REBELS REVIEW SEASON 3 "STEPS INTO SHADOW"

Since the premiere party thread is locked, I figured I'd fire up the discussion here.


My thoughts on the episode

Good
*The darker tone
* Hondo. "the purple guy and the mando girl!"
* I hated thrawn's voice from the trailer, but it really grew on me. It was a little hard for me to understand though.

Bad
*Zeb is looking at Sabine, and it isn't until she calls for help that he does anything. Was he not supposed to be in frame? Maybe he should've been facing the other way.
* Too little of Thrawn. I get that he wasn't the main point of the episode, but he was marketed so heavily that I was bummed to get only 1 minute with him.


weird
*Bendu. He just happened to be on that planet with the spiders from last seasons penultimate episode. He didn't do or say enough for me to really care about him.

*Tarkin's comments about vader having "dealt with the jedi problem" when Ezra is still wrecking havoc.

 

I think he was marketed so heavilt because of his over all presence/arc for this season similar to vader except he'll probably have more screen time .

 

I enjoyed the episode. It seems every main character has stepped up their game/skills a little and it left me intrigued with what's to come - just what I would hope a season opener should deliver.

 

Really enjoyed the episode and thought it set a great tone for the rest of the season. Can anybody give me a complete lowdown on the Bendu history? I hear it had a decent part in the legends universe.

 

Overall I liked the episode. You can definitely tell we are getting closer to ANH. I liked the reference of the Y-Wings going to General Dodana. Thrawn although not very prominent in this episode is going to be a very cool,calculated and ruthless bad guy. I'm looking forward to see the direction this season goes. So far so good.

 

The only thing I know about Bendu, or the Bendu, is that it's a term and concept from George's earlier drafts - the Jedi were known as the Jedi-Bendu. But here's Wookieepedia's take on the old EU stuff:

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Bendu

As for me, I loved this episode. I loved the look and the tone, and I thought that Kanan's time with Bendu was really fascinating. I want to know more about what all of that means. Just as importantly, we pick up where we left off with Ezra and I was kind of surprised that they really didn't hold back with him. I was also surprised by how little we saw Thrawn, but not disappointed by it. I never read any of the old EU so Thrawn is a new character to me, although I know how much he is loved throughout the fandom. Since he is a new character to me, I never got any real sense of why he was so desired and trusted in that situation. Fans of his from the old books are probably not asking that question, but I am. The episode never addresses why he is important.

And once again, Hera was woefully under-represented.

All in all I thought it was a magnificent episode. At times it felt a little too fast-paced; as if maybe too much was being thrown into this one episode. After all, we had Ezra and the holocron, Ezra and his promotion, Kanan and his blindness, Kanan and the Bendu, Thrawn, Tarkin, and the raid on the facility itself. It's a lot. But it set us up well for a dramatic season 3.

9/10

 

I felt that with Bendu, that arc of the episode felt really rushed because an entire episode could have been made with just Kanan and Bendy .

 

The Bendu scenes were great, really spiritual and a great directional piece. I'm hoping to see more of the Bendu through the series.

The character's becoming more mature is great, obviously with Ezra and Sabine. Judging by the trailers, it would seem that Hera will be more featured as we go on.

I enjoyed what I saw of Thrawn, a schemer, a master calculator operating in the background - there's a sinister genius there already and I think will cause the Rebels huge problems. I'm most intrigued how they will "write him out" of the OT period...

Overall, great start to what should be an awesome season!

 

The new Sabine is a big improvement over the old model. I could not stand the old hair colours, but I like the new ones .

 

That's what I thought! I am sure he may use the holocron for his own reasons.

Can't wait to see more of Thrawn and see more of how the relationships between the crew have changed since the end of season 2. I am also glad that the season has become more darker with Ezra more willing to kill.

 

It was careless of Kanan to give such a powerful force user the Holocron without knowing more about Bendu.
Ezra is becoming very powerful, in some respects more so than any Force user we have seen so far. He did not mind trick that guy in the Walker, he took him over.

Kanan and Ezra have to be scripted out of Star Wars before ANH, either by death, not being Jedi, sort of like Ashoka "Grey". If they are allowed to continue, they either have to be frozen in carbonite, dead, give up on fighting Vader and Sideous, thrown into a different time or so far away from the conflict they cannot get back for 30 years =).

I like the frozen in carbonite idea and left for dead because they can then bring them back in the current TFA time frame. Perhaps Ashoka learns to see into the future while stuck on that Sith Temple and can see Vader destroying Ezra and Kanan. Instead of letting that happen she captures them, freeze them and herself in Carbonite on that planet to be found later?

Next Cartoon could be Star Wars "Resistance" by brining them back to get it started. Maybe she just freeze the entire crew and they can come back and assist Rey and Luke...

 

I think it was a good start of the season! At one point I felt like most of the trailer scenes were from this first episode, but not for certain. I was not expecting to see so much of Thrawn during this episode - it was a good set up for his character in my opinion, didn't think they would like to give so much away yet!

Loved the mention of General Dodonna and how Hera keeps being the voice of reason - they're part of a bigger Rebellion, just one cell. Obviously my thoughts were immediately to the Gold Squadron when I saw the Y-wings, but it was nice to have a confirmation onscreen where those starfighters would be sent to.

And I liked the setup for Thrawn: he is more into the bigger picture and not worried about ending with just one Rebel cell, he's into destroying the whole Rebellion.

Same feeling here at some points. But enjoyed the episode anyway.

When Kanan was talking with the Bendu about his blindness, I could picture Obi-Wan telling Luke: "Your eyes can deceive you. Don't trust them."

Same feeling here: how his story-arc will be shown so everything is consistent with ANH? But I guess I have had the very same feeling about the Ghost Rebels.

I'd lie if I say there were not certain moments during the episode where I wanted to punch Ezra in the face LOL.

 

It appears from the preview for the next episode that the Bendu is back. Maul has some of the ghost crew and wants the holocron and Kanan and Ezra have to go back to him to get it.

 

Not gonna lie Ezra was pretty brutal and ruthless at points in this episode. You can definitely tell that his tone and the tone of Rebels in general is gonna be quite a bit darker this season. Thrawn was pretty cool. I'm sad we didn't get more of him this episode, but we will get a lot of him this season. I don't know what to make of the Bendu yet, he seems like a good guy, but I'm not entirely sure. Hondo was fun as usual, the General Dodonna reference was pretty nice too and the Y-wings were great although I will be kinda disappointed if we don't see them for a while. One thing that did surprise me is how quickly they dealt with Kanan's blindness. Instead of making it a season long arc for Kanan they resolved it in this episode, granted he has had months to deal with it on his own and he is a force user so that helps. Overall pretty good episode and I'm definitely excited to see where Rebels goes from here.

 

Big jump in quality i hope they keep it up.

 

It was great. I'm getting the impression Kallus might kill Thrawn. He was betrayed in Legends. I suspect he'll be betrayed and killed again but by Kallus. There are signs of his possible defection in the primere and last season.

 

With someone as important as Thrawn I doubt they'd kill him off so soon.