SPOILER Rebels Season 3 Ep 16 "Through Imperial Eyes"

i have to agree with this. he's gotta know Thrawn is smarter than this.
all he's doing is jeopardizing the Rebellion. he's pretty much a liability to everybody as this point.

 

I think we all understand what Windu was hoping to accomplish with that effort. The point being made is about optics, half-truths, and Palpatine’s claims not being entirely unfounded - although perverse.

Before attempting to apprehend him, they never say WHY. All we have is Mace saying "The oppression of the Sith will never return." Beyond Anakin, a Jedi, making an uncorroborated accusation, what evidence do they have that he orchestrated a conspiracy culminating in war crimes? What grounds did they have to take the leader of the Republic into custody? None. Mace says he’ll answer to the Senate, but then acknowledges that Palps has control of the Senate and courts. Arresting him then with the intent to stand trial would be pointless. So he’d either be imprisoned without due process or executed. Neither act would be entirely lawful. What Palpatine proclaims to the citizenry then isn’t ‘untrue’ it’s ‘half-true’ and THAT’S why he’s the Emperor.

It's not my intent to paint him or anyone else as blameless. I don’t imagine anyone here is. It’s called ‘character motivation’. Bad guys don’t generally know they’re the bad guys. They have a reason for who they are. Otherwise they’re just one dimensional caricatures. Understanding why someone does something isn’t the same thing as condoning what they’ve done. That’s how I see it anyway.

 

I agree.

As an engaged viewer I was rooting for him to do the smart thing but if I put my critic hat on it's probably good writing.

I assume counter-intelligence work ensures a risk-taking and limit-pushing personality type so I guess it makes sense that the self-confidence Kallus displays would lead to fatal error or exploitation by his enemies.

 

true ~ he thinks he's smarter than he is (or at least smart enough to match wits with Thrawn). it's just frustrating when it feels like an obviously bad idea.

 

I think having Azmorigan easily take out so many sentry droids in an earlier episode kinda weakened Thrawn's fight with them in this episode.

 

Furthermore, Windu explicitly stated that he wanted the Jedi council to take power 'for an interim period'. We all know how that ends up.

Yeah, you see that in Lost Stars. When they come to Jelucan they are seen as bringing progress and security. They are welcomed.

I think the story needed him to stay. We need to see Thrawn getting some wins, plus he has no real purpose to serve the story if he is with the rebellion. Kallus will die a hero and I'm going to call it, Zeb goes down trying to save him.

Windu represents for me all that was wrong with the Jedi Order. More order than jedi. All about the orthodoxy, but all too comfortable with war and too eager to see himself as the saviour of the galaxy. He was clearly jealous of Anakin and he wanted power for himself - albeit for reasons he thought were noble.

 

They need to get Kallus out soon.

 

Claudia Gray also introduced revisionist history into Imperial education which I think was brilliant. School children are taught that the radical Mace Windu was principally responsible for the inciting incident that sparked the Clone Wars on Geonosis. A whole generation was brought up being spoon fed a fabricated reality of Imperial benevolence. God, that book was so much better than it had any right to be

 

Exactly! The point here is not justify the actions of any individual, the idea is to understand that, as wise Obi-Wan said, the truths we cling to depend greatly on our point of view. It is hard to compare our point of view as spectators and what we know about the duality of Palpatine/Darth Sidious and how the Jedi discovered his taking over the Republic, and how other individuals who are not that into the Force beliefs - any given Yularen, the people of Jelucan, Sloane - might perceive that. We see it even in the Rebel Jail comic arc - having a Sith Lord as an Emperor it is not a truth universally acknowledged, even by all the Imperial law enforcers.

I have a bad feeling about this.

Anyhow, if they bring the other Fulcrum into scene on Season 4 I won't complain much about a potential ending for Kallus. LOL.

Agree. For worlds like Jelucan or for some other worlds like the one Sloane or Sergeant Kreel lived in, the arrival of the Empire only meant bringing order and peace compared to the previous reign of crime lords and instability.

Nooooooo Zeb noooo LOL.

Lost Stars was a fantastic book since it allowed us to see a different perspective other than the Skywalker main storyline. We can see how others see the Jedi from what the Empire has told them. We can understand how some individuals can stay with the Empire even if they are not utterly evil - like Cienna Ree, on this case.

 

ha! maybe that's what they're setting up. it kinda never really made sense to me that Kallus was Fulcrum to begin with. : o p

 

I just hope they bring that Fulcrum and his faithful reprogrammed Imperial droid.

 

Super interesting. I loved bloodlines. How does "lost stars" compare?

 

I think Lost Stars has a different dynamic than Bloodline since you are seeing the events from the OT from the eyes of new characters. But it is really good.

I might be biased since I'm a big Leia fan and I loved Bloodline but I was surprised by Lost Stars pleasantly.

 

Like @PrincessLeiaCB3 said, they’re two different stories trying to do two different things, so hard to directly compare them. Lost Stars, I think, is a little more fun.

Bloodline was pretty good, but I got the feeling through most of it that the topics that could be touched were deliberately hamstrung by the events involving a main character so close to the ST. The focus had to be more narrow.

Lost Stars involves some very familiar events but 'seen through the eyes'* of new characters who can be colored however the author chose. You get to view the Empire from the perspective of those who grew up during that era, from childhood to adulthood and how it informs them as characters from an emotional and psychological level. It’s technically YA, so there are some pronounced tropes of the genre you have to bear with. I’d say if you enjoyed Bloodline you’d most likely enjoy Lost Stars just as much, if not more.

*A variation of that expression has some cool context in the story.

 

Yeah, Lost Stars is so good. I almost didn't bother with it because it's Y/A and not available as ebook except in German, but I was getting a flight one day and I saw it in the airport bookshop and said, what the hell. By the time my plane landed I was hooked.

 

This is my problem. Thrawn is smarter than this but so is Kallus. He can't possibly think he is not under suspicion with Lyste still alive and talking. He would have a better chance if he had shot Lyste and cut that loose end, but even that wouldn't allow him to give info to the Rebels without making Thrawn aware of another leak, and it would be even more obvious. I'm hoping he stayed not to leak but a one time attempt at stealing info and escape like Zeebo. If anything else then the Kallus character is too inconsistent. Smart enough to pull off a great frame up on the fly, but too stupid to realize he has used up his cover.

 

I don’t know. Aren’t we talking about the same guy our little band of misfits were running circles around in Season 1? He’s certainly competent and capable, but doesn’t strike me as someone self-reflective enough to grasp his own limitations and inadequacies. Y’know? Seems fairly in-character enough to me to suspend disbelief.

Also consider he might be slightly apprehensive of the idea of defecting. The Empire is likely all this guy has ever known. What lays ahead for him with the Rebellion? A type of uncertainty he doesn’t have a frame of reference for. The fear of getting caught is sizeable, but it’s a known value to him. The fear of the unknown, for someone like Kallus, might be just as crippling. That’s probably just me excusing things away again though

 

That's the dilemma of writing for this show. How do you make an adversary that can't ever win. Kallus failed just like everybody else because the show is about Rebels. Grint and Aresko were keystone cops they always failed, so they bring in Kallus who did the same thing Thrawn did. He looked at a helmet and got this amazing insight. In that case he figured Ezra was listening in on communications and set a trap with the Wookies. Next up Grand Inquisitor then Tarkin. We got a little Vader and now Thrawn. Nobody has ever been able to stop our Rebels. I would say Maul has done the most significant damage to the crew than anybody else. So the question is are they going to make Kallus dumb so he can die the death the core characters can't.

 

It's the contradictory nature of this show unfortunately. It’s a property targeted at the youth market, but the subject matter is ‘war’. A war, that we know from other material set on the same stage, is costly and perilous.

Our gang seem to be having a grand old time duking it out with their hapless foe with limited consequence. Logically, there have to be noteworthy casualties along the way, but it’s not very kid friendly to kill off your heroes, so you position someone else that can be a proxy. I think you’re right on that count. Kallus has served his purpose to the story. Time to make him a martyr.

I'm also assuming, like plenty others, that the attack on Lothal isn't going to go very well. It'll be interesting to see to what extent.

 

Fulcrum needs a new recruit now.