Rebels Season 3 Review: Ep. 4 Hera's Heroes

I have to admit, not exactly having been an "early adopter" as far as being a fan of Rebels, I've liked this season a lot better so far. They've gotten away from the contrived "comically dysfunctional sitcom family" bit, and the stories feel more like Star Wars than what they did in the first season. There's a lot more at stake now for Kanan and Ezra and the Ghost crew than "Gee, d'ya think a bunch of stormtroopers who can't hit the broadside of a bantha stable are gonna get us this time?" and "YOU'RE not my DAD!!" and IMHO the show is much better for it.

My favorite so far, I think, is actually last week's episode where Sabine helped Wedge and Hobbie to defect to the Rebel Alliance (though I also particularly enjoyed the season opener with Ezra's dark side dabblings almost blowing their mission to snag those Y-wings from the Imperial demo station.) But "Hera's Heroes" was an interesting story. Like some others here, I didn't completely buy Hera's willingness to put her entire team in danger for the sake of recovering a family heirloom, but once my suspension of disbelief got me past that, there was some good stuff in there. Overall, I don't expect it's going to top my list of best episodes for the season, but it's solid in its own way.

Thrawn... obviously, this was the big draw for most folks this week. I admit to having always been rather ambivalent about the Thrawn character (and about Zahn's Thrawn trilogy in general, truth be told) but I do think he's a good EU character for LFL to have dusted off and added to the new canon. There was always something fascinating about a villain who was so tremendously formidable due largely to his ability to discern his enemies patterns of thought and strategy by through detailed examination of their art and their culture. And IMHO it looks like they've adapted this quite well to the Rebels storyline. I don't recall his reaction to philistine dismissal of works of art as having been as violent in the Zahn books as this week's episode showed it to be, but I think it makes for a broader dynamic range for the character. I'll be interested to see where they take him from here.