Star Wars:Rebels
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| Star Wars | |
|---|---|
| About: | The Franchise, The Setting, The Movies, The Video Games |
| Television Shows: | The Clone Wars, Rebels, Resistance, The Mandalorian, The Bad Batch, Disney + Originals |
| Star Wars Games | |
| Miniature: | X-Wing, Armada, Legion |
| Tabletop: | Rebellion |
| Roleplaying: | FFG, WotC (d20), WEG (d6) |
Star Wars: Rebels was an american TV series that was released in the shadow of TCW. Generally considered an ok show, but not a great one. It adds the nice little bits of mysticism back into the Star Wars universe, while also making its most powerful threat look like harmless fails. General opinion is mixed, but the results tend to lean towards tolerable. Ultimately its up to you whether or not its good, though most fans agree its way above whatever the hell resistance was supposed to be.
Imperial Incompetence?
Especially in early seasons the Empire comes off rather poorly as they are easily tricked and befuddled by our heroes, it is however it is worth remembering:
- The primary setting in the early seasons, Lothal, is a backwater world and these are not front line troopers here.
- Based on the Academy episodes some of them may be as young as 16 with two months of training. The Academy episodes also show why Stormtroopers seem so crap compared to the Clone Troopers from The Clone Wars: where the Clones were trained to fight together as actual comrades in arms, the morons in charge of the Lothal Academy decided it was more important to train Stormtroopers to actively sabotage each other for personal gain.
Of the Imperials appearing in the early seasons, the Inquisitor (his title was later revealed to actually be Grand Inquisitor) was the only one who didn't seem like an incompetent. Agent Kallus was allegedly an elite Imperial Security Bureau agent, but the Rebels generally ran rings around him. Minister Tua was basically a glorified secretary who was in over her head, and all things considered was actually somewhat sympathetic.
However, whenever a more notable (i.e. movie) Imperial shows up, they are almost certainly played completely straight. Tarkin shows up towards the end of the second season and quickly demonstrates he's there to Get Things Done by having the Inquisitor behead the aforementioned idiots in charge of the Lothal Academy and subtly warning Kallus and Tua their heads were next on the chopping block. In the finale, Tarkin is defeated and the Inquisitor killed, but that causes the Emperor to send Tarkin some backup in the form of Darth Fucking Vader, and every encounter with him left the rebels thanking the force they simply got away alive.
Of course, both Vader and Tarkin have Plot Armor since they both have to live to see Episode IV, so they don't stick around. New Imperial characters get introduced in the form of Governor Pryce (the actual governor of Lothal who apparently spent most of the early seasons mucking around on Coruscant instead of actually doing her job), a couple of new Inquisitors eager to take the now vacant title of Grand Inquisitor, and Grand Admiral Thrawn. Unfortunately, despite being shown to be threats at first, fans noticed they became less and less of a threat as time went on. In fact, even the heroes seemed to not take the new Inquisitors seriously as time went on as they got better at dealing with them. Neither Kannon nor Ezra ever manage to beat the second set of inquisitors, Fulcrum can take them both but, given who she is that is not surprising. It isn't until the old master returns that the inquisitors are.... removed.
This was one of the biggest criticisms of the series, in fact. The heroes have plot armour, and worse at times seemed to know they had plot armour. At several points, they even dismiss the presence of Stormtroopers as being nuisances at best. Again, it was implied that the Stormtroopers assigned to Lothal are just crap, but when later in the series it's revealed Lothal is actually pretty important to the Imperial war machine it makes it strange that more competent troops aren't rotated in. This is especially odd if you're familiar with Admiral Thrawn in the old Expanded Universe stories where he was very much more 'quality over quantity' and would want important facilities protected by the best troops he could find. To be fair, Thrawn successfully tracked the Rebels to their original base of operations and would've killed or imprisoned all of the main cast if not for the intervention of godlike Force entity.