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Star Wars:Rebels

2020-12-30T03:55:52Z

2601:2C1:8501:D350:8837:8B45:D710:A5B9: /* Season 3 */

Star Wars: Rebels was an american TV series that was released in the shadow of [[Star Wars:The Clone Wars|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 [[Abbadon|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 [[Star Wars:Resistance|hell resistance was supposed to be]].

''Rebels'' is set a few years before ''A New Hope'' and covers the early formation of the rebellion from the perspective of one cell focused on the planet Lothal. Much like the Clone Wars, it starts off weakly with slow pacing and erroneous animation, but gets better as the seasons and storyline progress, with season 4 sometimes rivaling the very best Clone Wars arcs for quality and storytelling. If you liked ''Rogue One'' but thought it should be about 25 hours long and done in cartoony CGI then this is the show for you.

[[File:Rebels.jpeg|thumb|And thus begins the slow but sure decent into [[Star Wars:Resistance|mediocrity]], *Sigh..*]]

Since the show does have a fair amount of dedicated fans, <strike>likely possibly</strike> certainly more than the sequel trilogy itself, Disney has made a habit of planting Easter Egg references to Rebels in basically everything moving forward, usually in the form of an appearance by the iconic ship The Ghost or the friendly-ish space pirate character Hondo Ohnaka.

<strike>(Wait a second, wasn’t Hondo in [[Star Wars:The Clone Wars|clone wars]] first-) </strike>

==Season 1==
[[Image:Alderaan.jpg|right|300px|thumb|The original vision for Alderaan, a planet of grassy rolling hills and mound-like cities.]]
Season 1 is perhaps the most hotly debated and skubby season. As this series amounts to a sequel to the Clone Wars, it had deep shoes to fill, and to be frank, it doesn't fill those shoes well at all. However, high points include Tarkin, the Grand Inquisitor, and Fulcrum. Special note about Fulcrum is that she is Ahsoka, and probably the only reason this show got another season.

Most of this Season takes place on or around Lothal. Lothal as a place isn't too boring either, coming across as a cool mix of Kansas/Oklahoma, with a centralized capital city as it's main point of commerce. The setting is based on Ralph McQuarrie's drawings for Alderaan, which went unused in the original and prequel movies.

The main complaint about season one is that the baddies are completely incompetent. The Imperial occupation of Lothal is seemingly commanded by two Imperial captains (a fat neckbeard and a skinny one with a Habsburg chin) led by a blond ditz who's just the real governor's stuck up secretary. Thankfully, Tarkin shows up towards the end who quickly proceeds to [[blam|execute]] the two captains for their incompetence and under his command, the Imperials become slightly more competent for the rest of the season.

==Season 2==
The real reason that this show got a second season. Darth FUCKING Vader appears, and he is played appropriately as an essential avatar of destruction ([[awesome|and is voiced by James Earl Jones to add up to the awesomeness]]). His first act? Carbombing the comedy baddie of season one, Minister Tua and blaming it on rebel terrorism. The plot armor heroes get brutally destroyed, shattering them and dispersing the rebels from Lothal for a time. Such appearances from awesome characters are kept relatively low, due to the need to not let them overshadow the main cast.

The inquisitors are ok (one of them comes across as having a light attraction to Ezra), and ISB agent Kallus continues to be a presence around the show. The finale really solidifies the show's right to continue, throwing Maul into the mix, and having the epic confrontation that Ahsoka and Anakin were destined to have since the beginning of The Clone Wars series.

It's in Season 2 that the rebellion makes its appearance, as a collection of independent cells largely focused on system level actions. Ryloth is in open revolt, Princess Leia is out on "mercy missions", and Bail Organa is bankrolling Jun Sato's ''Phoenix Squadron'', a renegade paramilitary force that assists other rebel cells.

==Season 3==
Season 3 is generally considered to be all around good, due to the introduction of Thrawn, and general lack of outright retarded episodes, with only a few exceptions. Thrawn is appropriately written as cunningly intelligent, kicking ass in every scene he is in, including [[Awesome|beating assassin droids with his bare fists and a blaster]]. We even get another new character in Governor Pryce, who apparently chose to chill on Coruscant for two whole seasons than do her actual fucking job on Lothal. Ezra also gets changes; he now has a lot less hair, and he has built a new lightsaber to replace the toy he was using for the first two seasons.

[[Image:WomanYellingAtLothcat.jpeg|right|400px|thumb|''Stop fooling our plan, you rebel scum!'']]

Most of the character development for the season is focused on two arcs: Ezra's entanglement with Maul, and Sabine's history with her people. Ezra's arc ends with Kenobi telling Maul to stay dead in the greatest and most illustrative lightsaber fight ever. Along the way Sabine discovers the Darksaber and then sits out a few episodes on Mandalore until returning for the finale.

For the alliance as a whole, Mon Mothma is on the run conducting pirate broadcasts against the Empire. Jan Dodonna has defected and begun assembling a fleet of defector pilots and stolen ships; among the new recruits are Wedge and Hobbie. Phoenix Squadron and the Dodonna force suffer severe losses fighting to escape Thrawn's fleet as the season ends.

==Season 4==

The survivors of the Battle of Atollon at the end of the 3rd season escape to Mon Mothma's new base on Yavin IV. The rebellion is now taking on its recognizable form from the movies, although is having difficulty reining in its wilder elements. Fighters like Saw Gerrera advocate aggressive direct action, to the dismay of the more moderate leaders. This arc is left for ''Rogue One'' to resolve, while the main cast of Rebels returns to Lothal, themselves in favor of direct action against Thrawn and his TIE Defender project.

The liberation of Lothal is the main arc of the season although that starts with the Rebels getting punched in the face because Lothal belongs to Thrawn and he's ready for them. [[lolwut|Pryce manages to kill Kanan]], but only by [[fail|blowing up the occupation's entire fuel reserve]]. The true extent and power of Ezra's connection to the force and Lothal is revealed, and it becomes clear that the Imperial occupation of Lothal is only tangentially about building fighters and more about the fact that it has a Jedi temple, which the Emperor is very interested in [[profit|for reasons]].

==The Good==

* All the main characters are well-written, fleshed out, with reasonable, sympathetic backstories and significant character arcs, along with different enough skill sets that they don't step on each others' toes. Each one feels like an integral part of the team; the pilot, the gunner, the muscle, the tech, the swordsman and the hot-shot rookie.
** Seriously, you'd think that with two jedi in a 6-man crew you'd get some overlap, but they feel like very different characters, both in personality and powers. Kanan is very much the quintessential combat jedi (as is to be expected as he was trained during the Clone Wars), while Ezra's signature ability to connect with the galaxy around him and especially its wildlife marks him out not only from the rest of the Ghost crew, but from every other force user we've seen on the screen.
* Ghost and it's shuttlecraft, Phantom, are both pretty cool ships
* Sense of escalation. In season 1, focus is entirely on the crew of the Ghost and the existence of a larger Rebellion is mostly unknown to them. In season 2, the crew has joined a larger Rebel cell named Phoenix Squadron. In season 3, Phoenix Squadron has acquired themselves a permanent base and we see more cells from the larger Rebellion. In season 4, Rebellion has taken the form we know from the movies, The Alliance to Restore the Republic, and the Galactic Civil War has officially begun.
* Having the crew use callsigns instead of names when on mission or on a radio is a cool detail
* Grand Admiral Thrawn makes his debut in Disney Star Wars, along with the TIE Defender project. The character doesn’t lose much in the translation.
* Zeb is voiced by [[Steve Blum]] who also voices some other characters (mostly Stormtroopers)
* Original trilogy actors such as Billy Dee Williams (Lando), James Earl Jones (Vader) and Frank Oz (Yoda) return to voice their characters
* Dee Bradley Baker is back to voice clones and even though they are naturally much less common here than in The Clone Wars (mostly it's just Rex), he does as good of a job as always
* The bearded old guy in the Endor strike team in RotJ turns out to be Captain Rex. Fan theory at first, later confirmed.
* You CAN [[combi-weapon]] a lightsaber and a blaster, and it's OP as shit
* Fighters sometimes perform some actual space-maneuvers instead of just flying in space like aircraft as is usually the case
* Plenty of Imperial warships, unlike the movies where we only really see Star Destroyers. Of particular note is the Arquitens-class Command Cruiser, a light cruiser which is generally more common in this series than the Star Destroyer. Makes sense since the galaxy is big and you can build 35 of these at the price of one Star Destroyer. They are also used as escorts for Star Destroyer, something we also don't see in the movies.
* Force wolves (no, not [[Rune Priest|those force wolves]])
* [[A Song of Ice and Fire|Game of Thrones-style]] Mandos (Krownest is pretty much Space-Winterfell).
* Imperial Inquisitors. Sure they don’t last long, but they were intimidating while they were, and it planted the seed that was used in other Star Wars media.
* Good appearances by Vader and Sheev.
* The Maul vs Obi-wan decades-long duel finally comes to an end... and what an end it is.
* The season finales are, invariably, fantastic.
* Animation gets better as the show goes on.

A note about the wolves... ''Rebels'' turns the force mysticism up past 11. Forget just being precog space monks with laser swords; as far as ''Rebels'' is concerned the Jedi are [[craftworld]] [[eldar]] without the racism. Rebels picks up the torch of the Clone Wars “Force Gods” and mixes in some of the straight-up fantasy shit from the Lucas era novels and the KOTOR/Old Republic Jedi philosophy schools and heresies beyond just “Light good, Dark bad”.

==The Bad==

* Since this is a Disney cartoon, the bad guys spend a large amount of their on-screen time (though not all, mind you) losing. This changes the Imperials (other than Thrawn and Vader) from an imposing force to [[Abbadon|cartoon villains]], although Rebels villains manage to stay intimidating more than Grievous did in Clone Wars.
* Battles slower paced than a Death Guard movement phase. Enjoy characters having conversations in cover-based shooting when everyone has Stormtrooper aim, including the main characters. Unlike The Clone Wars, this issue doesn't even get better as the series progresses.
* Like The Clone Wars, existence of shields is often either completely ignored or they deplete so quickly that it's barely worth it to even have them.
* The "lets punch and kick people wearing armor"-thing from The Clone Wars returns
* Artstyle is generally considered a downgrade from The Clone Wars
* [[Bullshit|Helicopter lightsabers]].
* Complete bipolarity in tone. This can create some great moments, but invariably ruins the mood episode by episode, or between the A and B plots.
* Iron Squadron. Just...fucking [[Rage|Iron Squadron]].
* Star Destroyers take some getting used to, mostly due to their bridge towers being way taller than they should be.
* Space Squid-whales annihilating a maximum strength Imperial Blockade in under 30 seconds.
* The changes to Hondo Ohnaka's character.
* Hera is a captain in the beginning of the series and later gets promoted to general... [[FAIL|yet wears rank insignia of a lieutenant throughout the series.]]
* TIE Fighters are used in space without spacesuits, even though it's well-known that TIE-Fighters have no life support systems

==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 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. Which also tie in to why some many early fights end with less lethal encounters, espically the ones involving Sabine's exposives.

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 absolute fucking idiot. Agent Kallus was allegedly an elite Imperial Security Bureau agent, but the Rebels generally ran rings around him. Minister Tula 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 first 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 Tula 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. A counter to this is that neither Kanan 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.... [[BLAM|removed]].

This was one of the biggest criticisms of the series, in fact. The heroes have plot armor, and worse at times seemed to know they had plot armor. 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.

==Thrawn==

Forget all that noise about Imperial incompetence, because the real bad of Rebels doesn't disappoint. Grand Admiral Thrawn is in peak form in Rebels. He's observant, he's ruthless, he plays the long game, and he's [[Frazetta Man|fucking ripped for a guy who's into art]] and strategy.

Thrawn's first spotlight moment is on Ryloth, when Hera attempts to steal back her family's Kalikori heirloom. Thrawn (understanding the artifact's significance) instantly realizes her identity as the daughter of Ryloth's renegade leader, while his aide struggles to put the pieces together. Taking an interest in the actions of Hera's band of rebels, Thrawn begins collecting Sabine Wren's graffiti.

His next big moment came when Agent Kallus, now a double agent for the rebels, assisted Ezra in hacking the records of Thrawn's search for the rebel base and then reprogramming some combat training droids as assassins (which Thrawn beats down like a boss). Kallus attempts to pin the incident on another officer, effectively enough to throw Wullf Yularen, but not enough to fool Thrawn, who deduces that Kallus switched sides and uses him to leak false intelligence. The giveaway? The helmet Ezra was captured with, which Thrawn immediately recognizes as Sabine's handiwork, confirming that its owner was the young Jedi, and the fact that Kallus withheld this information proved he was no longer loyal to the Empire.

In Imperial politics Thrawn is a pragmatist standing in opposition to the Death Star project as it draws resources away from his own projects. He sees it as [[Nazi Equipment#Wunderwaffen|a waste on big dumb object]] when the Empire would have an enormous advantage over the rebels [[meme|once the TIE Defender is mass produced]]. In fact, Thrawn would likely have stopped the project if it wasn't for the fact his boss had ordered it.

Thrawn's only mistake was his dismissal of the supernatural despite knowing about the Force, Jedi and Sith. When he found the rebel base on Atollon, the only reason the Rebels escaped was the intervention of the godlike Force entity Bendu. In the final episode Thrawn admitted to Ezra that he didn't know much about the Force. But Thrawn had the Resistance on the ropes and was only beaten by Ezra's use of the Force and a pod of giant space whales (which Thrawn had no way of knowing would show up).

{{Star Wars}}

Star Wars:Rebels

2020-12-30T03:55:38Z

2601:2C1:8501:D350:8837:8B45:D710:A5B9: /* Season 4 */

Star Wars: Rebels was an american TV series that was released in the shadow of [[Star Wars:The Clone Wars|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 [[Abbadon|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 [[Star Wars:Resistance|hell resistance was supposed to be]].

''Rebels'' is set a few years before ''A New Hope'' and covers the early formation of the rebellion from the perspective of one cell focused on the planet Lothal. Much like the Clone Wars, it starts off weakly with slow pacing and erroneous animation, but gets better as the seasons and storyline progress, with season 4 sometimes rivaling the very best Clone Wars arcs for quality and storytelling. If you liked ''Rogue One'' but thought it should be about 25 hours long and done in cartoony CGI then this is the show for you.

[[File:Rebels.jpeg|thumb|And thus begins the slow but sure decent into [[Star Wars:Resistance|mediocrity]], *Sigh..*]]

Since the show does have a fair amount of dedicated fans, <strike>likely possibly</strike> certainly more than the sequel trilogy itself, Disney has made a habit of planting Easter Egg references to Rebels in basically everything moving forward, usually in the form of an appearance by the iconic ship The Ghost or the friendly-ish space pirate character Hondo Ohnaka.

<strike>(Wait a second, wasn’t Hondo in [[Star Wars:The Clone Wars|clone wars]] first-) </strike>

==Season 1==
[[Image:Alderaan.jpg|right|300px|thumb|The original vision for Alderaan, a planet of grassy rolling hills and mound-like cities.]]
Season 1 is perhaps the most hotly debated and skubby season. As this series amounts to a sequel to the Clone Wars, it had deep shoes to fill, and to be frank, it doesn't fill those shoes well at all. However, high points include Tarkin, the Grand Inquisitor, and Fulcrum. Special note about Fulcrum is that she is Ahsoka, and probably the only reason this show got another season.

Most of this Season takes place on or around Lothal. Lothal as a place isn't too boring either, coming across as a cool mix of Kansas/Oklahoma, with a centralized capital city as it's main point of commerce. The setting is based on Ralph McQuarrie's drawings for Alderaan, which went unused in the original and prequel movies.

The main complaint about season one is that the baddies are completely incompetent. The Imperial occupation of Lothal is seemingly commanded by two Imperial captains (a fat neckbeard and a skinny one with a Habsburg chin) led by a blond ditz who's just the real governor's stuck up secretary. Thankfully, Tarkin shows up towards the end who quickly proceeds to [[blam|execute]] the two captains for their incompetence and under his command, the Imperials become slightly more competent for the rest of the season.

==Season 2==
The real reason that this show got a second season. Darth FUCKING Vader appears, and he is played appropriately as an essential avatar of destruction ([[awesome|and is voiced by James Earl Jones to add up to the awesomeness]]). His first act? Carbombing the comedy baddie of season one, Minister Tua and blaming it on rebel terrorism. The plot armor heroes get brutally destroyed, shattering them and dispersing the rebels from Lothal for a time. Such appearances from awesome characters are kept relatively low, due to the need to not let them overshadow the main cast.

The inquisitors are ok (one of them comes across as having a light attraction to Ezra), and ISB agent Kallus continues to be a presence around the show. The finale really solidifies the show's right to continue, throwing Maul into the mix, and having the epic confrontation that Ahsoka and Anakin were destined to have since the beginning of The Clone Wars series.

It's in Season 2 that the rebellion makes its appearance, as a collection of independent cells largely focused on system level actions. Ryloth is in open revolt, Princess Leia is out on "mercy missions", and Bail Organa is bankrolling Jun Sato's ''Phoenix Squadron'', a renegade paramilitary force that assists other rebel cells.

==Season 3==
Season 3 is generally considered to be all around good, due to the introduction of Thrawn, and general lack of outright retarded episodes, with only a few exceptions. Thrawn is appropriately written as cunningly intelligent, kicking ass in every scene he is in, including [[Awesome|beating assassin droids with his bare fists and a blaster]]. We even get another new character in Governor Pryce, who apparently chose to chill on Coruscant for two whole seasons than do her actual fucking job on Lothal. Ezra also gets changes; he now has a lot less hair, and he has built a new lightsaber to replace the toy he was using for the first two seasons.

Most of the character development for the season is focused on two arcs: Ezra's entanglement with Maul, and Sabine's history with her people. Ezra's arc ends with Kenobi telling Maul to stay dead in the greatest and most illustrative lightsaber fight ever. Along the way Sabine discovers the Darksaber and then sits out a few episodes on Mandalore until returning for the finale.

For the alliance as a whole, Mon Mothma is on the run conducting pirate broadcasts against the Empire. Jan Dodonna has defected and begun assembling a fleet of defector pilots and stolen ships; among the new recruits are Wedge and Hobbie. Phoenix Squadron and the Dodonna force suffer severe losses fighting to escape Thrawn's fleet as the season ends.

==Season 4==

The survivors of the Battle of Atollon at the end of the 3rd season escape to Mon Mothma's new base on Yavin IV. The rebellion is now taking on its recognizable form from the movies, although is having difficulty reining in its wilder elements. Fighters like Saw Gerrera advocate aggressive direct action, to the dismay of the more moderate leaders. This arc is left for ''Rogue One'' to resolve, while the main cast of Rebels returns to Lothal, themselves in favor of direct action against Thrawn and his TIE Defender project.

The liberation of Lothal is the main arc of the season although that starts with the Rebels getting punched in the face because Lothal belongs to Thrawn and he's ready for them. [[lolwut|Pryce manages to kill Kanan]], but only by [[fail|blowing up the occupation's entire fuel reserve]]. The true extent and power of Ezra's connection to the force and Lothal is revealed, and it becomes clear that the Imperial occupation of Lothal is only tangentially about building fighters and more about the fact that it has a Jedi temple, which the Emperor is very interested in [[profit|for reasons]].

==The Good==

* All the main characters are well-written, fleshed out, with reasonable, sympathetic backstories and significant character arcs, along with different enough skill sets that they don't step on each others' toes. Each one feels like an integral part of the team; the pilot, the gunner, the muscle, the tech, the swordsman and the hot-shot rookie.
** Seriously, you'd think that with two jedi in a 6-man crew you'd get some overlap, but they feel like very different characters, both in personality and powers. Kanan is very much the quintessential combat jedi (as is to be expected as he was trained during the Clone Wars), while Ezra's signature ability to connect with the galaxy around him and especially its wildlife marks him out not only from the rest of the Ghost crew, but from every other force user we've seen on the screen.
* Ghost and it's shuttlecraft, Phantom, are both pretty cool ships
* Sense of escalation. In season 1, focus is entirely on the crew of the Ghost and the existence of a larger Rebellion is mostly unknown to them. In season 2, the crew has joined a larger Rebel cell named Phoenix Squadron. In season 3, Phoenix Squadron has acquired themselves a permanent base and we see more cells from the larger Rebellion. In season 4, Rebellion has taken the form we know from the movies, The Alliance to Restore the Republic, and the Galactic Civil War has officially begun.
* Having the crew use callsigns instead of names when on mission or on a radio is a cool detail
* Grand Admiral Thrawn makes his debut in Disney Star Wars, along with the TIE Defender project. The character doesn’t lose much in the translation.
* Zeb is voiced by [[Steve Blum]] who also voices some other characters (mostly Stormtroopers)
* Original trilogy actors such as Billy Dee Williams (Lando), James Earl Jones (Vader) and Frank Oz (Yoda) return to voice their characters
* Dee Bradley Baker is back to voice clones and even though they are naturally much less common here than in The Clone Wars (mostly it's just Rex), he does as good of a job as always
* The bearded old guy in the Endor strike team in RotJ turns out to be Captain Rex. Fan theory at first, later confirmed.
* You CAN [[combi-weapon]] a lightsaber and a blaster, and it's OP as shit
* Fighters sometimes perform some actual space-maneuvers instead of just flying in space like aircraft as is usually the case
* Plenty of Imperial warships, unlike the movies where we only really see Star Destroyers. Of particular note is the Arquitens-class Command Cruiser, a light cruiser which is generally more common in this series than the Star Destroyer. Makes sense since the galaxy is big and you can build 35 of these at the price of one Star Destroyer. They are also used as escorts for Star Destroyer, something we also don't see in the movies.
* Force wolves (no, not [[Rune Priest|those force wolves]])
* [[A Song of Ice and Fire|Game of Thrones-style]] Mandos (Krownest is pretty much Space-Winterfell).
* Imperial Inquisitors. Sure they don’t last long, but they were intimidating while they were, and it planted the seed that was used in other Star Wars media.
* Good appearances by Vader and Sheev.
* The Maul vs Obi-wan decades-long duel finally comes to an end... and what an end it is.
* The season finales are, invariably, fantastic.
* Animation gets better as the show goes on.

A note about the wolves... ''Rebels'' turns the force mysticism up past 11. Forget just being precog space monks with laser swords; as far as ''Rebels'' is concerned the Jedi are [[craftworld]] [[eldar]] without the racism. Rebels picks up the torch of the Clone Wars “Force Gods” and mixes in some of the straight-up fantasy shit from the Lucas era novels and the KOTOR/Old Republic Jedi philosophy schools and heresies beyond just “Light good, Dark bad”.

==The Bad==

* Since this is a Disney cartoon, the bad guys spend a large amount of their on-screen time (though not all, mind you) losing. This changes the Imperials (other than Thrawn and Vader) from an imposing force to [[Abbadon|cartoon villains]], although Rebels villains manage to stay intimidating more than Grievous did in Clone Wars.
* Battles slower paced than a Death Guard movement phase. Enjoy characters having conversations in cover-based shooting when everyone has Stormtrooper aim, including the main characters. Unlike The Clone Wars, this issue doesn't even get better as the series progresses.
* Like The Clone Wars, existence of shields is often either completely ignored or they deplete so quickly that it's barely worth it to even have them.
* The "lets punch and kick people wearing armor"-thing from The Clone Wars returns
* Artstyle is generally considered a downgrade from The Clone Wars
* [[Bullshit|Helicopter lightsabers]].
* Complete bipolarity in tone. This can create some great moments, but invariably ruins the mood episode by episode, or between the A and B plots.
* Iron Squadron. Just...fucking [[Rage|Iron Squadron]].
* Star Destroyers take some getting used to, mostly due to their bridge towers being way taller than they should be.
* Space Squid-whales annihilating a maximum strength Imperial Blockade in under 30 seconds.
* The changes to Hondo Ohnaka's character.
* Hera is a captain in the beginning of the series and later gets promoted to general... [[FAIL|yet wears rank insignia of a lieutenant throughout the series.]]
* TIE Fighters are used in space without spacesuits, even though it's well-known that TIE-Fighters have no life support systems

==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 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. Which also tie in to why some many early fights end with less lethal encounters, espically the ones involving Sabine's exposives.

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 absolute fucking idiot. Agent Kallus was allegedly an elite Imperial Security Bureau agent, but the Rebels generally ran rings around him. Minister Tula 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 first 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 Tula 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. A counter to this is that neither Kanan 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.... [[BLAM|removed]].

This was one of the biggest criticisms of the series, in fact. The heroes have plot armor, and worse at times seemed to know they had plot armor. 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.

==Thrawn==

Forget all that noise about Imperial incompetence, because the real bad of Rebels doesn't disappoint. Grand Admiral Thrawn is in peak form in Rebels. He's observant, he's ruthless, he plays the long game, and he's [[Frazetta Man|fucking ripped for a guy who's into art]] and strategy.

Thrawn's first spotlight moment is on Ryloth, when Hera attempts to steal back her family's Kalikori heirloom. Thrawn (understanding the artifact's significance) instantly realizes her identity as the daughter of Ryloth's renegade leader, while his aide struggles to put the pieces together. Taking an interest in the actions of Hera's band of rebels, Thrawn begins collecting Sabine Wren's graffiti.

His next big moment came when Agent Kallus, now a double agent for the rebels, assisted Ezra in hacking the records of Thrawn's search for the rebel base and then reprogramming some combat training droids as assassins (which Thrawn beats down like a boss). Kallus attempts to pin the incident on another officer, effectively enough to throw Wullf Yularen, but not enough to fool Thrawn, who deduces that Kallus switched sides and uses him to leak false intelligence. The giveaway? The helmet Ezra was captured with, which Thrawn immediately recognizes as Sabine's handiwork, confirming that its owner was the young Jedi, and the fact that Kallus withheld this information proved he was no longer loyal to the Empire.

In Imperial politics Thrawn is a pragmatist standing in opposition to the Death Star project as it draws resources away from his own projects. He sees it as [[Nazi Equipment#Wunderwaffen|a waste on big dumb object]] when the Empire would have an enormous advantage over the rebels [[meme|once the TIE Defender is mass produced]]. In fact, Thrawn would likely have stopped the project if it wasn't for the fact his boss had ordered it.

Thrawn's only mistake was his dismissal of the supernatural despite knowing about the Force, Jedi and Sith. When he found the rebel base on Atollon, the only reason the Rebels escaped was the intervention of the godlike Force entity Bendu. In the final episode Thrawn admitted to Ezra that he didn't know much about the Force. But Thrawn had the Resistance on the ropes and was only beaten by Ezra's use of the Force and a pod of giant space whales (which Thrawn had no way of knowing would show up).

{{Star Wars}}

Star Wars:Rebels

2020-12-30T03:54:45Z

2601:2C1:8501:D350:8837:8B45:D710:A5B9:

Star Wars: Rebels was an american TV series that was released in the shadow of [[Star Wars:The Clone Wars|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 [[Abbadon|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 [[Star Wars:Resistance|hell resistance was supposed to be]].

''Rebels'' is set a few years before ''A New Hope'' and covers the early formation of the rebellion from the perspective of one cell focused on the planet Lothal. Much like the Clone Wars, it starts off weakly with slow pacing and erroneous animation, but gets better as the seasons and storyline progress, with season 4 sometimes rivaling the very best Clone Wars arcs for quality and storytelling. If you liked ''Rogue One'' but thought it should be about 25 hours long and done in cartoony CGI then this is the show for you.

[[File:Rebels.jpeg|thumb|And thus begins the slow but sure decent into [[Star Wars:Resistance|mediocrity]], *Sigh..*]]

Since the show does have a fair amount of dedicated fans, <strike>likely possibly</strike> certainly more than the sequel trilogy itself, Disney has made a habit of planting Easter Egg references to Rebels in basically everything moving forward, usually in the form of an appearance by the iconic ship The Ghost or the friendly-ish space pirate character Hondo Ohnaka.

<strike>(Wait a second, wasn’t Hondo in [[Star Wars:The Clone Wars|clone wars]] first-) </strike>

==Season 1==
[[Image:Alderaan.jpg|right|300px|thumb|The original vision for Alderaan, a planet of grassy rolling hills and mound-like cities.]]
Season 1 is perhaps the most hotly debated and skubby season. As this series amounts to a sequel to the Clone Wars, it had deep shoes to fill, and to be frank, it doesn't fill those shoes well at all. However, high points include Tarkin, the Grand Inquisitor, and Fulcrum. Special note about Fulcrum is that she is Ahsoka, and probably the only reason this show got another season.

Most of this Season takes place on or around Lothal. Lothal as a place isn't too boring either, coming across as a cool mix of Kansas/Oklahoma, with a centralized capital city as it's main point of commerce. The setting is based on Ralph McQuarrie's drawings for Alderaan, which went unused in the original and prequel movies.

The main complaint about season one is that the baddies are completely incompetent. The Imperial occupation of Lothal is seemingly commanded by two Imperial captains (a fat neckbeard and a skinny one with a Habsburg chin) led by a blond ditz who's just the real governor's stuck up secretary. Thankfully, Tarkin shows up towards the end who quickly proceeds to [[blam|execute]] the two captains for their incompetence and under his command, the Imperials become slightly more competent for the rest of the season.

==Season 2==
The real reason that this show got a second season. Darth FUCKING Vader appears, and he is played appropriately as an essential avatar of destruction ([[awesome|and is voiced by James Earl Jones to add up to the awesomeness]]). His first act? Carbombing the comedy baddie of season one, Minister Tua and blaming it on rebel terrorism. The plot armor heroes get brutally destroyed, shattering them and dispersing the rebels from Lothal for a time. Such appearances from awesome characters are kept relatively low, due to the need to not let them overshadow the main cast.

The inquisitors are ok (one of them comes across as having a light attraction to Ezra), and ISB agent Kallus continues to be a presence around the show. The finale really solidifies the show's right to continue, throwing Maul into the mix, and having the epic confrontation that Ahsoka and Anakin were destined to have since the beginning of The Clone Wars series.

It's in Season 2 that the rebellion makes its appearance, as a collection of independent cells largely focused on system level actions. Ryloth is in open revolt, Princess Leia is out on "mercy missions", and Bail Organa is bankrolling Jun Sato's ''Phoenix Squadron'', a renegade paramilitary force that assists other rebel cells.

==Season 3==
Season 3 is generally considered to be all around good, due to the introduction of Thrawn, and general lack of outright retarded episodes, with only a few exceptions. Thrawn is appropriately written as cunningly intelligent, kicking ass in every scene he is in, including [[Awesome|beating assassin droids with his bare fists and a blaster]]. We even get another new character in Governor Pryce, who apparently chose to chill on Coruscant for two whole seasons than do her actual fucking job on Lothal. Ezra also gets changes; he now has a lot less hair, and he has built a new lightsaber to replace the toy he was using for the first two seasons.

Most of the character development for the season is focused on two arcs: Ezra's entanglement with Maul, and Sabine's history with her people. Ezra's arc ends with Kenobi telling Maul to stay dead in the greatest and most illustrative lightsaber fight ever. Along the way Sabine discovers the Darksaber and then sits out a few episodes on Mandalore until returning for the finale.

For the alliance as a whole, Mon Mothma is on the run conducting pirate broadcasts against the Empire. Jan Dodonna has defected and begun assembling a fleet of defector pilots and stolen ships; among the new recruits are Wedge and Hobbie. Phoenix Squadron and the Dodonna force suffer severe losses fighting to escape Thrawn's fleet as the season ends.

==Season 4==

The survivors of the Battle of Atollon at the end of the 3rd season escape to Mon Mothma's new base on Yavin IV. The rebellion is now taking on its recognizable form from the movies, although is having difficulty reining in its wilder elements. Fighters like Saw Gerrera advocate aggressive direct action, to the dismay of the more moderate leaders. This arc is left for ''Rogue One'' to resolve, while the main cast of Rebels returns to Lothal, themselves in favor of direct action against Thrawn and his TIE Defender project.

[[Image:WomanYellingAtLothcat.jpeg|right|400px|thumb|''Stop fooling our plan, you rebel scum!'']]

The liberation of Lothal is the main arc of the season although that starts with the Rebels getting punched in the face because Lothal belongs to Thrawn and he's ready for them. [[lolwut|Pryce manages to kill Kanan]], but only by [[fail|blowing up the occupation's entire fuel reserve]]. The true extent and power of Ezra's connection to the force and Lothal is revealed, and it becomes clear that the Imperial occupation of Lothal is only tangentially about building fighters and more about the fact that it has a Jedi temple, which the Emperor is very interested in [[profit|for reasons]].

==The Good==

* All the main characters are well-written, fleshed out, with reasonable, sympathetic backstories and significant character arcs, along with different enough skill sets that they don't step on each others' toes. Each one feels like an integral part of the team; the pilot, the gunner, the muscle, the tech, the swordsman and the hot-shot rookie.
** Seriously, you'd think that with two jedi in a 6-man crew you'd get some overlap, but they feel like very different characters, both in personality and powers. Kanan is very much the quintessential combat jedi (as is to be expected as he was trained during the Clone Wars), while Ezra's signature ability to connect with the galaxy around him and especially its wildlife marks him out not only from the rest of the Ghost crew, but from every other force user we've seen on the screen.
* Ghost and it's shuttlecraft, Phantom, are both pretty cool ships
* Sense of escalation. In season 1, focus is entirely on the crew of the Ghost and the existence of a larger Rebellion is mostly unknown to them. In season 2, the crew has joined a larger Rebel cell named Phoenix Squadron. In season 3, Phoenix Squadron has acquired themselves a permanent base and we see more cells from the larger Rebellion. In season 4, Rebellion has taken the form we know from the movies, The Alliance to Restore the Republic, and the Galactic Civil War has officially begun.
* Having the crew use callsigns instead of names when on mission or on a radio is a cool detail
* Grand Admiral Thrawn makes his debut in Disney Star Wars, along with the TIE Defender project. The character doesn’t lose much in the translation.
* Zeb is voiced by [[Steve Blum]] who also voices some other characters (mostly Stormtroopers)
* Original trilogy actors such as Billy Dee Williams (Lando), James Earl Jones (Vader) and Frank Oz (Yoda) return to voice their characters
* Dee Bradley Baker is back to voice clones and even though they are naturally much less common here than in The Clone Wars (mostly it's just Rex), he does as good of a job as always
* The bearded old guy in the Endor strike team in RotJ turns out to be Captain Rex. Fan theory at first, later confirmed.
* You CAN [[combi-weapon]] a lightsaber and a blaster, and it's OP as shit
* Fighters sometimes perform some actual space-maneuvers instead of just flying in space like aircraft as is usually the case
* Plenty of Imperial warships, unlike the movies where we only really see Star Destroyers. Of particular note is the Arquitens-class Command Cruiser, a light cruiser which is generally more common in this series than the Star Destroyer. Makes sense since the galaxy is big and you can build 35 of these at the price of one Star Destroyer. They are also used as escorts for Star Destroyer, something we also don't see in the movies.
* Force wolves (no, not [[Rune Priest|those force wolves]])
* [[A Song of Ice and Fire|Game of Thrones-style]] Mandos (Krownest is pretty much Space-Winterfell).
* Imperial Inquisitors. Sure they don’t last long, but they were intimidating while they were, and it planted the seed that was used in other Star Wars media.
* Good appearances by Vader and Sheev.
* The Maul vs Obi-wan decades-long duel finally comes to an end... and what an end it is.
* The season finales are, invariably, fantastic.
* Animation gets better as the show goes on.

A note about the wolves... ''Rebels'' turns the force mysticism up past 11. Forget just being precog space monks with laser swords; as far as ''Rebels'' is concerned the Jedi are [[craftworld]] [[eldar]] without the racism. Rebels picks up the torch of the Clone Wars “Force Gods” and mixes in some of the straight-up fantasy shit from the Lucas era novels and the KOTOR/Old Republic Jedi philosophy schools and heresies beyond just “Light good, Dark bad”.

==The Bad==

* Since this is a Disney cartoon, the bad guys spend a large amount of their on-screen time (though not all, mind you) losing. This changes the Imperials (other than Thrawn and Vader) from an imposing force to [[Abbadon|cartoon villains]], although Rebels villains manage to stay intimidating more than Grievous did in Clone Wars.
* Battles slower paced than a Death Guard movement phase. Enjoy characters having conversations in cover-based shooting when everyone has Stormtrooper aim, including the main characters. Unlike The Clone Wars, this issue doesn't even get better as the series progresses.
* Like The Clone Wars, existence of shields is often either completely ignored or they deplete so quickly that it's barely worth it to even have them.
* The "lets punch and kick people wearing armor"-thing from The Clone Wars returns
* Artstyle is generally considered a downgrade from The Clone Wars
* [[Bullshit|Helicopter lightsabers]].
* Complete bipolarity in tone. This can create some great moments, but invariably ruins the mood episode by episode, or between the A and B plots.
* Iron Squadron. Just...fucking [[Rage|Iron Squadron]].
* Star Destroyers take some getting used to, mostly due to their bridge towers being way taller than they should be.
* Space Squid-whales annihilating a maximum strength Imperial Blockade in under 30 seconds.
* The changes to Hondo Ohnaka's character.
* Hera is a captain in the beginning of the series and later gets promoted to general... [[FAIL|yet wears rank insignia of a lieutenant throughout the series.]]
* TIE Fighters are used in space without spacesuits, even though it's well-known that TIE-Fighters have no life support systems

==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 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. Which also tie in to why some many early fights end with less lethal encounters, espically the ones involving Sabine's exposives.

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 absolute fucking idiot. Agent Kallus was allegedly an elite Imperial Security Bureau agent, but the Rebels generally ran rings around him. Minister Tula 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 first 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 Tula 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. A counter to this is that neither Kanan 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.... [[BLAM|removed]].

This was one of the biggest criticisms of the series, in fact. The heroes have plot armor, and worse at times seemed to know they had plot armor. 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.

==Thrawn==

Forget all that noise about Imperial incompetence, because the real bad of Rebels doesn't disappoint. Grand Admiral Thrawn is in peak form in Rebels. He's observant, he's ruthless, he plays the long game, and he's [[Frazetta Man|fucking ripped for a guy who's into art]] and strategy.

Thrawn's first spotlight moment is on Ryloth, when Hera attempts to steal back her family's Kalikori heirloom. Thrawn (understanding the artifact's significance) instantly realizes her identity as the daughter of Ryloth's renegade leader, while his aide struggles to put the pieces together. Taking an interest in the actions of Hera's band of rebels, Thrawn begins collecting Sabine Wren's graffiti.

His next big moment came when Agent Kallus, now a double agent for the rebels, assisted Ezra in hacking the records of Thrawn's search for the rebel base and then reprogramming some combat training droids as assassins (which Thrawn beats down like a boss). Kallus attempts to pin the incident on another officer, effectively enough to throw Wullf Yularen, but not enough to fool Thrawn, who deduces that Kallus switched sides and uses him to leak false intelligence. The giveaway? The helmet Ezra was captured with, which Thrawn immediately recognizes as Sabine's handiwork, confirming that its owner was the young Jedi, and the fact that Kallus withheld this information proved he was no longer loyal to the Empire.

In Imperial politics Thrawn is a pragmatist standing in opposition to the Death Star project as it draws resources away from his own projects. He sees it as [[Nazi Equipment#Wunderwaffen|a waste on big dumb object]] when the Empire would have an enormous advantage over the rebels [[meme|once the TIE Defender is mass produced]]. In fact, Thrawn would likely have stopped the project if it wasn't for the fact his boss had ordered it.

Thrawn's only mistake was his dismissal of the supernatural despite knowing about the Force, Jedi and Sith. When he found the rebel base on Atollon, the only reason the Rebels escaped was the intervention of the godlike Force entity Bendu. In the final episode Thrawn admitted to Ezra that he didn't know much about the Force. But Thrawn had the Resistance on the ropes and was only beaten by Ezra's use of the Force and a pod of giant space whales (which Thrawn had no way of knowing would show up).

{{Star Wars}}

Star Wars:Rebels

2020-12-30T03:53:58Z

2601:2C1:8501:D350:8837:8B45:D710:A5B9:

Star Wars: Rebels was an american TV series that was released in the shadow of [[Star Wars:The Clone Wars|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 [[Abbadon|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 [[Star Wars:Resistance|hell resistance was supposed to be]].

''Rebels'' is set a few years before ''A New Hope'' and covers the early formation of the rebellion from the perspective of one cell focused on the planet Lothal. Much like the Clone Wars, it starts off weakly with slow pacing and erroneous animation, but gets better as the seasons and storyline progress, with season 4 sometimes rivaling the very best Clone Wars arcs for quality and storytelling. If you liked ''Rogue One'' but thought it should be about 25 hours long and done in cartoony CGI then this is the show for you.

[[File:Rebels.jpeg|thumb|And thus begins the slow but sure decent into mediocrity, *Sigh..*]]

Since the show does have a fair amount of dedicated fans, <strike>likely possibly</strike> certainly more than the sequel trilogy itself, Disney has made a habit of planting Easter Egg references to Rebels in basically everything moving forward, usually in the form of an appearance by the iconic ship The Ghost or the friendly-ish space pirate character Hondo Ohnaka.

<strike>(Wait a second, wasn’t Hondo in [[Star Wars:The Clone Wars|clone wars]] first-) </strike>

==Season 1==
[[Image:Alderaan.jpg|right|300px|thumb|The original vision for Alderaan, a planet of grassy rolling hills and mound-like cities.]]
Season 1 is perhaps the most hotly debated and skubby season. As this series amounts to a sequel to the Clone Wars, it had deep shoes to fill, and to be frank, it doesn't fill those shoes well at all. However, high points include Tarkin, the Grand Inquisitor, and Fulcrum. Special note about Fulcrum is that she is Ahsoka, and probably the only reason this show got another season.

Most of this Season takes place on or around Lothal. Lothal as a place isn't too boring either, coming across as a cool mix of Kansas/Oklahoma, with a centralized capital city as it's main point of commerce. The setting is based on Ralph McQuarrie's drawings for Alderaan, which went unused in the original and prequel movies.

The main complaint about season one is that the baddies are completely incompetent. The Imperial occupation of Lothal is seemingly commanded by two Imperial captains (a fat neckbeard and a skinny one with a Habsburg chin) led by a blond ditz who's just the real governor's stuck up secretary. Thankfully, Tarkin shows up towards the end who quickly proceeds to [[blam|execute]] the two captains for their incompetence and under his command, the Imperials become slightly more competent for the rest of the season.

==Season 2==
The real reason that this show got a second season. Darth FUCKING Vader appears, and he is played appropriately as an essential avatar of destruction ([[awesome|and is voiced by James Earl Jones to add up to the awesomeness]]). His first act? Carbombing the comedy baddie of season one, Minister Tua and blaming it on rebel terrorism. The plot armor heroes get brutally destroyed, shattering them and dispersing the rebels from Lothal for a time. Such appearances from awesome characters are kept relatively low, due to the need to not let them overshadow the main cast.

The inquisitors are ok (one of them comes across as having a light attraction to Ezra), and ISB agent Kallus continues to be a presence around the show. The finale really solidifies the show's right to continue, throwing Maul into the mix, and having the epic confrontation that Ahsoka and Anakin were destined to have since the beginning of The Clone Wars series.

It's in Season 2 that the rebellion makes its appearance, as a collection of independent cells largely focused on system level actions. Ryloth is in open revolt, Princess Leia is out on "mercy missions", and Bail Organa is bankrolling Jun Sato's ''Phoenix Squadron'', a renegade paramilitary force that assists other rebel cells.

==Season 3==
Season 3 is generally considered to be all around good, due to the introduction of Thrawn, and general lack of outright retarded episodes, with only a few exceptions. Thrawn is appropriately written as cunningly intelligent, kicking ass in every scene he is in, including [[Awesome|beating assassin droids with his bare fists and a blaster]]. We even get another new character in Governor Pryce, who apparently chose to chill on Coruscant for two whole seasons than do her actual fucking job on Lothal. Ezra also gets changes; he now has a lot less hair, and he has built a new lightsaber to replace the toy he was using for the first two seasons.

Most of the character development for the season is focused on two arcs: Ezra's entanglement with Maul, and Sabine's history with her people. Ezra's arc ends with Kenobi telling Maul to stay dead in the greatest and most illustrative lightsaber fight ever. Along the way Sabine discovers the Darksaber and then sits out a few episodes on Mandalore until returning for the finale.

For the alliance as a whole, Mon Mothma is on the run conducting pirate broadcasts against the Empire. Jan Dodonna has defected and begun assembling a fleet of defector pilots and stolen ships; among the new recruits are Wedge and Hobbie. Phoenix Squadron and the Dodonna force suffer severe losses fighting to escape Thrawn's fleet as the season ends.

==Season 4==

The survivors of the Battle of Atollon at the end of the 3rd season escape to Mon Mothma's new base on Yavin IV. The rebellion is now taking on its recognizable form from the movies, although is having difficulty reining in its wilder elements. Fighters like Saw Gerrera advocate aggressive direct action, to the dismay of the more moderate leaders. This arc is left for ''Rogue One'' to resolve, while the main cast of Rebels returns to Lothal, themselves in favor of direct action against Thrawn and his TIE Defender project.

[[Image:WomanYellingAtLothcat.jpeg|right|400px|thumb|''Stop fooling our plan, you rebel scum!'']]

The liberation of Lothal is the main arc of the season although that starts with the Rebels getting punched in the face because Lothal belongs to Thrawn and he's ready for them. [[lolwut|Pryce manages to kill Kanan]], but only by [[fail|blowing up the occupation's entire fuel reserve]]. The true extent and power of Ezra's connection to the force and Lothal is revealed, and it becomes clear that the Imperial occupation of Lothal is only tangentially about building fighters and more about the fact that it has a Jedi temple, which the Emperor is very interested in [[profit|for reasons]].

==The Good==

* All the main characters are well-written, fleshed out, with reasonable, sympathetic backstories and significant character arcs, along with different enough skill sets that they don't step on each others' toes. Each one feels like an integral part of the team; the pilot, the gunner, the muscle, the tech, the swordsman and the hot-shot rookie.
** Seriously, you'd think that with two jedi in a 6-man crew you'd get some overlap, but they feel like very different characters, both in personality and powers. Kanan is very much the quintessential combat jedi (as is to be expected as he was trained during the Clone Wars), while Ezra's signature ability to connect with the galaxy around him and especially its wildlife marks him out not only from the rest of the Ghost crew, but from every other force user we've seen on the screen.
* Ghost and it's shuttlecraft, Phantom, are both pretty cool ships
* Sense of escalation. In season 1, focus is entirely on the crew of the Ghost and the existence of a larger Rebellion is mostly unknown to them. In season 2, the crew has joined a larger Rebel cell named Phoenix Squadron. In season 3, Phoenix Squadron has acquired themselves a permanent base and we see more cells from the larger Rebellion. In season 4, Rebellion has taken the form we know from the movies, The Alliance to Restore the Republic, and the Galactic Civil War has officially begun.
* Having the crew use callsigns instead of names when on mission or on a radio is a cool detail
* Grand Admiral Thrawn makes his debut in Disney Star Wars, along with the TIE Defender project. The character doesn’t lose much in the translation.
* Zeb is voiced by [[Steve Blum]] who also voices some other characters (mostly Stormtroopers)
* Original trilogy actors such as Billy Dee Williams (Lando), James Earl Jones (Vader) and Frank Oz (Yoda) return to voice their characters
* Dee Bradley Baker is back to voice clones and even though they are naturally much less common here than in The Clone Wars (mostly it's just Rex), he does as good of a job as always
* The bearded old guy in the Endor strike team in RotJ turns out to be Captain Rex. Fan theory at first, later confirmed.
* You CAN [[combi-weapon]] a lightsaber and a blaster, and it's OP as shit
* Fighters sometimes perform some actual space-maneuvers instead of just flying in space like aircraft as is usually the case
* Plenty of Imperial warships, unlike the movies where we only really see Star Destroyers. Of particular note is the Arquitens-class Command Cruiser, a light cruiser which is generally more common in this series than the Star Destroyer. Makes sense since the galaxy is big and you can build 35 of these at the price of one Star Destroyer. They are also used as escorts for Star Destroyer, something we also don't see in the movies.
* Force wolves (no, not [[Rune Priest|those force wolves]])
* [[A Song of Ice and Fire|Game of Thrones-style]] Mandos (Krownest is pretty much Space-Winterfell).
* Imperial Inquisitors. Sure they don’t last long, but they were intimidating while they were, and it planted the seed that was used in other Star Wars media.
* Good appearances by Vader and Sheev.
* The Maul vs Obi-wan decades-long duel finally comes to an end... and what an end it is.
* The season finales are, invariably, fantastic.
* Animation gets better as the show goes on.

A note about the wolves... ''Rebels'' turns the force mysticism up past 11. Forget just being precog space monks with laser swords; as far as ''Rebels'' is concerned the Jedi are [[craftworld]] [[eldar]] without the racism. Rebels picks up the torch of the Clone Wars “Force Gods” and mixes in some of the straight-up fantasy shit from the Lucas era novels and the KOTOR/Old Republic Jedi philosophy schools and heresies beyond just “Light good, Dark bad”.

==The Bad==

* Since this is a Disney cartoon, the bad guys spend a large amount of their on-screen time (though not all, mind you) losing. This changes the Imperials (other than Thrawn and Vader) from an imposing force to [[Abbadon|cartoon villains]], although Rebels villains manage to stay intimidating more than Grievous did in Clone Wars.
* Battles slower paced than a Death Guard movement phase. Enjoy characters having conversations in cover-based shooting when everyone has Stormtrooper aim, including the main characters. Unlike The Clone Wars, this issue doesn't even get better as the series progresses.
* Like The Clone Wars, existence of shields is often either completely ignored or they deplete so quickly that it's barely worth it to even have them.
* The "lets punch and kick people wearing armor"-thing from The Clone Wars returns
* Artstyle is generally considered a downgrade from The Clone Wars
* [[Bullshit|Helicopter lightsabers]].
* Complete bipolarity in tone. This can create some great moments, but invariably ruins the mood episode by episode, or between the A and B plots.
* Iron Squadron. Just...fucking [[Rage|Iron Squadron]].
* Star Destroyers take some getting used to, mostly due to their bridge towers being way taller than they should be.
* Space Squid-whales annihilating a maximum strength Imperial Blockade in under 30 seconds.
* The changes to Hondo Ohnaka's character.
* Hera is a captain in the beginning of the series and later gets promoted to general... [[FAIL|yet wears rank insignia of a lieutenant throughout the series.]]
* TIE Fighters are used in space without spacesuits, even though it's well-known that TIE-Fighters have no life support systems

==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 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. Which also tie in to why some many early fights end with less lethal encounters, espically the ones involving Sabine's exposives.

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 absolute fucking idiot. Agent Kallus was allegedly an elite Imperial Security Bureau agent, but the Rebels generally ran rings around him. Minister Tula 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 first 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 Tula 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. A counter to this is that neither Kanan 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.... [[BLAM|removed]].

This was one of the biggest criticisms of the series, in fact. The heroes have plot armor, and worse at times seemed to know they had plot armor. 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.

==Thrawn==

Forget all that noise about Imperial incompetence, because the real bad of Rebels doesn't disappoint. Grand Admiral Thrawn is in peak form in Rebels. He's observant, he's ruthless, he plays the long game, and he's [[Frazetta Man|fucking ripped for a guy who's into art]] and strategy.

Thrawn's first spotlight moment is on Ryloth, when Hera attempts to steal back her family's Kalikori heirloom. Thrawn (understanding the artifact's significance) instantly realizes her identity as the daughter of Ryloth's renegade leader, while his aide struggles to put the pieces together. Taking an interest in the actions of Hera's band of rebels, Thrawn begins collecting Sabine Wren's graffiti.

His next big moment came when Agent Kallus, now a double agent for the rebels, assisted Ezra in hacking the records of Thrawn's search for the rebel base and then reprogramming some combat training droids as assassins (which Thrawn beats down like a boss). Kallus attempts to pin the incident on another officer, effectively enough to throw Wullf Yularen, but not enough to fool Thrawn, who deduces that Kallus switched sides and uses him to leak false intelligence. The giveaway? The helmet Ezra was captured with, which Thrawn immediately recognizes as Sabine's handiwork, confirming that its owner was the young Jedi, and the fact that Kallus withheld this information proved he was no longer loyal to the Empire.

In Imperial politics Thrawn is a pragmatist standing in opposition to the Death Star project as it draws resources away from his own projects. He sees it as [[Nazi Equipment#Wunderwaffen|a waste on big dumb object]] when the Empire would have an enormous advantage over the rebels [[meme|once the TIE Defender is mass produced]]. In fact, Thrawn would likely have stopped the project if it wasn't for the fact his boss had ordered it.

Thrawn's only mistake was his dismissal of the supernatural despite knowing about the Force, Jedi and Sith. When he found the rebel base on Atollon, the only reason the Rebels escaped was the intervention of the godlike Force entity Bendu. In the final episode Thrawn admitted to Ezra that he didn't know much about the Force. But Thrawn had the Resistance on the ropes and was only beaten by Ezra's use of the Force and a pod of giant space whales (which Thrawn had no way of knowing would show up).

{{Star Wars}}

Star Wars:Rebels

2020-12-30T03:51:55Z

2601:2C1:8501:D350:8837:8B45:D710:A5B9:

Star Wars: Rebels was an american TV series that was released in the shadow of [[Star Wars:The Clone Wars|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 [[Abbadon|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 [[Star Wars:Resistance|hell resistance was supposed to be]].

''Rebels'' is set a few years before ''A New Hope'' and covers the early formation of the rebellion from the perspective of one cell focused on the planet Lothal. Much like the Clone Wars, it starts off weakly with slow pacing and erroneous animation, but gets better as the seasons and storyline progress, with season 4 sometimes rivaling the very best Clone Wars arcs for quality and storytelling. If you liked ''Rogue One'' but thought it should be about 25 hours long and done in cartoony CGI then this is the show for you.

Since the show does have a fair amount of dedicated fans, <strike>likely possibly</strike> certainly more than the sequel trilogy itself, Disney has made a habit of planting Easter Egg references to Rebels in basically everything moving forward, usually in the form of an appearance by the iconic ship The Ghost or the friendly-ish space pirate character Hondo Ohnaka.

<strike>(Wait a second, wasn’t Hondo in [[Star Wars:The Clone Wars|clone wars]] first-) </strike>

==Season 1==
[[Image:Alderaan.jpg|right|300px|thumb|The original vision for Alderaan, a planet of grassy rolling hills and mound-like cities.]]
Season 1 is perhaps the most hotly debated and skubby season. As this series amounts to a sequel to the Clone Wars, it had deep shoes to fill, and to be frank, it doesn't fill those shoes well at all. However, high points include Tarkin, the Grand Inquisitor, and Fulcrum. Special note about Fulcrum is that she is Ahsoka, and probably the only reason this show got another season.

Most of this Season takes place on or around Lothal. Lothal as a place isn't too boring either, coming across as a cool mix of Kansas/Oklahoma, with a centralized capital city as it's main point of commerce. The setting is based on Ralph McQuarrie's drawings for Alderaan, which went unused in the original and prequel movies.

The main complaint about season one is that the baddies are completely incompetent. The Imperial occupation of Lothal is seemingly commanded by two Imperial captains (a fat neckbeard and a skinny one with a Habsburg chin) led by a blond ditz who's just the real governor's stuck up secretary. Thankfully, Tarkin shows up towards the end who quickly proceeds to [[blam|execute]] the two captains for their incompetence and under his command, the Imperials become slightly more competent for the rest of the season.

==Season 2==
The real reason that this show got a second season. Darth FUCKING Vader appears, and he is played appropriately as an essential avatar of destruction ([[awesome|and is voiced by James Earl Jones to add up to the awesomeness]]). His first act? Carbombing the comedy baddie of season one, Minister Tua and blaming it on rebel terrorism. The plot armor heroes get brutally destroyed, shattering them and dispersing the rebels from Lothal for a time. Such appearances from awesome characters are kept relatively low, due to the need to not let them overshadow the main cast.

The inquisitors are ok (one of them comes across as having a light attraction to Ezra), and ISB agent Kallus continues to be a presence around the show. The finale really solidifies the show's right to continue, throwing Maul into the mix, and having the epic confrontation that Ahsoka and Anakin were destined to have since the beginning of The Clone Wars series.

It's in Season 2 that the rebellion makes its appearance, as a collection of independent cells largely focused on system level actions. Ryloth is in open revolt, Princess Leia is out on "mercy missions", and Bail Organa is bankrolling Jun Sato's ''Phoenix Squadron'', a renegade paramilitary force that assists other rebel cells.

==Season 3==
Season 3 is generally considered to be all around good, due to the introduction of Thrawn, and general lack of outright retarded episodes, with only a few exceptions. Thrawn is appropriately written as cunningly intelligent, kicking ass in every scene he is in, including [[Awesome|beating assassin droids with his bare fists and a blaster]]. We even get another new character in Governor Pryce, who apparently chose to chill on Coruscant for two whole seasons than do her actual fucking job on Lothal. Ezra also gets changes; he now has a lot less hair, and he has built a new lightsaber to replace the toy he was using for the first two seasons.

Most of the character development for the season is focused on two arcs: Ezra's entanglement with Maul, and Sabine's history with her people. Ezra's arc ends with Kenobi telling Maul to stay dead in the greatest and most illustrative lightsaber fight ever. Along the way Sabine discovers the Darksaber and then sits out a few episodes on Mandalore until returning for the finale.

For the alliance as a whole, Mon Mothma is on the run conducting pirate broadcasts against the Empire. Jan Dodonna has defected and begun assembling a fleet of defector pilots and stolen ships; among the new recruits are Wedge and Hobbie. Phoenix Squadron and the Dodonna force suffer severe losses fighting to escape Thrawn's fleet as the season ends.

==Season 4==

The survivors of the Battle of Atollon at the end of the 3rd season escape to Mon Mothma's new base on Yavin IV. The rebellion is now taking on its recognizable form from the movies, although is having difficulty reining in its wilder elements. Fighters like Saw Gerrera advocate aggressive direct action, to the dismay of the more moderate leaders. This arc is left for ''Rogue One'' to resolve, while the main cast of Rebels returns to Lothal, themselves in favor of direct action against Thrawn and his TIE Defender project.

[[Image:WomanYellingAtLothcat.jpeg|right|400px|thumb|''Stop fooling our plan, you rebel scum!'']]

The liberation of Lothal is the main arc of the season although that starts with the Rebels getting punched in the face because Lothal belongs to Thrawn and he's ready for them. [[lolwut|Pryce manages to kill Kanan]], but only by [[fail|blowing up the occupation's entire fuel reserve]]. The true extent and power of Ezra's connection to the force and Lothal is revealed, and it becomes clear that the Imperial occupation of Lothal is only tangentially about building fighters and more about the fact that it has a Jedi temple, which the Emperor is very interested in [[profit|for reasons]].

==The Good==

* All the main characters are well-written, fleshed out, with reasonable, sympathetic backstories and significant character arcs, along with different enough skill sets that they don't step on each others' toes. Each one feels like an integral part of the team; the pilot, the gunner, the muscle, the tech, the swordsman and the hot-shot rookie.
** Seriously, you'd think that with two jedi in a 6-man crew you'd get some overlap, but they feel like very different characters, both in personality and powers. Kanan is very much the quintessential combat jedi (as is to be expected as he was trained during the Clone Wars), while Ezra's signature ability to connect with the galaxy around him and especially its wildlife marks him out not only from the rest of the Ghost crew, but from every other force user we've seen on the screen.
* Ghost and it's shuttlecraft, Phantom, are both pretty cool ships
* Sense of escalation. In season 1, focus is entirely on the crew of the Ghost and the existence of a larger Rebellion is mostly unknown to them. In season 2, the crew has joined a larger Rebel cell named Phoenix Squadron. In season 3, Phoenix Squadron has acquired themselves a permanent base and we see more cells from the larger Rebellion. In season 4, Rebellion has taken the form we know from the movies, The Alliance to Restore the Republic, and the Galactic Civil War has officially begun.
* Having the crew use callsigns instead of names when on mission or on a radio is a cool detail
* Grand Admiral Thrawn makes his debut in Disney Star Wars, along with the TIE Defender project. The character doesn’t lose much in the translation.
* Zeb is voiced by [[Steve Blum]] who also voices some other characters (mostly Stormtroopers)
* Original trilogy actors such as Billy Dee Williams (Lando), James Earl Jones (Vader) and Frank Oz (Yoda) return to voice their characters
* Dee Bradley Baker is back to voice clones and even though they are naturally much less common here than in The Clone Wars (mostly it's just Rex), he does as good of a job as always
* The bearded old guy in the Endor strike team in RotJ turns out to be Captain Rex. Fan theory at first, later confirmed.
* You CAN [[combi-weapon]] a lightsaber and a blaster, and it's OP as shit
* Fighters sometimes perform some actual space-maneuvers instead of just flying in space like aircraft as is usually the case
* Plenty of Imperial warships, unlike the movies where we only really see Star Destroyers. Of particular note is the Arquitens-class Command Cruiser, a light cruiser which is generally more common in this series than the Star Destroyer. Makes sense since the galaxy is big and you can build 35 of these at the price of one Star Destroyer. They are also used as escorts for Star Destroyer, something we also don't see in the movies.
* Force wolves (no, not [[Rune Priest|those force wolves]])
* [[A Song of Ice and Fire|Game of Thrones-style]] Mandos (Krownest is pretty much Space-Winterfell).
* Imperial Inquisitors. Sure they don’t last long, but they were intimidating while they were, and it planted the seed that was used in other Star Wars media.
* Good appearances by Vader and Sheev.
* The Maul vs Obi-wan decades-long duel finally comes to an end... and what an end it is.
* The season finales are, invariably, fantastic.
* Animation gets better as the show goes on.

A note about the wolves... ''Rebels'' turns the force mysticism up past 11. Forget just being precog space monks with laser swords; as far as ''Rebels'' is concerned the Jedi are [[craftworld]] [[eldar]] without the racism. Rebels picks up the torch of the Clone Wars “Force Gods” and mixes in some of the straight-up fantasy shit from the Lucas era novels and the KOTOR/Old Republic Jedi philosophy schools and heresies beyond just “Light good, Dark bad”.

==The Bad==

* Since this is a Disney cartoon, the bad guys spend a large amount of their on-screen time (though not all, mind you) losing. This changes the Imperials (other than Thrawn and Vader) from an imposing force to [[Abbadon|cartoon villains]], although Rebels villains manage to stay intimidating more than Grievous did in Clone Wars.
* Battles slower paced than a Death Guard movement phase. Enjoy characters having conversations in cover-based shooting when everyone has Stormtrooper aim, including the main characters. Unlike The Clone Wars, this issue doesn't even get better as the series progresses.
* Like The Clone Wars, existence of shields is often either completely ignored or they deplete so quickly that it's barely worth it to even have them.
* The "lets punch and kick people wearing armor"-thing from The Clone Wars returns
* Artstyle is generally considered a downgrade from The Clone Wars
* [[Bullshit|Helicopter lightsabers]].
* Complete bipolarity in tone. This can create some great moments, but invariably ruins the mood episode by episode, or between the A and B plots.
* Iron Squadron. Just...fucking [[Rage|Iron Squadron]].
* Star Destroyers take some getting used to, mostly due to their bridge towers being way taller than they should be.
* Space Squid-whales annihilating a maximum strength Imperial Blockade in under 30 seconds.
* The changes to Hondo Ohnaka's character.
* Hera is a captain in the beginning of the series and later gets promoted to general... [[FAIL|yet wears rank insignia of a lieutenant throughout the series.]]
* TIE Fighters are used in space without spacesuits, even though it's well-known that TIE-Fighters have no life support systems

==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 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. Which also tie in to why some many early fights end with less lethal encounters, espically the ones involving Sabine's exposives.

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 absolute fucking idiot. Agent Kallus was allegedly an elite Imperial Security Bureau agent, but the Rebels generally ran rings around him. Minister Tula 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 first 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 Tula 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. A counter to this is that neither Kanan 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.... [[BLAM|removed]].

This was one of the biggest criticisms of the series, in fact. The heroes have plot armor, and worse at times seemed to know they had plot armor. 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.

==Thrawn==

Forget all that noise about Imperial incompetence, because the real bad of Rebels doesn't disappoint. Grand Admiral Thrawn is in peak form in Rebels. He's observant, he's ruthless, he plays the long game, and he's [[Frazetta Man|fucking ripped for a guy who's into art]] and strategy.

Thrawn's first spotlight moment is on Ryloth, when Hera attempts to steal back her family's Kalikori heirloom. Thrawn (understanding the artifact's significance) instantly realizes her identity as the daughter of Ryloth's renegade leader, while his aide struggles to put the pieces together. Taking an interest in the actions of Hera's band of rebels, Thrawn begins collecting Sabine Wren's graffiti.

His next big moment came when Agent Kallus, now a double agent for the rebels, assisted Ezra in hacking the records of Thrawn's search for the rebel base and then reprogramming some combat training droids as assassins (which Thrawn beats down like a boss). Kallus attempts to pin the incident on another officer, effectively enough to throw Wullf Yularen, but not enough to fool Thrawn, who deduces that Kallus switched sides and uses him to leak false intelligence. The giveaway? The helmet Ezra was captured with, which Thrawn immediately recognizes as Sabine's handiwork, confirming that its owner was the young Jedi, and the fact that Kallus withheld this information proved he was no longer loyal to the Empire.

In Imperial politics Thrawn is a pragmatist standing in opposition to the Death Star project as it draws resources away from his own projects. He sees it as [[Nazi Equipment#Wunderwaffen|a waste on big dumb object]] when the Empire would have an enormous advantage over the rebels [[meme|once the TIE Defender is mass produced]]. In fact, Thrawn would likely have stopped the project if it wasn't for the fact his boss had ordered it.

Thrawn's only mistake was his dismissal of the supernatural despite knowing about the Force, Jedi and Sith. When he found the rebel base on Atollon, the only reason the Rebels escaped was the intervention of the godlike Force entity Bendu. In the final episode Thrawn admitted to Ezra that he didn't know much about the Force. But Thrawn had the Resistance on the ropes and was only beaten by Ezra's use of the Force and a pod of giant space whales (which Thrawn had no way of knowing would show up).

{{Star Wars}}

Star Wars:The Clone Wars

2020-12-30T03:42:45Z

2601:2C1:8501:D350:8837:8B45:D710:A5B9: /* The Bad */

'''Star Wars: The Clone Wars''', also known as TCW, is a 3D computer animated cartoon created by Lucasfilm before the days of the dread lord Kathleen Kennedy, and released on Cartoon Network until its cancellation. Despite a rough start (not uncommon for TV shows as they get) the series was incredibly popular for a number of reasons: its dark tone, amazing character development, the entire goddamn clone army and their balls of steel, and generally being what the prequels were trying to be.

[[File:Clonewars.jpeg|thumb|One of the most Kick-Ass Kid’s cartoons in the history of Television]]

The premise is pretty simple: adventures set in the Clone Wars era. This gave us the ability to explore life in all kinds of different ways: willingness to help others during war, the meaning of being a good soldier, the dangers of corporations in government, political tribalism, the evils and justifications of corrupt leaders, crime in nations devoted to total war, and even stuff like the dangers of revenge and touching on the debate of destiny. Most of these are served on the side, while we get some kickass action sequences that would make C.S. Goto greener than a 3-day old Ork with jealousy.

Some tend to pass it as just a kids show due to it being an animated series but doing so would be a mistake: Despite having a low age rating, it deals with topics that most kids would probably not even be able to understand, such as war profiteering, war economy and corruption. Some arcs also get more [[grimdark]], such as an arc dealing with Trandoshans who kidnap children and then set them free on their planet to hunt them for sport, an arc dealing with an empire whose economy is based solely on slave trade and many arcs which deal with war and its consequences. Some bits are also quite violent, with the show being able to keep its low age rating only due to it hiding most of the graphic stuff with camera-angles.

Generally, it is regarded as the best of the animated series released by Lucasfilm. Disney, having realised this, is getting their rears in gear after the disaster that was [[Star Wars:Resistance|Star Wars: Resistance]] and gave us an incredible, harrowing final season... [[Games Workshop|on their own streaming service.]]

==Origins==
The Origins of The Clone Wars were to act primarily as a stop gap series until the next money making idea that George Lucas could create. He got together with a team in order to shill a novel idea: tell the story of the Clone Wars, something that they were never able to do with the movies due to time constraints.

Funnily enough, a man named Dave Filoni (Who had plenty of experience on ATLA and Boondocks before this) created one of the first characters on the show: A young Togruta girl who later became Ahsoka.

Technically, there are two series called similar titles. The first was 2003's ''Star Wars: Clone Wars'', an animated miniseries made by Genndy Tartakovsky (He of Dexter's Lab and [[Samurai Jack]] fame) chronicling, among other things, the titular Clone Wars and introducing a much more sinister General Grievous to the world.

But then we have ''The Clone Wars'', a CGI animated series (and tie-in movie) that we'll be talking about more and contributed more to the EU. One of the most universally known and loved parts of Star Wars, most fans worth their action figures and limited edition movie sets have watched the show and have an opinion on it one way or another. Some of the most notable characteristics are:

* The Clone Troopers are fleshed out,and we see that they are manly motherfuckers who make Guardsmen's balls of steel look like the cardboard their armor is made out of (seriously, in the movie, they literally charge straight into close combat with ''giant armored walkers with large guns'' and jump off roofs to get top of them to shoot them point blank, and punch droids in the face)
* Anakin Skywalker is actually a good, fleshed out character, with a good voice actor and shows his descent to child-murdering Force-choking asshat wasn't just him going 'welp, guess I'll fall to the Dark Side.' There was a fair amount of bad-cop “it was him or me” murder to get there.
* Introduces Ahsoka Tano, a major character who's a female Togruta Jedi that's well-written, non-OP, non-Mary Sue and doesn't invalidate characters from the movies. Starts off a bit annoying in the Clone Wars movie, but manages to do something truly special: she ''learns''. Over the course of Clone Wars and Rebels, Ahsoka probably has the most character development out of any other Star Wars character.
* Obi-Wan being a sexy one-liner spouting sarcastic badass.
* And many others.

However, there were some pretty derp moments too, such as

* Babysitting episode/movie.
* D-squad, where a bunch of droids become heroes of the Republic.
* Mandalore and how its fluff was basically screwed 180 degrees, and then some.
* Droids were comic relief of the first and second seasons. It was annoying.

All in all, it was a good show that took some time to find its feet.

After many years, a seventh season was announced in an attempt to take away from ''The Last Jedi'' being shit and add ''something'' to the empty Disney Plus lineup. At least some of the episodes will be ones that were in production when the show ended. It promptly disappeared after that announcement for a couple years till it was announced it was going to come out in 2019. And when it did, it blew pretty much everyone away, with fantastic animation, great storytelling, and a harrowing final few episodes. Maul's speech to Ahsoka in particular is downright chilling when you realize he's 100% sincere, is ''afraid'' of what's coming, and genuinely wants to try and stop it.

==Season One==
Ok...the first Season is a rough patch that has a some golden moments sprinkled throughout. Part of these problems stem from early show stuff, and the limits of their ability to animate. One in particular was a scene where to characters were fist fighting, and looked like two Fire Warriors in a melee phase.

BUT, nonetheless, there were some good episodes and good characterization. Among them were Plo Koon as space Gandalf, Aayla Secura as hot alien chick who now has a voice (Jennifer Hale, [[Awesome|which means Aayla has the same VA as Samus]]), the Awesomeness that is sarcastic Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin's voice actor, and the fifth episode of the series, where the clones really shine on their own, some of which later return. Speaking of clones, special note to Dee Bradley Baker, who literally voices dozens of different clones, each with unique Personalities and voices. Did we mention he does this for 7 seasons? No? Well remember that you twit.

==Season Two==
Season two is much better and more watchable than the majority of Season One. Pick a random episode in Season Two, and there is a good chance it is better than almost anything in Season One. Season two is notorious for not only the bounty hunters being a part of no less than three separate storylines, but introduces us to what we would later see out of this series, particularly the Battle of Geonosis arc, which was no less than four episodes of intense, attrition warfare with all the explosions and casualties a die hard fa/tg/uy could ever need, with a special brew of horror on the side to boot.

Another introduction in Season Two is Mandalore, which will become a staple in the rest of the series. The big problem with Mandalore is how it retcons Mandalorians from their original awesome state as warriors to having abandoned that past, and those who embrace that warrior tradition being terrorists. The storyline itself is actually a great political series of episodes with sporadic action, but to fans of the old Mandalorians, it was practically a slap in the face. Season Two also did something in one Episode that the entirety of Attack of the Clones couldn't do: show a genuine romance and love between Anakin and Padme.

==Season Three==
This is where things get legit. At this point, the sailing becomes real smooth. It is rare to find a one off episode at this point in the series, as everything is arcs now. Clones from the first season return here, and man do you grow a connection with them. We also get more "criminal underworld" and "political subterfuge" episodes here, which despite not having people getting gunned down in droves, are still entertaining to watch and not overly boring.

Of particular note is that Anakin and Ahsoka start to really come into focus here, with a three episode Arc alone exploring Anakin in a super weird realm called Mortis, with Ahsoka getting her own self contained arc in the Season Finale. Anakin is able to hold off the equivalent of Force Chaos Gods, while Ahsoka singlehandedly kicks the butt of Trandoshans, coincidentally also introducing fan favorite furball Chewbacca. There are also some moments here that downright sting your heart. Defintely worth suffering through the first season to watch this.

Half-way through the season, the animation also got a major overhaul with new and better models for everything, turning the series from an odd-looking animation to one of the best-looking 3D-animations out there. The best way I would describe it is that it looks like an animated concept art. Seriously, pause at right moments and you always couldn't tell that it's from an animated series.

==Season Four==
Hot dang, this is where stuff gets insane. Not only does the violence escalate substantially, but so does the production quality and storytelling. It's mostly more of the same stuff from Season Three, except for two major, and by association awesome, differences: Umbara, and The Return of Maul. Umbara is unique in that it hammers on on the clones, and looks so good that you might mistake it for a theatrical film if you didn't see it on Cartoon Network. Clones get zapped by what are effectively Necron Gauss weapons, crushed by Necron-battlesuit hybrids, eaten by [[Catachan|wild animals]], all the while fighting through it like complete chads with their <s>Mars</s> Kaminoan pattern balls of steel. The other story arcs are fantastic, but Umbara is one of the best, and explores many of the questions seen above at the beginning of the page. It is regarded as one of the best arcs in the show for good reason.

But the return of Maul is...amazing. His entire motivation is revenge, and the way they show Obi-Wan rise above it proves he truly has [[Meme|the high ground]]. Unlike in The Phantom Menace, Maul gets plenty of screen time to be fleshed out as a very talkative, profound character, a trait that will define him for the reminder of his appearances in media, mouse or pre-mouse. He also teams up with the Star Wars equivalent of a Khorne Bezerker to go around cutting through fools like a hot knife through butter.

==Season Five==
Season Five was once supposed to be the last Season, and it really zeroes in on Ahsoka. It shows how she has changed, and even uses General Grievous to show this. It also continues Maul's story, showing how much of a genius he is, and speaks volumes of him as a character. This also introduces us to what will later become the early foundations of the Rebel Alliance in an Arc that takes place on Onderon.

But the finale of this Season is both heart wrenching and awesome at the same time. But lo and behold, shortly after this season was complete, the series was cancelled by Cartoon Network.

==Season Six==
This is where the Paywalls start, and...yeah. Netflix agreed to take on the Clone Wars for a brief period of time, allowing those diehard fans to watch the last episodes. These episodes are dark, but the focus becomes less on the war, and really hits hard on the themes of the Corruption of the Jedi, the Nature of the Force, and guest Appearances of Mark Hamil and Liam Neeson as Darth Bane and Qui-gon respectively.

This season also sees the end of another fan loved character in what is truly a tragic arc, and Mace Windu and the Temple of Doom. No, we're not joking. Go watch Indiana Jones, then watch this arc. The season also has an arc focusing on Yoda, for the first time since the first episode of the series and this time, we get to see him be the learner, not the master.

Unfortunately, after this season, the series was cancelled again, seemingly for good. As Lucasfilm Animation started to work on [[Star Wars:Rebels]], it seemed as this series will forever lack a true ending. Until six years after cancellation:

==Season Seven==
Beautiful. Assuming you paid the mouse for a Disney + subscription, then you know that it's just about worth every cent you spent. If the reason you got Disney + was to watch this, then you almost certainly got your money's worth from it. The Seventh Season is so good, that we could write a whole page alone on why it works, and why the characterization is far ahead of anything else currently or maybe even ever produced, with only ATLA maybe beating it in regards to animated shows.

There are three separate Arcs: An Arc for Captain Rex, which introduces a group named Bad Batch, who are getting their own series later. Then there is an Arc for Ahsoka that most people will say they hated and yes, considering that this is the last season made years after cancellation of the series, it does feel a bit underwhelming. Finally there is an Arc for the both Ahsoka and Rex that takes place before, during, and shortly after Order 66 with major focus on Maul and Mandalore and this arc really makes the series end on a high note as it is arguably the best arc of the whole series and some might even argue that it overshadows anything done in any of the movies. Special credit goes to Sam Witwer, who's voicework with Darth Maul makes him not only iconic, but hyper-accentuates the dread and horror of Order 66. As if dead kids and Aayla Secura getting full auto'ed in the back wasn't enough

==Non-Exhaustive List of Awesome==
*Dee Bradley Baker (so many clones with different personalities and he voices them all)
*Clones in general
*Anakin and his Characterization
*Obi-Wan as a one-lining sarcastic chad
*Ahsoka as an actually decent female character ''Looking at you [[Heresy|Rey]]''
*The writing
*The cinematography in general
*The show's embrace of side characters and using them effectively
*Admiral Tarkin
*Captain Rex, Fives, Echo all get special recognition as some of the best clones, though there are many good ones
*Death Watch
*The Dark tone and willingness to kill off significant characters.
*Kevin Kiner's scoring of the clone wars music. Some of his work alone rivals anything in the sequels, and destroys most music heard in modern television music composition. TBH the man could get a whole section just for himself.
*Umbara
*Dee Bradley Baker (clones are not even the only characters he voices)
*The exploration of the universe. There are single episodes that do more in terms of worldbuilding than the whole sequel trilogy
*Matt Lanter's voice work with Anakin, which is comparable and in some ways better than anything Hayden Christensen ever did.
*Plo Koon
*Darth Maul
*Sam Witwer
*Mace Motherfucking Windu showing off as a total chad and proving why he's a master. Imagine if there was someone as badass as Vader but for the good guys and that's basically what he is in this series.
*Battle Of Ryloth
*Mandalore
*The Indiana Jones references. Seriously, I dare you, go find the ones I'm thinking of, there is one in Season three and another in Season four and one more on Season six.
*Did we mention Dee Bradley Baker (seriously, some Umbaran episodes have several characters and he plays all but one of them)?
*Zygerria as space Mesopatamian slavers
*Hondo Ohnaka being a Magnificent Bastard

==The Bad==
There is no bad. {{BLAM|Heresy.}}

Fine. For all that the Clone Wars did right, there are at least a dozen things they did wrong. One of the most obvious of these is Grievous. Now for context, in the Original Clone Wars, Grievous was a killing machine who cut through Jedi like a power sword through a fire warrior. He was genuinely Terrifying, and Revenge of the Sith had a scene where he killed a Jedi to show how strong he was. But in this Clone Wars, he was a raving looney who could never win and was a beatstick for the hero of the week. Granted, Grievous did have his victories, but they were too few and far between to make up for the 5 Seasons worth of [[Fail]]. When he can't even kill a Padawan in his second to last appearance in Season One, you know something is wrong.

Another Problem with this show was that unlike Avatar, the production quality could be all over the place. In fact, what many fans agree to be the worst arc in the series are in the fifth season, and many tend to think the second worst is in the seventh. This can be applied in some capacity to every season, and though it doesn't detract from the overall quality, we wouldn't be proper fans if we didn't [[Neckbeard|criticize absolutely everything]]!

There are also some more minor gripes like terrible aim (so bad at times that it makes stormtroopers in A New Hope look like [[Vindicare|Vindicare Assassins]] by comparison), the existence of shields being ignored constantly, people punching and kicking droids and people wearing armor [[derp|(even though Obi-Wan tried that in Revenge of the Sith and all it did was hurt his leg)]], [[what|B1 battledroids head apparently being so poorly attached to the body that you can rip it off with your bare hands]] and LAAT:s not using their massive arsenal of weapons ([[FAIL|there is even a scene where troopers inside the ship fire their weapons instead of the LAAT using its own weapons]]). Thankfully as with most issues in the series, these got less prevalent as the series went on.

Finally there is the thing that although the Clone Wars was a relatively morally gray conflict in the [[fluff]], where the separatists became separatists because they were tired of the corruption and ineffectiveness of the Republic, in the series the Republic side is almost always portrayed as heroic while the separatists are sometimes portrayed as moustache-twirlingly evil. In the first season, we have Grievous and Ventress killing their allies when they feel like it, a chemical weapon which completely destroys everything that lives while sparing anything that doesn't (highly effective for an army composed primarily of droids) and then attempt to test it on a pacifist village who wish to remain neutral and a mad scientist who redevelops an exterminated virus (according to him, it was murdered) and develops it further into an airborne bioweapon. Even the attempt in season 3 to try and humanize the Separatists falls a little flat when you see the war crimes the Separatists regularly commit. Thankfully, this issue becomes less common as the series progresses and is almost non-existent towards the end of the series.

Also "Jedi Cruiser" was always a dumb term for a ship but hearing characters actually say it in universe is just so much worse.

{{Star Wars}}

Star Wars:The Clone Wars

2020-12-30T03:37:01Z

2601:2C1:8501:D350:8837:8B45:D710:A5B9:

'''Star Wars: The Clone Wars''', also known as TCW, is a 3D computer animated cartoon created by Lucasfilm before the days of the dread lord Kathleen Kennedy, and released on Cartoon Network until its cancellation. Despite a rough start (not uncommon for TV shows as they get) the series was incredibly popular for a number of reasons: its dark tone, amazing character development, the entire goddamn clone army and their balls of steel, and generally being what the prequels were trying to be.

[[File:Clonewars.jpeg|thumb|One of the most Kick-Ass Kid’s cartoons in the history of Television]]

The premise is pretty simple: adventures set in the Clone Wars era. This gave us the ability to explore life in all kinds of different ways: willingness to help others during war, the meaning of being a good soldier, the dangers of corporations in government, political tribalism, the evils and justifications of corrupt leaders, crime in nations devoted to total war, and even stuff like the dangers of revenge and touching on the debate of destiny. Most of these are served on the side, while we get some kickass action sequences that would make C.S. Goto greener than a 3-day old Ork with jealousy.

Some tend to pass it as just a kids show due to it being an animated series but doing so would be a mistake: Despite having a low age rating, it deals with topics that most kids would probably not even be able to understand, such as war profiteering, war economy and corruption. Some arcs also get more [[grimdark]], such as an arc dealing with Trandoshans who kidnap children and then set them free on their planet to hunt them for sport, an arc dealing with an empire whose economy is based solely on slave trade and many arcs which deal with war and its consequences. Some bits are also quite violent, with the show being able to keep its low age rating only due to it hiding most of the graphic stuff with camera-angles.

Generally, it is regarded as the best of the animated series released by Lucasfilm. Disney, having realised this, is getting their rears in gear after the disaster that was [[Star Wars:Resistance|Star Wars: Resistance]] and gave us an incredible, harrowing final season... [[Games Workshop|on their own streaming service.]]

==Origins==
The Origins of The Clone Wars were to act primarily as a stop gap series until the next money making idea that George Lucas could create. He got together with a team in order to shill a novel idea: tell the story of the Clone Wars, something that they were never able to do with the movies due to time constraints.

Funnily enough, a man named Dave Filoni (Who had plenty of experience on ATLA and Boondocks before this) created one of the first characters on the show: A young Togruta girl who later became Ahsoka.

Technically, there are two series called similar titles. The first was 2003's ''Star Wars: Clone Wars'', an animated miniseries made by Genndy Tartakovsky (He of Dexter's Lab and [[Samurai Jack]] fame) chronicling, among other things, the titular Clone Wars and introducing a much more sinister General Grievous to the world.

But then we have ''The Clone Wars'', a CGI animated series (and tie-in movie) that we'll be talking about more and contributed more to the EU. One of the most universally known and loved parts of Star Wars, most fans worth their action figures and limited edition movie sets have watched the show and have an opinion on it one way or another. Some of the most notable characteristics are:

* The Clone Troopers are fleshed out,and we see that they are manly motherfuckers who make Guardsmen's balls of steel look like the cardboard their armor is made out of (seriously, in the movie, they literally charge straight into close combat with ''giant armored walkers with large guns'' and jump off roofs to get top of them to shoot them point blank, and punch droids in the face)
* Anakin Skywalker is actually a good, fleshed out character, with a good voice actor and shows his descent to child-murdering Force-choking asshat wasn't just him going 'welp, guess I'll fall to the Dark Side.' There was a fair amount of bad-cop “it was him or me” murder to get there.
* Introduces Ahsoka Tano, a major character who's a female Togruta Jedi that's well-written, non-OP, non-Mary Sue and doesn't invalidate characters from the movies. Starts off a bit annoying in the Clone Wars movie, but manages to do something truly special: she ''learns''. Over the course of Clone Wars and Rebels, Ahsoka probably has the most character development out of any other Star Wars character.
* Obi-Wan being a sexy one-liner spouting sarcastic badass.
* And many others.

However, there were some pretty derp moments too, such as

* Babysitting episode/movie.
* D-squad, where a bunch of droids become heroes of the Republic.
* Mandalore and how its fluff was basically screwed 180 degrees, and then some.
* Droids were comic relief of the first and second seasons. It was annoying.

All in all, it was a good show that took some time to find its feet.

After many years, a seventh season was announced in an attempt to take away from ''The Last Jedi'' being shit and add ''something'' to the empty Disney Plus lineup. At least some of the episodes will be ones that were in production when the show ended. It promptly disappeared after that announcement for a couple years till it was announced it was going to come out in 2019. And when it did, it blew pretty much everyone away, with fantastic animation, great storytelling, and a harrowing final few episodes. Maul's speech to Ahsoka in particular is downright chilling when you realize he's 100% sincere, is ''afraid'' of what's coming, and genuinely wants to try and stop it.

==Season One==
Ok...the first Season is a rough patch that has a some golden moments sprinkled throughout. Part of these problems stem from early show stuff, and the limits of their ability to animate. One in particular was a scene where to characters were fist fighting, and looked like two Fire Warriors in a melee phase.

BUT, nonetheless, there were some good episodes and good characterization. Among them were Plo Koon as space Gandalf, Aayla Secura as hot alien chick who now has a voice (Jennifer Hale, [[Awesome|which means Aayla has the same VA as Samus]]), the Awesomeness that is sarcastic Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin's voice actor, and the fifth episode of the series, where the clones really shine on their own, some of which later return. Speaking of clones, special note to Dee Bradley Baker, who literally voices dozens of different clones, each with unique Personalities and voices. Did we mention he does this for 7 seasons? No? Well remember that you twit.

==Season Two==
Season two is much better and more watchable than the majority of Season One. Pick a random episode in Season Two, and there is a good chance it is better than almost anything in Season One. Season two is notorious for not only the bounty hunters being a part of no less than three separate storylines, but introduces us to what we would later see out of this series, particularly the Battle of Geonosis arc, which was no less than four episodes of intense, attrition warfare with all the explosions and casualties a die hard fa/tg/uy could ever need, with a special brew of horror on the side to boot.

Another introduction in Season Two is Mandalore, which will become a staple in the rest of the series. The big problem with Mandalore is how it retcons Mandalorians from their original awesome state as warriors to having abandoned that past, and those who embrace that warrior tradition being terrorists. The storyline itself is actually a great political series of episodes with sporadic action, but to fans of the old Mandalorians, it was practically a slap in the face. Season Two also did something in one Episode that the entirety of Attack of the Clones couldn't do: show a genuine romance and love between Anakin and Padme.

==Season Three==
This is where things get legit. At this point, the sailing becomes real smooth. It is rare to find a one off episode at this point in the series, as everything is arcs now. Clones from the first season return here, and man do you grow a connection with them. We also get more "criminal underworld" and "political subterfuge" episodes here, which despite not having people getting gunned down in droves, are still entertaining to watch and not overly boring.

Of particular note is that Anakin and Ahsoka start to really come into focus here, with a three episode Arc alone exploring Anakin in a super weird realm called Mortis, with Ahsoka getting her own self contained arc in the Season Finale. Anakin is able to hold off the equivalent of Force Chaos Gods, while Ahsoka singlehandedly kicks the butt of Trandoshans, coincidentally also introducing fan favorite furball Chewbacca. There are also some moments here that downright sting your heart. Defintely worth suffering through the first season to watch this.

Half-way through the season, the animation also got a major overhaul with new and better models for everything, turning the series from an odd-looking animation to one of the best-looking 3D-animations out there. The best way I would describe it is that it looks like an animated concept art. Seriously, pause at right moments and you always couldn't tell that it's from an animated series.

==Season Four==
Hot dang, this is where stuff gets insane. Not only does the violence escalate substantially, but so does the production quality and storytelling. It's mostly more of the same stuff from Season Three, except for two major, and by association awesome, differences: Umbara, and The Return of Maul. Umbara is unique in that it hammers on on the clones, and looks so good that you might mistake it for a theatrical film if you didn't see it on Cartoon Network. Clones get zapped by what are effectively Necron Gauss weapons, crushed by Necron-battlesuit hybrids, eaten by [[Catachan|wild animals]], all the while fighting through it like complete chads with their <s>Mars</s> Kaminoan pattern balls of steel. The other story arcs are fantastic, but Umbara is one of the best, and explores many of the questions seen above at the beginning of the page. It is regarded as one of the best arcs in the show for good reason.

But the return of Maul is...amazing. His entire motivation is revenge, and the way they show Obi-Wan rise above it proves he truly has [[Meme|the high ground]]. Unlike in The Phantom Menace, Maul gets plenty of screen time to be fleshed out as a very talkative, profound character, a trait that will define him for the reminder of his appearances in media, mouse or pre-mouse. He also teams up with the Star Wars equivalent of a Khorne Bezerker to go around cutting through fools like a hot knife through butter.

==Season Five==
Season Five was once supposed to be the last Season, and it really zeroes in on Ahsoka. It shows how she has changed, and even uses General Grievous to show this. It also continues Maul's story, showing how much of a genius he is, and speaks volumes of him as a character. This also introduces us to what will later become the early foundations of the Rebel Alliance in an Arc that takes place on Onderon.

But the finale of this Season is both heart wrenching and awesome at the same time. But lo and behold, shortly after this season was complete, the series was cancelled by Cartoon Network.

==Season Six==
This is where the Paywalls start, and...yeah. Netflix agreed to take on the Clone Wars for a brief period of time, allowing those diehard fans to watch the last episodes. These episodes are dark, but the focus becomes less on the war, and really hits hard on the themes of the Corruption of the Jedi, the Nature of the Force, and guest Appearances of Mark Hamil and Liam Neeson as Darth Bane and Qui-gon respectively.

This season also sees the end of another fan loved character in what is truly a tragic arc, and Mace Windu and the Temple of Doom. No, we're not joking. Go watch Indiana Jones, then watch this arc. The season also has an arc focusing on Yoda, for the first time since the first episode of the series and this time, we get to see him be the learner, not the master.

Unfortunately, after this season, the series was cancelled again, seemingly for good. As Lucasfilm Animation started to work on [[Star Wars:Rebels]], it seemed as this series will forever lack a true ending. Until six years after cancellation:

==Season Seven==
Beautiful. Assuming you paid the mouse for a Disney + subscription, then you know that it's just about worth every cent you spent. If the reason you got Disney + was to watch this, then you almost certainly got your money's worth from it. The Seventh Season is so good, that we could write a whole page alone on why it works, and why the characterization is far ahead of anything else currently or maybe even ever produced, with only ATLA maybe beating it in regards to animated shows.

There are three separate Arcs: An Arc for Captain Rex, which introduces a group named Bad Batch, who are getting their own series later. Then there is an Arc for Ahsoka that most people will say they hated and yes, considering that this is the last season made years after cancellation of the series, it does feel a bit underwhelming. Finally there is an Arc for the both Ahsoka and Rex that takes place before, during, and shortly after Order 66 with major focus on Maul and Mandalore and this arc really makes the series end on a high note as it is arguably the best arc of the whole series and some might even argue that it overshadows anything done in any of the movies. Special credit goes to Sam Witwer, who's voicework with Darth Maul makes him not only iconic, but hyper-accentuates the dread and horror of Order 66. As if dead kids and Aayla Secura getting full auto'ed in the back wasn't enough

==Non-Exhaustive List of Awesome==
*Dee Bradley Baker (so many clones with different personalities and he voices them all)
*Clones in general
*Anakin and his Characterization
*Obi-Wan as a one-lining sarcastic chad
*Ahsoka as an actually decent female character ''Looking at you [[Heresy|Rey]]''
*The writing
*The cinematography in general
*The show's embrace of side characters and using them effectively
*Admiral Tarkin
*Captain Rex, Fives, Echo all get special recognition as some of the best clones, though there are many good ones
*Death Watch
*The Dark tone and willingness to kill off significant characters.
*Kevin Kiner's scoring of the clone wars music. Some of his work alone rivals anything in the sequels, and destroys most music heard in modern television music composition. TBH the man could get a whole section just for himself.
*Umbara
*Dee Bradley Baker (clones are not even the only characters he voices)
*The exploration of the universe. There are single episodes that do more in terms of worldbuilding than the whole sequel trilogy
*Matt Lanter's voice work with Anakin, which is comparable and in some ways better than anything Hayden Christensen ever did.
*Plo Koon
*Darth Maul
*Sam Witwer
*Mace Motherfucking Windu showing off as a total chad and proving why he's a master. Imagine if there was someone as badass as Vader but for the good guys and that's basically what he is in this series.
*Battle Of Ryloth
*Mandalore
*The Indiana Jones references. Seriously, I dare you, go find the ones I'm thinking of, there is one in Season three and another in Season four and one more on Season six.
*Did we mention Dee Bradley Baker (seriously, some Umbaran episodes have several characters and he plays all but one of them)?
*Zygerria as space Mesopatamian slavers
*Hondo Ohnaka being a Magnificent Bastard

==The Bad==
There is no bad. Heresy.

Fine. For all that the Clone Wars did right, there are at least a dozen things they did wrong. One of the most obvious of these is Grievous. Now for context, in the Original Clone Wars, Grievous was a killing machine who cut through Jedi like a power sword through a fire warrior. He was genuinely Terrifying, and Revenge of the Sith had a scene where he killed a Jedi to show how strong he was. But in this Clone Wars, he was a raving looney who could never win and was a beatstick for the hero of the week. Granted, Grievous did have his victories, but they were too few and far between to make up for the 5 Seasons worth of [[Fail]]. When he can't even kill a Padawan in his second to last appearance in Season One, you know something is wrong.

Another Problem with this show was that unlike Avatar, the production quality could be all over the place. In fact, what many fans agree to be the worst arc in the series are in the fifth season, and many tend to think the second worst is in the seventh. This can be applied in some capacity to every season, and though it doesn't detract from the overall quality, we wouldn't be proper fans if we didn't [[Neckbeard|criticize absolutely everything]]!

There are also some more minor gripes like terrible aim (so bad at times that it makes stormtroopers in A New Hope look like [[Vindicare|Vindicare Assassins]] by comparison), the existence of shields being ignored constantly, people punching and kicking droids and people wearing armor [[derp|(even though Obi-Wan tried that in Revenge of the Sith and all it did was hurt his leg)]], [[what|B1 battledroids head apparently being so poorly attached to the body that you can rip it off with your bare hands]] and LAAT:s not using their massive arsenal of weapons ([[FAIL|there is even a scene where troopers inside the ship fire their weapons instead of the LAAT using its own weapons]]). Thankfully as with most issues in the series, these got less prevalent as the series went on.

Finally there is the thing that although the Clone Wars was a relatively morally gray conflict in the [[fluff]], where the separatists became separatists because they were tired of the corruption and ineffectiveness of the Republic, in the series the Republic side is almost always portrayed as heroic while the separatists are sometimes portrayed as moustache-twirlingly evil. In the first season, we have Grievous and Ventress killing their allies when they feel like it, a chemical weapon which completely destroys everything that lives while sparing anything that doesn't (highly effective for an army composed primarily of droids) and then attempt to test it on a pacifist village who wish to remain neutral and a mad scientist who redevelops an exterminated virus (according to him, it was murdered) and develops it further into an airborne bioweapon. Even the attempt in season 3 to try and humanize the Separatists falls a little flat when you see the war crimes the Separatists regularly commit. Thankfully, this issue becomes less common as the series progresses and is almost non-existent towards the end of the series.

Also "Jedi Cruiser" was always a dumb term for a ship but hearing characters actually say it in universe is just so much worse.

{{Star Wars}}

Star Wars:Rebels

2020-12-30T03:27:44Z

2601:2C1:8501:D350:8837:8B45:D710:A5B9:

Star Wars: Rebels was an american TV series that was released in the shadow of [[Star Wars:The Clone Wars|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 [[Abbadon|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 [[Star Wars:Resistance|hell resistance was supposed to be]].

[[Image:WomanYellingAtLothcat.jpeg|right|400px|thumb|''Stop fooling our plan, you rebel scum!'']]
''Rebels'' is set a few years before ''A New Hope'' and covers the early formation of the rebellion from the perspective of one cell focused on the planet Lothal. Much like the Clone Wars, it starts off weakly with slow pacing and erroneous animation, but gets better as the seasons and storyline progress, with season 4 sometimes rivaling the very best Clone Wars arcs for quality and storytelling. If you liked ''Rogue One'' but thought it should be about 25 hours long and done in cartoony CGI then this is the show for you.

Since the show does have a fair amount of dedicated fans, <strike>likely possibly</strike> certainly more than the sequel trilogy itself, Disney has made a habit of planting Easter Egg references to Rebels in basically everything moving forward, usually in the form of an appearance by the iconic ship The Ghost or the friendly-ish space pirate character Hondo Ohnaka.

<strike>(Wait a second, wasn’t Hondo in [[Star Wars:The Clone Wars|clone wars]] first-) </strike>

==Season 1==
[[Image:Alderaan.jpg|right|300px|thumb|The original vision for Alderaan, a planet of grassy rolling hills and mound-like cities.]]
Season 1 is perhaps the most hotly debated and skubby season. As this series amounts to a sequel to the Clone Wars, it had deep shoes to fill, and to be frank, it doesn't fill those shoes well at all. However, high points include Tarkin, the Grand Inquisitor, and Fulcrum. Special note about Fulcrum is that she is Ahsoka, and probably the only reason this show got another season.

Most of this Season takes place on or around Lothal. Lothal as a place isn't too boring either, coming across as a cool mix of Kansas/Oklahoma, with a centralized capital city as it's main point of commerce. The setting is based on Ralph McQuarrie's drawings for Alderaan, which went unused in the original and prequel movies.

The main complaint about season one is that the baddies are completely incompetent. The Imperial occupation of Lothal is seemingly commanded by two Imperial captains (a fat neckbeard and a skinny one with a Habsburg chin) led by a blond ditz who's just the real governor's stuck up secretary. Thankfully, Tarkin shows up towards the end who quickly proceeds to [[blam|execute]] the two captains for their incompetence and under his command, the Imperials become slightly more competent for the rest of the season.

==Season 2==
The real reason that this show got a second season. Darth FUCKING Vader appears, and he is played appropriately as an essential avatar of destruction ([[awesome|and is voiced by James Earl Jones to add up to the awesomeness]]). His first act? Carbombing the comedy baddie of season one, Minister Tua and blaming it on rebel terrorism. The plot armor heroes get brutally destroyed, shattering them and dispersing the rebels from Lothal for a time. Such appearances from awesome characters are kept relatively low, due to the need to not let them overshadow the main cast.

The inquisitors are ok (one of them comes across as having a light attraction to Ezra), and ISB agent Kallus continues to be a presence around the show. The finale really solidifies the show's right to continue, throwing Maul into the mix, and having the epic confrontation that Ahsoka and Anakin were destined to have since the beginning of The Clone Wars series.

It's in Season 2 that the rebellion makes its appearance, as a collection of independent cells largely focused on system level actions. Ryloth is in open revolt, Princess Leia is out on "mercy missions", and Bail Organa is bankrolling Jun Sato's ''Phoenix Squadron'', a renegade paramilitary force that assists other rebel cells.

==Season 3==
Season 3 is generally considered to be all around good, due to the introduction of Thrawn, and general lack of outright retarded episodes, with only a few exceptions. Thrawn is appropriately written as cunningly intelligent, kicking ass in every scene he is in, including [[Awesome|beating assassin droids with his bare fists and a blaster]]. We even get another new character in Governor Pryce, who apparently chose to chill on Coruscant for two whole seasons than do her actual fucking job on Lothal. Ezra also gets changes; he now has a lot less hair, and he has built a new lightsaber to replace the toy he was using for the first two seasons.

Most of the character development for the season is focused on two arcs: Ezra's entanglement with Maul, and Sabine's history with her people. Ezra's arc ends with Kenobi telling Maul to stay dead in the greatest and most illustrative lightsaber fight ever. Along the way Sabine discovers the Darksaber and then sits out a few episodes on Mandalore until returning for the finale.

For the alliance as a whole, Mon Mothma is on the run conducting pirate broadcasts against the Empire. Jan Dodonna has defected and begun assembling a fleet of defector pilots and stolen ships; among the new recruits are Wedge and Hobbie. Phoenix Squadron and the Dodonna force suffer severe losses fighting to escape Thrawn's fleet as the season ends.

==Season 4==

The survivors of the Battle of Atollon at the end of the 3rd season escape to Mon Mothma's new base on Yavin IV. The rebellion is now taking on its recognizable form from the movies, although is having difficulty reining in its wilder elements. Fighters like Saw Gerrera advocate aggressive direct action, to the dismay of the more moderate leaders. This arc is left for ''Rogue One'' to resolve, while the main cast of Rebels returns to Lothal, themselves in favor of direct action against Thrawn and his TIE Defender project.

The liberation of Lothal is the main arc of the season although that starts with the Rebels getting punched in the face because Lothal belongs to Thrawn and he's ready for them. [[lolwut|Pryce manages to kill Kanan]], but only by [[fail|blowing up the occupation's entire fuel reserve]]. The true extent and power of Ezra's connection to the force and Lothal is revealed, and it becomes clear that the Imperial occupation of Lothal is only tangentially about building fighters and more about the fact that it has a Jedi temple, which the Emperor is very interested in [[profit|for reasons]].

==The Good==

* All the main characters are well-written, fleshed out, with reasonable, sympathetic backstories and significant character arcs, along with different enough skill sets that they don't step on each others' toes. Each one feels like an integral part of the team; the pilot, the gunner, the muscle, the tech, the swordsman and the hot-shot rookie.
** Seriously, you'd think that with two jedi in a 6-man crew you'd get some overlap, but they feel like very different characters, both in personality and powers. Kanan is very much the quintessential combat jedi (as is to be expected as he was trained during the Clone Wars), while Ezra's signature ability to connect with the galaxy around him and especially its wildlife marks him out not only from the rest of the Ghost crew, but from every other force user we've seen on the screen.
* Ghost and it's shuttlecraft, Phantom, are both pretty cool ships
* Sense of escalation. In season 1, focus is entirely on the crew of the Ghost and the existence of a larger Rebellion is mostly unknown to them. In season 2, the crew has joined a larger Rebel cell named Phoenix Squadron. In season 3, Phoenix Squadron has acquired themselves a permanent base and we see more cells from the larger Rebellion. In season 4, Rebellion has taken the form we know from the movies, The Alliance to Restore the Republic, and the Galactic Civil War has officially begun.
* Having the crew use callsigns instead of names when on mission or on a radio is a cool detail
* Grand Admiral Thrawn makes his debut in Disney Star Wars, along with the TIE Defender project. The character doesn’t lose much in the translation.
* Zeb is voiced by [[Steve Blum]] who also voices some other characters (mostly Stormtroopers)
* Original trilogy actors such as Billy Dee Williams (Lando), James Earl Jones (Vader) and Frank Oz (Yoda) return to voice their characters
* Dee Bradley Baker is back to voice clones and even though they are naturally much less common here than in The Clone Wars (mostly it's just Rex), he does as good of a job as always
* The bearded old guy in the Endor strike team in RotJ turns out to be Captain Rex. Fan theory at first, later confirmed.
* You CAN [[combi-weapon]] a lightsaber and a blaster, and it's OP as shit
* Fighters sometimes perform some actual space-maneuvers instead of just flying in space like aircraft as is usually the case
* Plenty of Imperial warships, unlike the movies where we only really see Star Destroyers. Of particular note is the Arquitens-class Command Cruiser, a light cruiser which is generally more common in this series than the Star Destroyer. Makes sense since the galaxy is big and you can build 35 of these at the price of one Star Destroyer. They are also used as escorts for Star Destroyer, something we also don't see in the movies.
* Force wolves (no, not [[Rune Priest|those force wolves]])
* [[A Song of Ice and Fire|Game of Thrones-style]] Mandos (Krownest is pretty much Space-Winterfell).
* Imperial Inquisitors. Sure they don’t last long, but they were intimidating while they were, and it planted the seed that was used in other Star Wars media.
* Good appearances by Vader and Sheev.
* The Maul vs Obi-wan decades-long duel finally comes to an end... and what an end it is.
* The season finales are, invariably, fantastic.
* Animation gets better as the show goes on.

A note about the wolves... ''Rebels'' turns the force mysticism up past 11. Forget just being precog space monks with laser swords; as far as ''Rebels'' is concerned the Jedi are [[craftworld]] [[eldar]] without the racism. Rebels picks up the torch of the Clone Wars “Force Gods” and mixes in some of the straight-up fantasy shit from the Lucas era novels and the KOTOR/Old Republic Jedi philosophy schools and heresies beyond just “Light good, Dark bad”.

==The Bad==

* Since this is a Disney cartoon, the bad guys spend a large amount of their on-screen time (though not all, mind you) losing. This changes the Imperials (other than Thrawn and Vader) from an imposing force to [[Abbadon|cartoon villains]], although Rebels villains manage to stay intimidating more than Grievous did in Clone Wars.
* Battles slower paced than a Death Guard movement phase. Enjoy characters having conversations in cover-based shooting when everyone has Stormtrooper aim, including the main characters. Unlike The Clone Wars, this issue doesn't even get better as the series progresses.
* Like The Clone Wars, existence of shields is often either completely ignored or they deplete so quickly that it's barely worth it to even have them.
* The "lets punch and kick people wearing armor"-thing from The Clone Wars returns
* Artstyle is generally considered a downgrade from The Clone Wars
* [[Bullshit|Helicopter lightsabers]].
* Complete bipolarity in tone. This can create some great moments, but invariably ruins the mood episode by episode, or between the A and B plots.
* Iron Squadron. Just...fucking [[Rage|Iron Squadron]].
* Star Destroyers take some getting used to, mostly due to their bridge towers being way taller than they should be.
* Space Squid-whales annihilating a maximum strength Imperial Blockade in under 30 seconds.
* The changes to Hondo Ohnaka's character.
* Hera is a captain in the beginning of the series and later gets promoted to general... [[FAIL|yet wears rank insignia of a lieutenant throughout the series.]]
* TIE Fighters are used in space without spacesuits, even though it's well-known that TIE-Fighters have no life support systems

==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 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. Which also tie in to why some many early fights end with less lethal encounters, espically the ones involving Sabine's exposives.

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 absolute fucking idiot. Agent Kallus was allegedly an elite Imperial Security Bureau agent, but the Rebels generally ran rings around him. Minister Tula 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 first 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 Tula 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. A counter to this is that neither Kanan 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.... [[BLAM|removed]].

This was one of the biggest criticisms of the series, in fact. The heroes have plot armor, and worse at times seemed to know they had plot armor. 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.

==Thrawn==

Forget all that noise about Imperial incompetence, because the real bad of Rebels doesn't disappoint. Grand Admiral Thrawn is in peak form in Rebels. He's observant, he's ruthless, he plays the long game, and he's [[Frazetta Man|fucking ripped for a guy who's into art]] and strategy.

Thrawn's first spotlight moment is on Ryloth, when Hera attempts to steal back her family's Kalikori heirloom. Thrawn (understanding the artifact's significance) instantly realizes her identity as the daughter of Ryloth's renegade leader, while his aide struggles to put the pieces together. Taking an interest in the actions of Hera's band of rebels, Thrawn begins collecting Sabine Wren's graffiti.

His next big moment came when Agent Kallus, now a double agent for the rebels, assisted Ezra in hacking the records of Thrawn's search for the rebel base and then reprogramming some combat training droids as assassins (which Thrawn beats down like a boss). Kallus attempts to pin the incident on another officer, effectively enough to throw Wullf Yularen, but not enough to fool Thrawn, who deduces that Kallus switched sides and uses him to leak false intelligence. The giveaway? The helmet Ezra was captured with, which Thrawn immediately recognizes as Sabine's handiwork, confirming that its owner was the young Jedi, and the fact that Kallus withheld this information proved he was no longer loyal to the Empire.

In Imperial politics Thrawn is a pragmatist standing in opposition to the Death Star project as it draws resources away from his own projects. He sees it as [[Nazi Equipment#Wunderwaffen|a waste on big dumb object]] when the Empire would have an enormous advantage over the rebels [[meme|once the TIE Defender is mass produced]]. In fact, Thrawn would likely have stopped the project if it wasn't for the fact his boss had ordered it.

Thrawn's only mistake was his dismissal of the supernatural despite knowing about the Force, Jedi and Sith. When he found the rebel base on Atollon, the only reason the Rebels escaped was the intervention of the godlike Force entity Bendu. In the final episode Thrawn admitted to Ezra that he didn't know much about the Force. But Thrawn had the Resistance on the ropes and was only beaten by Ezra's use of the Force and a pod of giant space whales (which Thrawn had no way of knowing would show up).

{{Star Wars}}

Star Wars:Rebels

2020-12-30T03:26:11Z

2601:2C1:8501:D350:8837:8B45:D710:A5B9:

Star Wars: Rebels was an american TV series that was released in the shadow of [[Star Wars:The Clone Wars|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 [[Abbadon|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 [[Star Wars:Resistance|hell resistance was supposed to be]].

[[Image:WomanYellingAtLothcat.jpeg|right|400px|thumb|''Stop fooling our plan, you rebel scum!'']]
''Rebels'' is set a few years before ''A New Hope'' and covers the early formation of the rebellion from the perspective of one cell focused on the planet Lothal. Much like the Clone Wars, it starts off weakly with slow pacing and erroneous animation, but gets better as the seasons and storyline progress, with season 4 sometimes rivaling the very best Clone Wars arcs for quality and storytelling. If you liked ''Rogue One'' but thought it should be about 25 hours long and done in cartoony CGI then this is the show for you.

Since the show does have a fair amount of dedicated fans, <strike>likely possibly</strike> certainly more than the sequel trilogy itself, Disney has made a habit of planting Easter Egg references to Rebels in basically everything moving forward, usually in the form of an appearance by the iconic ship The Ghost or the friendly-ish space pirate character Hondo Ohnaka.

<strike>(Wait a second, wasn’t Hondo in clone wars first-) </strike>

==Season 1==
[[Image:Alderaan.jpg|right|300px|thumb|The original vision for Alderaan, a planet of grassy rolling hills and mound-like cities.]]
Season 1 is perhaps the most hotly debated and skubby season. As this series amounts to a sequel to the Clone Wars, it had deep shoes to fill, and to be frank, it doesn't fill those shoes well at all. However, high points include Tarkin, the Grand Inquisitor, and Fulcrum. Special note about Fulcrum is that she is Ahsoka, and probably the only reason this show got another season.

Most of this Season takes place on or around Lothal. Lothal as a place isn't too boring either, coming across as a cool mix of Kansas/Oklahoma, with a centralized capital city as it's main point of commerce. The setting is based on Ralph McQuarrie's drawings for Alderaan, which went unused in the original and prequel movies.

The main complaint about season one is that the baddies are completely incompetent. The Imperial occupation of Lothal is seemingly commanded by two Imperial captains (a fat neckbeard and a skinny one with a Habsburg chin) led by a blond ditz who's just the real governor's stuck up secretary. Thankfully, Tarkin shows up towards the end who quickly proceeds to [[blam|execute]] the two captains for their incompetence and under his command, the Imperials become slightly more competent for the rest of the season.

==Season 2==
The real reason that this show got a second season. Darth FUCKING Vader appears, and he is played appropriately as an essential avatar of destruction ([[awesome|and is voiced by James Earl Jones to add up to the awesomeness]]). His first act? Carbombing the comedy baddie of season one, Minister Tua and blaming it on rebel terrorism. The plot armor heroes get brutally destroyed, shattering them and dispersing the rebels from Lothal for a time. Such appearances from awesome characters are kept relatively low, due to the need to not let them overshadow the main cast.

The inquisitors are ok (one of them comes across as having a light attraction to Ezra), and ISB agent Kallus continues to be a presence around the show. The finale really solidifies the show's right to continue, throwing Maul into the mix, and having the epic confrontation that Ahsoka and Anakin were destined to have since the beginning of The Clone Wars series.

It's in Season 2 that the rebellion makes its appearance, as a collection of independent cells largely focused on system level actions. Ryloth is in open revolt, Princess Leia is out on "mercy missions", and Bail Organa is bankrolling Jun Sato's ''Phoenix Squadron'', a renegade paramilitary force that assists other rebel cells.

==Season 3==
Season 3 is generally considered to be all around good, due to the introduction of Thrawn, and general lack of outright retarded episodes, with only a few exceptions. Thrawn is appropriately written as cunningly intelligent, kicking ass in every scene he is in, including [[Awesome|beating assassin droids with his bare fists and a blaster]]. We even get another new character in Governor Pryce, who apparently chose to chill on Coruscant for two whole seasons than do her actual fucking job on Lothal. Ezra also gets changes; he now has a lot less hair, and he has built a new lightsaber to replace the toy he was using for the first two seasons.

Most of the character development for the season is focused on two arcs: Ezra's entanglement with Maul, and Sabine's history with her people. Ezra's arc ends with Kenobi telling Maul to stay dead in the greatest and most illustrative lightsaber fight ever. Along the way Sabine discovers the Darksaber and then sits out a few episodes on Mandalore until returning for the finale.

For the alliance as a whole, Mon Mothma is on the run conducting pirate broadcasts against the Empire. Jan Dodonna has defected and begun assembling a fleet of defector pilots and stolen ships; among the new recruits are Wedge and Hobbie. Phoenix Squadron and the Dodonna force suffer severe losses fighting to escape Thrawn's fleet as the season ends.

==Season 4==

The survivors of the Battle of Atollon at the end of the 3rd season escape to Mon Mothma's new base on Yavin IV. The rebellion is now taking on its recognizable form from the movies, although is having difficulty reining in its wilder elements. Fighters like Saw Gerrera advocate aggressive direct action, to the dismay of the more moderate leaders. This arc is left for ''Rogue One'' to resolve, while the main cast of Rebels returns to Lothal, themselves in favor of direct action against Thrawn and his TIE Defender project.

The liberation of Lothal is the main arc of the season although that starts with the Rebels getting punched in the face because Lothal belongs to Thrawn and he's ready for them. [[lolwut|Pryce manages to kill Kanan]], but only by [[fail|blowing up the occupation's entire fuel reserve]]. The true extent and power of Ezra's connection to the force and Lothal is revealed, and it becomes clear that the Imperial occupation of Lothal is only tangentially about building fighters and more about the fact that it has a Jedi temple, which the Emperor is very interested in [[profit|for reasons]].

==The Good==

* All the main characters are well-written, fleshed out, with reasonable, sympathetic backstories and significant character arcs, along with different enough skill sets that they don't step on each others' toes. Each one feels like an integral part of the team; the pilot, the gunner, the muscle, the tech, the swordsman and the hot-shot rookie.
** Seriously, you'd think that with two jedi in a 6-man crew you'd get some overlap, but they feel like very different characters, both in personality and powers. Kanan is very much the quintessential combat jedi (as is to be expected as he was trained during the Clone Wars), while Ezra's signature ability to connect with the galaxy around him and especially its wildlife marks him out not only from the rest of the Ghost crew, but from every other force user we've seen on the screen.
* Ghost and it's shuttlecraft, Phantom, are both pretty cool ships
* Sense of escalation. In season 1, focus is entirely on the crew of the Ghost and the existence of a larger Rebellion is mostly unknown to them. In season 2, the crew has joined a larger Rebel cell named Phoenix Squadron. In season 3, Phoenix Squadron has acquired themselves a permanent base and we see more cells from the larger Rebellion. In season 4, Rebellion has taken the form we know from the movies, The Alliance to Restore the Republic, and the Galactic Civil War has officially begun.
* Having the crew use callsigns instead of names when on mission or on a radio is a cool detail
* Grand Admiral Thrawn makes his debut in Disney Star Wars, along with the TIE Defender project. The character doesn’t lose much in the translation.
* Zeb is voiced by [[Steve Blum]] who also voices some other characters (mostly Stormtroopers)
* Original trilogy actors such as Billy Dee Williams (Lando), James Earl Jones (Vader) and Frank Oz (Yoda) return to voice their characters
* Dee Bradley Baker is back to voice clones and even though they are naturally much less common here than in The Clone Wars (mostly it's just Rex), he does as good of a job as always
* The bearded old guy in the Endor strike team in RotJ turns out to be Captain Rex. Fan theory at first, later confirmed.
* You CAN [[combi-weapon]] a lightsaber and a blaster, and it's OP as shit
* Fighters sometimes perform some actual space-maneuvers instead of just flying in space like aircraft as is usually the case
* Plenty of Imperial warships, unlike the movies where we only really see Star Destroyers. Of particular note is the Arquitens-class Command Cruiser, a light cruiser which is generally more common in this series than the Star Destroyer. Makes sense since the galaxy is big and you can build 35 of these at the price of one Star Destroyer. They are also used as escorts for Star Destroyer, something we also don't see in the movies.
* Force wolves (no, not [[Rune Priest|those force wolves]])
* [[A Song of Ice and Fire|Game of Thrones-style]] Mandos (Krownest is pretty much Space-Winterfell).
* Imperial Inquisitors. Sure they don’t last long, but they were intimidating while they were, and it planted the seed that was used in other Star Wars media.
* Good appearances by Vader and Sheev.
* The Maul vs Obi-wan decades-long duel finally comes to an end... and what an end it is.
* The season finales are, invariably, fantastic.
* Animation gets better as the show goes on.

A note about the wolves... ''Rebels'' turns the force mysticism up past 11. Forget just being precog space monks with laser swords; as far as ''Rebels'' is concerned the Jedi are [[craftworld]] [[eldar]] without the racism. Rebels picks up the torch of the Clone Wars “Force Gods” and mixes in some of the straight-up fantasy shit from the Lucas era novels and the KOTOR/Old Republic Jedi philosophy schools and heresies beyond just “Light good, Dark bad”.

==The Bad==

* Since this is a Disney cartoon, the bad guys spend a large amount of their on-screen time (though not all, mind you) losing. This changes the Imperials (other than Thrawn and Vader) from an imposing force to [[Abbadon|cartoon villains]], although Rebels villains manage to stay intimidating more than Grievous did in Clone Wars.
* Battles slower paced than a Death Guard movement phase. Enjoy characters having conversations in cover-based shooting when everyone has Stormtrooper aim, including the main characters. Unlike The Clone Wars, this issue doesn't even get better as the series progresses.
* Like The Clone Wars, existence of shields is often either completely ignored or they deplete so quickly that it's barely worth it to even have them.
* The "lets punch and kick people wearing armor"-thing from The Clone Wars returns
* Artstyle is generally considered a downgrade from The Clone Wars
* [[Bullshit|Helicopter lightsabers]].
* Complete bipolarity in tone. This can create some great moments, but invariably ruins the mood episode by episode, or between the A and B plots.
* Iron Squadron. Just...fucking [[Rage|Iron Squadron]].
* Star Destroyers take some getting used to, mostly due to their bridge towers being way taller than they should be.
* Space Squid-whales annihilating a maximum strength Imperial Blockade in under 30 seconds.
* The changes to Hondo Ohnaka's character.
* Hera is a captain in the beginning of the series and later gets promoted to general... [[FAIL|yet wears rank insignia of a lieutenant throughout the series.]]
* TIE Fighters are used in space without spacesuits, even though it's well-known that TIE-Fighters have no life support systems

==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 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. Which also tie in to why some many early fights end with less lethal encounters, espically the ones involving Sabine's exposives.

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 absolute fucking idiot. Agent Kallus was allegedly an elite Imperial Security Bureau agent, but the Rebels generally ran rings around him. Minister Tula 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 first 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 Tula 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. A counter to this is that neither Kanan 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.... [[BLAM|removed]].

This was one of the biggest criticisms of the series, in fact. The heroes have plot armor, and worse at times seemed to know they had plot armor. 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.

==Thrawn==

Forget all that noise about Imperial incompetence, because the real bad of Rebels doesn't disappoint. Grand Admiral Thrawn is in peak form in Rebels. He's observant, he's ruthless, he plays the long game, and he's [[Frazetta Man|fucking ripped for a guy who's into art]] and strategy.

Thrawn's first spotlight moment is on Ryloth, when Hera attempts to steal back her family's Kalikori heirloom. Thrawn (understanding the artifact's significance) instantly realizes her identity as the daughter of Ryloth's renegade leader, while his aide struggles to put the pieces together. Taking an interest in the actions of Hera's band of rebels, Thrawn begins collecting Sabine Wren's graffiti.

His next big moment came when Agent Kallus, now a double agent for the rebels, assisted Ezra in hacking the records of Thrawn's search for the rebel base and then reprogramming some combat training droids as assassins (which Thrawn beats down like a boss). Kallus attempts to pin the incident on another officer, effectively enough to throw Wullf Yularen, but not enough to fool Thrawn, who deduces that Kallus switched sides and uses him to leak false intelligence. The giveaway? The helmet Ezra was captured with, which Thrawn immediately recognizes as Sabine's handiwork, confirming that its owner was the young Jedi, and the fact that Kallus withheld this information proved he was no longer loyal to the Empire.

In Imperial politics Thrawn is a pragmatist standing in opposition to the Death Star project as it draws resources away from his own projects. He sees it as [[Nazi Equipment#Wunderwaffen|a waste on big dumb object]] when the Empire would have an enormous advantage over the rebels [[meme|once the TIE Defender is mass produced]]. In fact, Thrawn would likely have stopped the project if it wasn't for the fact his boss had ordered it.

Thrawn's only mistake was his dismissal of the supernatural despite knowing about the Force, Jedi and Sith. When he found the rebel base on Atollon, the only reason the Rebels escaped was the intervention of the godlike Force entity Bendu. In the final episode Thrawn admitted to Ezra that he didn't know much about the Force. But Thrawn had the Resistance on the ropes and was only beaten by Ezra's use of the Force and a pod of giant space whales (which Thrawn had no way of knowing would show up).

{{Star Wars}}

Star Wars:Rebels

2020-12-30T03:25:28Z

2601:2C1:8501:D350:8837:8B45:D710:A5B9:

Star Wars: Rebels was an american TV series that was released in the shadow of [[Star Wars:The Clone Wars|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 [[Abbadon|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 [[Star Wars:Resistance|hell resistance was supposed to be]].

[[Image:WomanYellingAtLothcat.jpeg|right|400px|thumb|''Stop fooling our plan, you rebel scum!'']]
''Rebels'' is set a few years before ''A New Hope'' and covers the early formation of the rebellion from the perspective of one cell focused on the planet Lothal. Much like the Clone Wars, it starts off weakly with slow pacing and erroneous animation, but gets better as the seasons and storyline progress, with season 4 sometimes rivaling the very best Clone Wars arcs for quality and storytelling. If you liked ''Rogue One'' but thought it should be about 25 hours long and done in cartoony CGI then this is the show for you.

Since the show does have a fair amount of dedicated fans, <strike>likely possibly</strike> certainly more than the sequel trilogy itself, Disney has made a habit of planting Easter Egg references to Rebels in basically everything moving forward, usually in the form of an appearance by the iconic ship The Ghost or the friendly-ish space pirate character Hondo Ohnaka.

(Wait a second, wasn’t he in clone wars first-)

==Season 1==
[[Image:Alderaan.jpg|right|300px|thumb|The original vision for Alderaan, a planet of grassy rolling hills and mound-like cities.]]
Season 1 is perhaps the most hotly debated and skubby season. As this series amounts to a sequel to the Clone Wars, it had deep shoes to fill, and to be frank, it doesn't fill those shoes well at all. However, high points include Tarkin, the Grand Inquisitor, and Fulcrum. Special note about Fulcrum is that she is Ahsoka, and probably the only reason this show got another season.

Most of this Season takes place on or around Lothal. Lothal as a place isn't too boring either, coming across as a cool mix of Kansas/Oklahoma, with a centralized capital city as it's main point of commerce. The setting is based on Ralph McQuarrie's drawings for Alderaan, which went unused in the original and prequel movies.

The main complaint about season one is that the baddies are completely incompetent. The Imperial occupation of Lothal is seemingly commanded by two Imperial captains (a fat neckbeard and a skinny one with a Habsburg chin) led by a blond ditz who's just the real governor's stuck up secretary. Thankfully, Tarkin shows up towards the end who quickly proceeds to [[blam|execute]] the two captains for their incompetence and under his command, the Imperials become slightly more competent for the rest of the season.

==Season 2==
The real reason that this show got a second season. Darth FUCKING Vader appears, and he is played appropriately as an essential avatar of destruction ([[awesome|and is voiced by James Earl Jones to add up to the awesomeness]]). His first act? Carbombing the comedy baddie of season one, Minister Tua and blaming it on rebel terrorism. The plot armor heroes get brutally destroyed, shattering them and dispersing the rebels from Lothal for a time. Such appearances from awesome characters are kept relatively low, due to the need to not let them overshadow the main cast.

The inquisitors are ok (one of them comes across as having a light attraction to Ezra), and ISB agent Kallus continues to be a presence around the show. The finale really solidifies the show's right to continue, throwing Maul into the mix, and having the epic confrontation that Ahsoka and Anakin were destined to have since the beginning of The Clone Wars series.

It's in Season 2 that the rebellion makes its appearance, as a collection of independent cells largely focused on system level actions. Ryloth is in open revolt, Princess Leia is out on "mercy missions", and Bail Organa is bankrolling Jun Sato's ''Phoenix Squadron'', a renegade paramilitary force that assists other rebel cells.

==Season 3==
Season 3 is generally considered to be all around good, due to the introduction of Thrawn, and general lack of outright retarded episodes, with only a few exceptions. Thrawn is appropriately written as cunningly intelligent, kicking ass in every scene he is in, including [[Awesome|beating assassin droids with his bare fists and a blaster]]. We even get another new character in Governor Pryce, who apparently chose to chill on Coruscant for two whole seasons than do her actual fucking job on Lothal. Ezra also gets changes; he now has a lot less hair, and he has built a new lightsaber to replace the toy he was using for the first two seasons.

Most of the character development for the season is focused on two arcs: Ezra's entanglement with Maul, and Sabine's history with her people. Ezra's arc ends with Kenobi telling Maul to stay dead in the greatest and most illustrative lightsaber fight ever. Along the way Sabine discovers the Darksaber and then sits out a few episodes on Mandalore until returning for the finale.

For the alliance as a whole, Mon Mothma is on the run conducting pirate broadcasts against the Empire. Jan Dodonna has defected and begun assembling a fleet of defector pilots and stolen ships; among the new recruits are Wedge and Hobbie. Phoenix Squadron and the Dodonna force suffer severe losses fighting to escape Thrawn's fleet as the season ends.

==Season 4==

The survivors of the Battle of Atollon at the end of the 3rd season escape to Mon Mothma's new base on Yavin IV. The rebellion is now taking on its recognizable form from the movies, although is having difficulty reining in its wilder elements. Fighters like Saw Gerrera advocate aggressive direct action, to the dismay of the more moderate leaders. This arc is left for ''Rogue One'' to resolve, while the main cast of Rebels returns to Lothal, themselves in favor of direct action against Thrawn and his TIE Defender project.

The liberation of Lothal is the main arc of the season although that starts with the Rebels getting punched in the face because Lothal belongs to Thrawn and he's ready for them. [[lolwut|Pryce manages to kill Kanan]], but only by [[fail|blowing up the occupation's entire fuel reserve]]. The true extent and power of Ezra's connection to the force and Lothal is revealed, and it becomes clear that the Imperial occupation of Lothal is only tangentially about building fighters and more about the fact that it has a Jedi temple, which the Emperor is very interested in [[profit|for reasons]].

==The Good==

* All the main characters are well-written, fleshed out, with reasonable, sympathetic backstories and significant character arcs, along with different enough skill sets that they don't step on each others' toes. Each one feels like an integral part of the team; the pilot, the gunner, the muscle, the tech, the swordsman and the hot-shot rookie.
** Seriously, you'd think that with two jedi in a 6-man crew you'd get some overlap, but they feel like very different characters, both in personality and powers. Kanan is very much the quintessential combat jedi (as is to be expected as he was trained during the Clone Wars), while Ezra's signature ability to connect with the galaxy around him and especially its wildlife marks him out not only from the rest of the Ghost crew, but from every other force user we've seen on the screen.
* Ghost and it's shuttlecraft, Phantom, are both pretty cool ships
* Sense of escalation. In season 1, focus is entirely on the crew of the Ghost and the existence of a larger Rebellion is mostly unknown to them. In season 2, the crew has joined a larger Rebel cell named Phoenix Squadron. In season 3, Phoenix Squadron has acquired themselves a permanent base and we see more cells from the larger Rebellion. In season 4, Rebellion has taken the form we know from the movies, The Alliance to Restore the Republic, and the Galactic Civil War has officially begun.
* Having the crew use callsigns instead of names when on mission or on a radio is a cool detail
* Grand Admiral Thrawn makes his debut in Disney Star Wars, along with the TIE Defender project. The character doesn’t lose much in the translation.
* Zeb is voiced by [[Steve Blum]] who also voices some other characters (mostly Stormtroopers)
* Original trilogy actors such as Billy Dee Williams (Lando), James Earl Jones (Vader) and Frank Oz (Yoda) return to voice their characters
* Dee Bradley Baker is back to voice clones and even though they are naturally much less common here than in The Clone Wars (mostly it's just Rex), he does as good of a job as always
* The bearded old guy in the Endor strike team in RotJ turns out to be Captain Rex. Fan theory at first, later confirmed.
* You CAN [[combi-weapon]] a lightsaber and a blaster, and it's OP as shit
* Fighters sometimes perform some actual space-maneuvers instead of just flying in space like aircraft as is usually the case
* Plenty of Imperial warships, unlike the movies where we only really see Star Destroyers. Of particular note is the Arquitens-class Command Cruiser, a light cruiser which is generally more common in this series than the Star Destroyer. Makes sense since the galaxy is big and you can build 35 of these at the price of one Star Destroyer. They are also used as escorts for Star Destroyer, something we also don't see in the movies.
* Force wolves (no, not [[Rune Priest|those force wolves]])
* [[A Song of Ice and Fire|Game of Thrones-style]] Mandos (Krownest is pretty much Space-Winterfell).
* Imperial Inquisitors. Sure they don’t last long, but they were intimidating while they were, and it planted the seed that was used in other Star Wars media.
* Good appearances by Vader and Sheev.
* The Maul vs Obi-wan decades-long duel finally comes to an end... and what an end it is.
* The season finales are, invariably, fantastic.
* Animation gets better as the show goes on.

A note about the wolves... ''Rebels'' turns the force mysticism up past 11. Forget just being precog space monks with laser swords; as far as ''Rebels'' is concerned the Jedi are [[craftworld]] [[eldar]] without the racism. Rebels picks up the torch of the Clone Wars “Force Gods” and mixes in some of the straight-up fantasy shit from the Lucas era novels and the KOTOR/Old Republic Jedi philosophy schools and heresies beyond just “Light good, Dark bad”.

==The Bad==

* Since this is a Disney cartoon, the bad guys spend a large amount of their on-screen time (though not all, mind you) losing. This changes the Imperials (other than Thrawn and Vader) from an imposing force to [[Abbadon|cartoon villains]], although Rebels villains manage to stay intimidating more than Grievous did in Clone Wars.
* Battles slower paced than a Death Guard movement phase. Enjoy characters having conversations in cover-based shooting when everyone has Stormtrooper aim, including the main characters. Unlike The Clone Wars, this issue doesn't even get better as the series progresses.
* Like The Clone Wars, existence of shields is often either completely ignored or they deplete so quickly that it's barely worth it to even have them.
* The "lets punch and kick people wearing armor"-thing from The Clone Wars returns
* Artstyle is generally considered a downgrade from The Clone Wars
* [[Bullshit|Helicopter lightsabers]].
* Complete bipolarity in tone. This can create some great moments, but invariably ruins the mood episode by episode, or between the A and B plots.
* Iron Squadron. Just...fucking [[Rage|Iron Squadron]].
* Star Destroyers take some getting used to, mostly due to their bridge towers being way taller than they should be.
* Space Squid-whales annihilating a maximum strength Imperial Blockade in under 30 seconds.
* The changes to Hondo Ohnaka's character.
* Hera is a captain in the beginning of the series and later gets promoted to general... [[FAIL|yet wears rank insignia of a lieutenant throughout the series.]]
* TIE Fighters are used in space without spacesuits, even though it's well-known that TIE-Fighters have no life support systems

==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 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. Which also tie in to why some many early fights end with less lethal encounters, espically the ones involving Sabine's exposives.

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 absolute fucking idiot. Agent Kallus was allegedly an elite Imperial Security Bureau agent, but the Rebels generally ran rings around him. Minister Tula 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 first 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 Tula 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. A counter to this is that neither Kanan 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.... [[BLAM|removed]].

This was one of the biggest criticisms of the series, in fact. The heroes have plot armor, and worse at times seemed to know they had plot armor. 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.

==Thrawn==

Forget all that noise about Imperial incompetence, because the real bad of Rebels doesn't disappoint. Grand Admiral Thrawn is in peak form in Rebels. He's observant, he's ruthless, he plays the long game, and he's [[Frazetta Man|fucking ripped for a guy who's into art]] and strategy.

Thrawn's first spotlight moment is on Ryloth, when Hera attempts to steal back her family's Kalikori heirloom. Thrawn (understanding the artifact's significance) instantly realizes her identity as the daughter of Ryloth's renegade leader, while his aide struggles to put the pieces together. Taking an interest in the actions of Hera's band of rebels, Thrawn begins collecting Sabine Wren's graffiti.

His next big moment came when Agent Kallus, now a double agent for the rebels, assisted Ezra in hacking the records of Thrawn's search for the rebel base and then reprogramming some combat training droids as assassins (which Thrawn beats down like a boss). Kallus attempts to pin the incident on another officer, effectively enough to throw Wullf Yularen, but not enough to fool Thrawn, who deduces that Kallus switched sides and uses him to leak false intelligence. The giveaway? The helmet Ezra was captured with, which Thrawn immediately recognizes as Sabine's handiwork, confirming that its owner was the young Jedi, and the fact that Kallus withheld this information proved he was no longer loyal to the Empire.

In Imperial politics Thrawn is a pragmatist standing in opposition to the Death Star project as it draws resources away from his own projects. He sees it as [[Nazi Equipment#Wunderwaffen|a waste on big dumb object]] when the Empire would have an enormous advantage over the rebels [[meme|once the TIE Defender is mass produced]]. In fact, Thrawn would likely have stopped the project if it wasn't for the fact his boss had ordered it.

Thrawn's only mistake was his dismissal of the supernatural despite knowing about the Force, Jedi and Sith. When he found the rebel base on Atollon, the only reason the Rebels escaped was the intervention of the godlike Force entity Bendu. In the final episode Thrawn admitted to Ezra that he didn't know much about the Force. But Thrawn had the Resistance on the ropes and was only beaten by Ezra's use of the Force and a pod of giant space whales (which Thrawn had no way of knowing would show up).

{{Star Wars}}