One of the major reasons I want to do this review is because Disney decided to bend the Star Wars fan-base over a Dejarik table and screw us with the wrong side of a lightsaber. 

Hey there, readers! If you couldn’t tell from the title, this is the first installment of a Star Wars Rebels review. One of the major reasons I want to do this review is because Disney decided to bend the Star Wars fan-base over a Dejarik table and screw us with the wrong side of a lightsaber. Disney decided that anything outside of the movies is no longer considered canon. But at the same time, they’re still keeping some of the comic, video game, and novel lore as canon. The real issue is that they just haven’t told us what is and what isn’t canon. Quick side note, I realize I just used the word canon a ton and for those who don’t know, canon means that the lore in question is officially apart of the story. As an example, Dragon Ball through Dragon Ball Super is canon, Dragon Ball GT is not (for obvious reasons). So now no one knows what’s happened in the Star Wars Universe. Total crap, right? Well, Disney has thrown us a bone and created Star Wars Rebels and declared it canon. What’s so great about this is that Rebels is a continuation of the animated series, Star Wars Clone Wars except that it’s after episode three. Now then, fair warning to you all, this isn’t going to be a typical TV show review; I’m still going to be taking a look at the series as a whole but I’m going to be putting the Ghost crew’s leader under the microscope. I’m doing this because the survivor of Order Sixty-Six (Kanan) has gained his own comic series.

So, season one is all about teaching the viewers who the crew is, why they’re fighting the Empire, and why they’re awesome. Let’s start with Ezra Bridger. Ezra is a teenager (I’m guessing mid-teens, maybe fifteen) who grew up on the Planet of Lothal. Lothal is essentially a farming planet that’s under major oppression from the Empire. Before joining up with the Ghost crew, Ezra was an orphan thief. It turns out that this kid is a force sensitive, a curse to anyone during the time of Imperial control. We find out late in season one that his parents were big time anti-Empire pirate radio broadcasters. Sadly, this got them killed and thus Ezra is on his own. After revealing his force sensitivity (albeit by accident given that he didn’t even know about it) Ezra goes from orphan thief to a member of the Ghost family and the padawan to Kanan Jarrus. Throughout the season, Ezra goes through the life altering lessons of the Jedi order as well as the common life lesson that being a part of something means looking out for more than just yourself. Ezra is essentially the Luke Skywalker of the crew. Not in the sense of his importance but in the sense of his ignorance of who he is and how the galaxy really works.

The next crew member we’ll do a season one examination on is Garazeb “Zeb” Orrelios. Zeb is the last of the Lasat species (as far as we know thanks to the Star Wars canon being the largest cluster fuck of all time). The Lasat were (are) an extremely honorable people and because of this were one of the first species to truly rebel against the Empire. Given that Zeb is considered the last of his kind, it’s pretty obvious how the Lasat rebellion went down. So now Zeb has this cliché tough guy act going on but throughout season one we see that he’s really an absolute goof-ball, an odd characteristic given that he was a member of the Lasat Honor Guard. If you need to put Zeb in a role, Zeb is the Chewbacca of the group. Really, the only difference is that you can understand the guy.

Zeb Orrelios squares off with some unlucky Imperial troops in the STAR WARS REBELS animated short ‘Entanglement’. The crew of the Ghost blast into adventure in STAR WARS REBELS this fall on Disney XD. © Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved.

Every Star Wars crew needs the snarky beeps and whistles of an astromech and the Ghost is no exception. C1-10P, AKA, Chopper, is the foul mouthed brat of the Ghost crew. Really, he’s R2-D2 with a different look, maybe not as bright, and a little more ill-mannered.

Now we’ve arrived at the two mystery crew members, Hera Syndulla and Sabine Wren. We don’t know jack about these two outside of a few hints about their backstory and a single episode dedicated to the two of them (episode 5, Out of Darkness). Here’s what we know about Hera: she’s the owner of the Ghost (that’s their ship by the way, have I not mentioned that yet, because that’s pretty important) and she’s a light green skinned Twi’lek. Now, her race gives us a lot more information, though, than you’d think. The last name could have been a total coincidence but being a Twi’lek as well pretty much locks Hera’s lineage down. If you watched Star Wars Clone Wars (the animated series, not Episode II) you might remember the Twi’lek revolutionary from Ryloth, Cham Syndulla. Well, he’s Hera’s father. You can see a few aspects of his personality in Hera but really she seems way more in your face than Cham.

Then we have Sabine. Sabine is a teenage Mandalorian (she’s older than Ezra but not by much, maybe a year or two) with a passion for explosives and graffiti. Outside of the fact that she used to be a trainee for the Imperial army, she’s angsty, creative, and Ezra has a huge thing for her (phrasing). Other than that we really don’t know jack about her. We can speculate a little bit, though. We know she’s a Mandalorian, however, this doesn’t mean she is Old Republic stile Mandalorian. From what we can tell from her armor, she may be related to one of the Night Watch Mandos from the Clone Wars series. Granted, the armor is standard Mandalorian so again, we don’t know jack. Another side note here, why does nobody know Jack? I mean, the guy must be lonely as hell if no one knows a thing about him.

Lastly, we have Kanan Jarrus. From a pure Rebels season one perspective, we don’t know a whole lot about Kanan’s past. However, we can put some pieces together through dropped hints as well as his personality. Kanan was the padawan of Master Depa Billaba. Master Billaba was a student of Mace Windu and was a victim of Order Sixty-Six. You actually see her murdered by her troopers in Star Wars Episode III. What you don’t see in Episode III, is Kanan escaping the troopers. This is something that is corrected by both the show and the comic book. I know, this is supposed to be pure season one but speculation allows us to assume that the young Padawan was with his master when she was struck down. This must have had a profound impact on Kanan. We can see this through the fact that Kanan hides who he is. He hides his datacron, he keeps his dual-phase lightsaber unassembled, he primarily uses a DL-18 blaster, and on multiple occasions, risks the lives of his crew in order to hide his force sensitivity. Some outside knowledge for you, he hides so much that Kanan Jarrus isn’t even his real name. Kanan is thrust into the role of Master for Ezra which we can see rather plainly is something that he isn’t ready for. Prior to Ezra’s arrival, it is clear that Kanan was the Han Solo cowboy type, of the Ghost crew. We know, based on his appearance, that Kanan must have been young when Order Sixty-Six happened. With that knowledge, we know that outside of his training during his youngling years, he is a fairly untrained force user. He is so uncomfortable that in Episode III, Rise of the Old Masters, he jumps at the opportunity to go on a suicide mission to rescue a Jedi master (who turns out to be dead) from a heavily guarded Imperial prison. All of this so that Ezra can have a different teacher. It isn’t until Episode VIII, Path of the Jedi, that we see Kanan truly accept his role as a Jedi.

With the introductions out of the way, we can get to what happened in season one. The entirety of the season’s plot is the crew truly committing to creating a rebellion on Lothal. They start creating some distress of the Imperial leadership that’s stationed there. Agent Kallus and Minister Maketh Tua are attempting to get a tie-fighter assembly yard set up on Lothal but they are thwarted time and time again by the Ghost crew. It seems that the reason the Ghost crew is able to cause the Imperials so much grief is because Hera is receiving their orders from a mysterious source going by the codename, Fulcrum. Because of all of the residing Imperial leadership’s failures, the Empire sees fit to send in the Sith Grand Inquisitor. Now, just from his title, we know that there is more than one Inquisitor. This is a bit of an oddity given that the Rule of Two suggests that there should only be a Sith master and a Sith apprentice. Granted, Sidius was never one for following that rule and neither was Vader, so perhaps it’s not quite as odd as I think it is. This Sith Inquisitor starts to really put the pressure on the Ghost crew. Because of his presence, Kanan starts to take Ezra’s training more seriously. Because Kanan is slowly accepting his role as a Jedi, the Inquisitor starts to fail. The Inquisitor’s biggest failure is in Episode VI, Empire Day, when the Ghost crew pretty much destroys the ship yard. One last side note, it’s during that episode that we learn about Ezra’s parents. Anyways, this creates a domino effect of failure for the Inquisitor. This causes the Empire to send in Grand Moff Willhuff Tarkin. You know, the old guy who talks back to Vader but Vader doesn’t force choke like he does to everyone else? Well, Tarkin is a sadistic dick who turns out to be a badass when it comes to strategy. Tarkin calls in an Imperial agent who poses as a rebel sympathizer to lure potential rebels into traps. Well, the crew falls for the trap.

They think that they’re gonna meet up with this guy and break into the Empire’s broadcast tower to rally the people of Lothal. After learning that it was a set-up, Ezra takes charge and has the crew go through with the plan anyways. Well, Tarkin knew that they were going to do that and has the Inquisitor on standby. A big battle ensues, Tarkin blows up the broadcast tower after Ezra gets his message out, and Kanan ends up getting captured. The crew decides to use a tie-fighter they jacked in Episode II, Fighter Flight, to sneak aboard the Imperial Star Destroyer, where they’re keeping Kanan. They end up busting Kanan out but the Inquisitor is waiting for them. The crew gets separated and it ends up with Kanan and Ezra versus the Inquisitor. The three get into an epic lightsaber battle while the rest of the crew tries to escape. Kanan ends up defeating the Inquisitor and the Inquisitor ends up killing himself out of fear of telling a Sith Lord (implying Vader) of his failure. So now the whole crew is trying to escape but they seem to be pretty much boned. It’s at this point that we learn that Chopper decided to send out a distress call to Fulcrum. Fulcrum turns out to be the leader of the, currently very young, Rebel Alliance. He brings in a huge part of the Rebel fleet and ends up saving the Ghost crew’s asses. At the very end of the season finale, we meet up with Skywalker’s old padawan, Ahsoka Tano, who seems to be a big part of the Rebel Alliance.

So, now you’re all caught up after that exhaustingly long summary. Turns out that I suck at summaries. Anyways, from this point, the Ghost crew is now a part of something much larger than a single planet’s rebellion. As season two progresses, we see how that really affects the crew.

Well, that’s all I’ve got for now. Next week I’ll be back with an in-depth look into Kanan and Rebels season two.