How Star Wars Rebels Brought New Life to the Franchise in the Disney Era | Entertainment

It’s now been ten years since Star Wars Rebels first premiered on Disney XD. As one in all the first main initiatives to debut as a part of Disney’s revamped Star Wars timeline, it’s protected to say the sequence ushered in a complete new period for Star Wars. And even a decade later, it stays one in all the finest examples of how to broaden and enrich the Skywalker Saga.

To have fun this anniversary, let’s have a look again at the game-changing storylines and new concepts that helped Rebels reinvigorate Star Wars at a pivotal time for the franchise.

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Warning: this text incorporates full spoilers for Star Wars Rebels!

Kanan Jarrus: Learning How to Teach

Rebels could also be a followup to Star Wars: The Clone Wars, however it shortly proved to be a really completely different beast. Not solely is the sequence set throughout the interval between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope, it’s one which maintains its deal with a single, core forged, relatively than repeatedly leaping from one batch of characters to the subsequent. That allowed followers to actually settle in and get to know the Spectres and turn into invested in their guerilla warfare in opposition to the Empire.

If there’s anyone character whose arc actually ties the sequence collectively, it’s Kanan Jarrus (voiced by Freddie Prinze, Jr.). Kanan is launched as a former Jedi Padawan who escaped the wrath of Order 66 and has been surviving on the fringes of the galaxy ever since. Though Kanan by no means accomplished his personal Jedi coaching, he finds himself unwittingly turning into a mentor to younger Ezra Bridger (Taylor Gray), an orphan who reveals sturdy potential with the Force.

The Rebels saga unfolds kind of in real-time as the sequence progresses and attracts nearer to the occasions of A New Hope. That permits each Kanan and Ezra to develop in profound methods. Rebels is, if nothing else, a sequence about studying and the methods in which a trainer can develop by means of the act of educating. Kanan begins out as a damaged man haunted by the tragedy of his previous. His story ends with Kanan turning into a completely realized hero at peace with himself and his place in the galaxy.

Speaking of that ending, Rebels arguably peaks in Season 4’s “Jedi Night,” the place Kanan makes the heroic sacrifice that saves his discovered household and retains the spark of rise up alive. That episode serves as an amazing payoff to the sequence’ finest arc, and it casts the the rest of the sequence in a darker and extra emotional mild.

The Evolution of Ahsoka Tano

If The Clone Wars has a essential character, it’s undoubtedly Ahsoka Tano (Ashley Eckstein). That sequence showcases her journey from bright-eyed beginner to battle-hardened veteran to disillusioned Jedi exile. Unfortunately, followers had been left in a little bit of a lurch with Ahsoka when Cartoon Network initially canceled The Clone Wars in 2013. What turned of her after she left the Jedi order to search her future elsewhere?

Thankfully, that’s a query Rebels ultimately set out to reply. Following a shock cameo look in the Season 1 finale, Ahsoka turns into an integral member of the group in Season 2. The sequence instantly begins to present a distinct aspect to Anakin Skywalker’s former Padawan. Where as soon as Ahsoka was an untested, headstrong pupil thrust into warfare, Rebels reveals her as a fearless, assured chief who helps form and information the fledgling Rebel Alliance. The sequence additionally paved the method for the launch of the Ahsoka novel, which bridges the hole between The Clone Wars and Rebels.

Two Ahsoka-centric moments from Season 2 nonetheless stand out. One comes in “Shroud of Darkness,” when Ahsoka has a imaginative and prescient about Darth Vader and is lastly pressured to come to phrases with what her former grasp has turn into. The different comes in the Season 2 finale, “Twilight of the Apprentice,” when Ahsoka lastly confronts Darth Vader in the Sith temple on Malachor and actually and figuratively cuts by means of his masks. If Star Wars is all about rhyming, that showdown makes for a beautiful companion to the Vader/Obi-Wan duel in the Obi-Wan Kenobi sequence.

A New Side to Mandalore

Early on, Rebels viewers are launched to Sabine Wren (Tiya Circar), an authority-defying Mandalorian with a penchant for leaving colourful graffiti in her wake. While a necessary member of the forged from the very starting, Sabine actually comes into her personal as a personality in the latter two seasons, as Rebels explores the state of Mandalore throughout the Imperial period.

Viewers had grown conversant in Mandalore in The Clone Wars, with the world wracked by civil warfare and turning into drawn into the galactic battle in opposition to the higher needs of Duchess Satine Kryze (Anna Graves). Rebels enormously expanded on the Mandalorian setting by revealing what occurs when Mandalore turns into a pawn of the Empire. This can be the place Clone Wars veteran (and Satine’s sister) Bo-Katan Kryze (Katee Sackhoff) returns to the highlight in a extra heroic position.

The Mandalore battle stays one in all the most memorable storylines in Rebels, each in the way it elevates Sabine and explores her household battle, and in the way it provides new layers to Mandalorian tradition. It’s protected to say that Star Wars: The Mandalorian couldn’t exist because it does with out the basis laid in Rebels.

The Menace of Grand Admiral Thrawn

One of the finest issues about the Disney Star Wars period is seeing beloved characters from the Expanded Universe books and comics come alive in animation and live-action. Never has that been extra true than with Grand Admiral Thrawn (Lars Mikkelsen). Thrawn was formally inducted into the Disney canon in Rebels’ third season, the place he emerged as the newest and best menace to the rising Rebel Alliance.

Right away, Rebels captured what makes Thrawn so interesting in books like Star Wars: Heir to the Empire. He’s a chilly, calculating, and ruthlessly environment friendly villain with a knack for out-strategizing his opponents. He’s a contemplative foe who believes understanding the enemy’s artwork and tradition is the key to their defeat. In Rebels, Thrawn was mainly the antithesis of the overconfident, blustery Imperial characters followers had been used to. He turned an ever-present reminder of simply how overwhelming a menace the Empire posed to the Spectres and their dwindling allies.

Much of Rebels’ success with Thrawn is thanks to Mikkelsen’s charming vocal efficiency He performs Thrawn as a person who's each wholly alien but fully snug in his environment. His quiet, nearly soothing voice belies his fearsome battle prowess. It’s no surprise Dave Filoni opted to forged Mikkelsen as the live-action Thrawn in the Ahsoka sequence. Who else might convey this iconic EU villain to life?

Finishing Darth Maul’s Story

Like Ahsoka, the ex-Darth Maul (Sam Witwer) is a serious Clone Wars character whose story was left frustratingly unfinished after the sequence’ premature cancellation. When final we noticed Maul late in The Clone Wars: Season 5, his victorious rise to energy as head of the Shadow Collective was lower brief by the intervention of his former grasp, Darth Sidious (Ian Abercrombie).

Rebels lastly picked up that baton and ran with it in the Season 2 finale, the place Maul is revealed to be a hermit trapped on Malachor and briefly joins forces with the Spectres earlier than betraying them. Maul goes on to play a recurring position in Season 3, the place he has solely two issues on his thoughts – turning Ezra to the Dark Side and vengeance in opposition to Obi-Wan Kenobi after what the Jedi did to him in The Phantom Menace. If a lot of the sequence is about Ezra’s rise in the Force, Maul’s malignant affect turns into a crucial counterpoint to Kanan’s teachings.

Those subplots come to a head in the unbelievable Season 3 episode “Twin Suns,” the place Maul and Ezra each discover themselves on Tatooine looking for Obi-Wan. The ensuing duel between Maul and Kenobi is as temporary as it's emotionally satisfying. If any second in the sequence can rival Kanan’s sacrifice in “Jedi Night,” it’s the one the place a dying Maul tells his outdated nemesis that Luke Skywalker will likely be the one to avenge them.

There’s nonetheless numerous Maul’s story in the years between The Clone Wars and Rebels that continues to be untold, even with the belated The Clone Wars: Season 7 filling in the most necessary blanks. But what’s most necessary is that Rebels provides Maul’s story the ending and the closure it wanted. It’s a becoming finish to a personality who gained a stunning quantity of depth and complexity in the years after The Phantom Menace.

That Is How the Force Works

One of the most dominant themes in Disney’s Star Wars line is the concept that the Jedi and Sith don’t have a monopoly on the Force. There are different methods of utilizing the Force that may’t be simply bottled up into good and evil classes. We have to credit score Rebels with getting that ball rolling early on and paving the method for reveals like Ahsoka and The Acolyte and films like Rogue One to showcase different sides of the Force.

Certainly, there’s Ahsoka herself, who overtly declares, “I am no Jedi.” She’s turn into one thing else fully in the years since her exile from the Jedi Order, wielding distinctive white blades and turning into the closest factor the Disney universe has to the common EU idea of a “Gray Jedi.”

Rebels, like The Clone Wars earlier than it, additionally dug deeper into the nature of The Force itself. Where The Clone Wars gave us the ethereal world of Mortis and The Father, The Son, and The Daughter, Rebels launched followers to the Bendu, a mysterious, animalistic being who embodies the stability between the Light and Dark Sides. Even Ezra himself proved to be one thing new, communing with the animals of Lothal in a method we had by no means seen from his fellow Jedi.

Rebels went particularly huge in its fourth and last season, introducing a wholly new realm referred to as The World Between Worlds. When Ezra travels there, he’s in a position to pierce the boundaries of time and house and save Ahsoka from what appeared like her sure doom in Season 2’s finale. Even Emperor Palpatine reveals up to muck about with time. For Star Wars – a franchise that has at all times veered extra in direction of house fantasy than science fiction – to take care of an idea like time journey was novel certainly.

As the Ahsoka sequence has proven, Filoni is hardly performed exploring Mortis, The World Between Worlds, and the unusual mysteries of the Force. Rebels opened our eyes to a bigger universe, and it continues to encourage new Star Wars tales a decade later.

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For extra Star Wars goodness, try the Ahsoka, Hera, and Sabine episodes to watch earlier than seeing Star Wars: Ahsoka and brush up on each Star Wars film and sequence in growth.

Jesse is a mild-mannered workers author for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your mental thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.