I’d be interested to hear more of your thoughts about Maul’s arc! I haven’t seen TCW, so I don’t know precisely how it lines up. And I do think Rebels is generally not at its best when handling complicated villains; Thrawn works well within the show, for example, but he’s a lot more one-dimensional than Zahn’s version and the contrast is a little jarring if you’ve encountered him elsewhere. To some extent that’s probably to be expected in a kid’s cartoon, but still. Thrawn and Ezra would actually make fascinating foils if the former were better developed. Likewise I enjoyed the Kallus redemption arc once it got going, but I think it suffers from a lack of foreshadowing in the early stages - he’s a pretty one-note villain right up until the moment they start telegraphing where his story is headed, so the character continuity you need for a smooth transition just isn’t there.
I was initially irritated about Palpatine too (the galaxy is huge! pulling every single character into every story makes it feel small!), though they won me over with the execution. And thematically I appreciate that the show starts with Ezra caring mostly about his own survival, and struggling to connect to so much as a single loth-cat - and ends with self-sacrifice, and freeing his planet alongside not just the Ghost crew but a bunch of characters he’s personally drawn into the fight, and reaching out with the Force to connect with an entire school of space whales. It ought to be ridiculous but somehow it gave me feelings.
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Date: 2019-06-03 08:16 pm (UTC)I was initially irritated about Palpatine too (the galaxy is huge! pulling every single character into every story makes it feel small!), though they won me over with the execution. And thematically I appreciate that the show starts with Ezra caring mostly about his own survival, and struggling to connect to so much as a single loth-cat - and ends with self-sacrifice, and freeing his planet alongside not just the Ghost crew but a bunch of characters he’s personally drawn into the fight, and reaching out with the Force to connect with an entire school of space whales. It ought to be ridiculous but somehow it gave me feelings.