Twilight of the Apprentice

[unspeakablehorror]

Just finished rewatching the two Season 2 finale episodes.  These were pretty exciting, but then in then in the next season the show just really dropped the ball on a lot of the stuff set up here.  A list of arcs that I feel were mishandled:

*Maul--the plotline to nowhere!:(
*The Sith Holocron--who was speaking?! Whose holocron was this??!! Inquiring minds want to know!
*Ahsoka--am fine with the ultimate outcome, but deeply annoyed by the unnecessarily convoluted path to that destination; I admit a certain bias against this kind of plotline, of course...
*Ezra--because he should have had more interactions with Maul!

Which brings me to my last point:
*Maul--aaarrrgghhhh...just give me....Maul redemption arc...giiiiiive...

Anyway, it was interesting to rewatch this thinking about what I would change if I were to do a fanfic AU for this.  Which I would love to do, but I don't have enough of a direction yet (though I have some ideas).  I feel like I want to make progress on my current longfic though, because if I did this, it would definitely end up being a longer story.

Comments

[unspeakablehorror]

Yeah, I'm aware that Twin Suns is supposed to be symbolic and stuff, but it's not a symbolism that delivers anything I can enjoy, so *shrug emoji*. That's probably because my personal interpretations of Maul and Obi-Wan don't line up very well with those of the showrunners, or Lucas, for that matter, and the entire point of the symbolism is to reinforce their interpretations. Which is likely a large part of why it seems superflous to me. And I'm just going to have to disagree that Maul's portrayal there is anything except evil equals not just failure, but incompetence. Also, lightsaber fights are *never* a waste of screentime in my book!

The limited time frame of Rebels was definitely an issue. If they had had more seasons, they could have developed character relationships better and given them more detailed arcs. Also maybe they could have worked out more of the kinks in their rendering designs (I feel like they should have redesigned Ezra's hair to look better, for example, rather than just giving him a buzz cut). The graphics quality did improve as the show went on, but I didn't feel it ever reached the level of quality The Clone Wars attained relatively early on. Barring a few notable exceptions, clothing design on every level was just awful imo.

Also that is a good point about Thrawn! There wasn't really anything done to highlight that parallel, which is an interesting one for sure.

I think one of the limitations of Rebels is that it's an interquel, an unknown sandwiched between two known quantities, and there's so many characters introduced that either have impenetrable plot armor due to being in the OT or have to disappear before the OT, that the possibilities for these characters becomes significantly reduced. That's probably one of the reasons I enjoy AUs so much, because they can break the story out of these restrictions. Also because they can explore themes and ideas that canon doesn't.

[chamerion]

Fair enough! I find Obi-Wan a far more difficult character to like than I think Lucas & Co intend him to be, and I had few feelings about Maul prior to watching Rebels, so in part I was just pleasantly surprised that Twin Suns gave me so many emotions about them.

And yeah, the timeframe was a problem, as was the baffling decision to rely mostly on self-contained episodes-of-the-week rather than story arcs. It’s just hard to tell a story in twenty minutes. There’s a noticeable uptick in quality with the two-parters and in the fourth season where they take a more arc-based approach. Likewise I agree that much of the animation was a pile of meh, which is why the bits that wowed me in the S2 finale made such an impression.

The silver lining of the things that frustrate us about a work is always that they make good fanfic fuel, haha. I tend to like interquels - done well I think a story is more about the journey than the destination, and constraints can spur a lot of creativity - but the freedom of AUs definitely has its appeal.