Star Wars Rebels S4 Ep 1 & 2 ‘Heroes of Mandalore Part 1 & 2’ Review
The fourth and final season of Rebels aired, starting us off with a bang! Sabine Wren finally comes into her own. The Empire has a deadly new weapon. And Ezra is doing what he does best… being himself.
Spoilers if you haven’t watched the episode
After last seasons epic battle on Lothal, we return to Mandalore. Home to one of the Rebels, Sabine Wren, who last season was reconnected to her family and promised to make things right on Mandalore. We waste no time as the episode starts off with a quick bit of recon before a battle. The mission: To rescue Sabine’s father, an important figure to Mandalorians. Though the Empire has a couple of tricks up their sleeves, they manage to rescue Sabine’s father, only to discover that a weapon, known as The Duchess, is strong enough to penetrate Mandalorian armor has been developed and the originals plans were designed by Sabine herself.
Now their plan is to destroy the weapon and unite all the Mandalorian clans against the Empire. Along these adventures were are introduced to new and former characters, such as Bo Kotan, a Mandalorian warrior from the Clone Wars series. Though she was rather an antagonist in that series, here she’s an ally, even mentoring Sabine in what it means to be a good leader. There is also Tiber Saxon, a Mandalorian warrior who pledged his clan to the Empire and was made Governor of Mandalore after the death of his brother Gar Saxon, last season. With Tiber, we are shown a man with an overwhelmingly amount of power, yet he doesn’t know how to use it correctly and is naive in believing that any Mandalorian clan will join the Empire after utilizing the new weapon, The Duchess.
You see, Mandalorian armor is incredibly important to the culture of its people. Though it is reforged, the armor has been passed down from generation to generation. Although Mandalorians are deadly warriors, many are bound by honor and their culture. And you see how each clan and person has a different style, especially when riding around the jetpack. The speed, ferocity, grace, and fluidity that is shown when they ride around their jetpacks is amazing; the action in this episode is top notch and the mission seem is familiar to the missions of the earlier seasons.
Now Ezra Bridger, who is the series protagonist, takes a back seat and offers more a comical relief. Now comedy can be an iffy thing with Rebels because sometimes it leans too heavy to kids audience, which is fine and understandable, but not really for everyone. However, in this episode, the comedy really worked, specifically with Ezra; we see that for the mission he’s given a jetpack, the only problem is he doesn’t know how to use one, so he uses that to his advantage when fighting which makes for some great comedic/action scenes.
We also have Chopper and Kanan help with the mission but they take an even bigger step back in the episode as they are only there to assist with the mission. I’m pretty sure Zeb isn’t even mentioned and Hera is in one scene as a hologram talking to Kanan about the mission, but after seasons of not seeing anything, we finally get a tiny glimpse of a romance between the two. This is laying the seeds early for what we’ll more than likely see later on in the season.
Eventually, the team destroys the Duchess and escape, finally uniting most of the clans together against the Empire. And this is where Sabine shows herself to be one of the best Rebels character. When we’re first introduced to her, we know practically nothing about her, she was just there. As the series progressed, we learned more about her, we saw what she was truly capable of, and she earned herself a spot as one of the best Star Wars characters. She learns that leadership is sometimes knowing when to step down for something, or in this case, someone better to take charge.
Ultimately, the season premiere was great! Sabine finally came into her own and we learn more about Mandalorian culture through the mission instead of exposition. Though we might leave Mandalore for a while, I hope we return to the planet in a future episode and see what Sabine does next.
Episode Three and Four of Star Wars: Rebels airs Monday, October 23 at 9:30pm EST on Disney XD.
