What They Say:
Breaking Ranks – Ezra goes undercover to retrieve information vital to an operation.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Star Wars Rebels is certainly still finding its legs, and while I had hoped it would do so quicker than it has, it has had some good moments. The previous episode finally brought in the Inquisitor and that offers up some potential for a villain to work with here and we also got some ties back to the Clone Wars period with the whole Jedi aspect, which was worked in a pretty neat way. This time around, events are focusing more on Ezra as he’s becoming an important player for the team as they have to deal with a lot of situations in the formative years of the rebellion. Sending Ezra in undercover as an Imperial cadet is something that only he can do, so that adds to his usefulness as the crew is looking to gain key information.
Taking on the role of Dev Morgan, he’s not the best undercover agent in some ways, but he’s almost enjoying spending time with kids his age, even in a place like this where they’re facing some tough situations with the training. Training that certainly gives them a lot to deal with, making you wonder why we don’t see more of these seemingly solid and well trained people in the service of the Empire. Playing at being a cadet is difficult enough, though his Force affinity makes some of it easier for him, he’s also finding it easy to get the decoder information that he’s trying to acquire. Or at least, it starts that way as things rarely go to plan when it comes to this group as he’s discovered after getting the data by Leonis, who was already clued into the idea that Ezra may be in cahoots with someone since Chopper is “undercover” as well.
Ezra manages to get Leonis to partner up wtih him for the moment since he’s not exactly enthralled with the Empire himself, since he’s trying to find out what happened to his sister in this academy after she, a star pupil, went missing. THe two certainly work well together to get the decoder, which had its own hurdles to be dealt with, but there’s also the added problem in that the academy is also watching for potential Force sensitive kids, which Ezra is obviously identified as being one along with Kell. The fact that Kell has been potentially discovered has Ezra skipping out on bugging out of there in order to help him stay out of the Inquisitor’s hands. It’s a pretty fun escape sequence that plays out, running alongside the mission that Kanan and the others are on to give them just a little screen time, and seeing how the people that Ezra has drawn to him work the situation makes for a good time. It’s simplistic to be sure, but it works in the context of the series so far.
In Summary:
While the subplot involving the Ghost and her crew with what they’re doing amounts to basically a little bit of time in space here and some action with little else, the main plot is a fairly fun one as we see Ezra’s undercover time doesn’t go quite as well as intended, but has made him a few new friends. There are some interesting twists that can come into this with what we see towards the end with the Inquisitor, but for the most part it’s an episode that lets us see Ezra on his own and away from the Ghost to do what needs doing. He’s proving competent enough to be sure to handle it, though with the usual kind of luck and bad feelings that are part and parcel of the property. It’s a fun episode and you can see it advancing some small things, but it’s still lacking a larger scale that I had hoped the show would latch onto early on.
Grade: B
