Return to Ryloth!
What They Say:
Homecoming – The Rebels contact freedom fighter Cham Syndulla, who needs help to fight off the Imperial bombing attack on his planet.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
While we had something of an ensemble show the last time around, the main focus was again pushing Ezra’s connection to the natural side of things with the Force. It’s something that he definitely has a strong connection with than Kanan does, but both characters have had their own unique experiences that have pushed them in different directions while still on the same overall path. There were some very fun moments with the action, but the purrgil just didn’t do much for me overall and I disliked the smaller roles that everyone else got for what really felt like it was intended to be an ensemble story. There’s still a fairly strong imbalance in how these characters are treated.
With the premise of trying to find a place where they rebellion can find a base where they can start putting down some ships, people, and plans, the focus shifts to Hera and her team heading to Ryloth where there’s a rebel cell there that might have access to a carrier that will give them what they need. Considering Hera’s obvious connection/heritage on Ryloth and that the man running things there is her father, a well-known freedom fighter from the Clone Wars, it provides another connection to the past. It’s an amusing moment when they come together because Kanan is far more deferential towards Cham than one might expect. It’s been an age since I saw the episodes with these characters in the previous series, but the connections are natural and work well enough – and hopefully draw in a few more viewers that still have a love for that series.
With a plan that works for both sides in allowing Cham’s group to show a real strength to inspire others while Hera’s group gets the carrier that they need, there’s some obvious things put into motion alongside it. The father/daughter dynamic is one that works well enough in how it serves to give us more of Hera as she stands up to her father and and what it is she does. The more emphatic and emotional she gets, the more her accent changes too, which is a great touch. There isn’t a lot that’s original here as Cham lost his wife in the Clone Wars and threw himself into the fight for Ryloth while she lost her mother and through his actions, she lost him as well. So it’s no surprise that Hera wants little to do with him and his stories because all he knows is fighting at this point.
And that means his plans are all that matters as he’s little interested in what Hera and her team needs. To the point where he’ll use them in order to achieve the goal of getting on board of the main ship that deploys the bombers that are destroying Ryloth. This does make for a pretty fun series of action events on board the carrier as Cham and his group are looking to blow it up while Hera is trying to capture it. There’s a great sense of Hera’s team really working well together here in a more fluid way than we usually see and it’s also a good moment for Ezra as he gets to use his Force abilities to be even more integral to the situation than usual. It’s also a fun balance to see Sabine and Zeb working together as the action toughs dealing with Cham’s group as they have to get creative in a totally Sabine kind of way.
Considering what Cham has been through and his view of being the one to truly liberate Ryloth, his actions are understandable for the most part. The main focus, however, really is the dynamic between father and daughter and their experiences and views of how to deal with the greater war against Ryloth. Cham is focused solely on Ryloth, not really realizing that even should they win in the short term that the Empire will do much worse in the long term. With this being Star Wars, you know that they all figure out how to work together in the end and that gives us a very good action scene that works to reinforce Hera’s leadership abilities overall and pushes Cham to really understanding who his daughter is at this point. While the themes are obvious enough and done well enough all things considered, the final act just runs very well with the action and that makes it a whole lot of fun. The show has stepped up the action side more in the second season and this reinforces that they’re getting more comfortable with bigger and more elaborate missions.
In Summary:
Rebels has a bigger series of action sequences across the episode as a whole here and it works quite well. The father and daughter aspects to it are pretty much a given once it’s made known and there are no surprise at all here. That said, they sell it well enough that it works by the end even if it is all super compressed with a lot of aspects that are needed to make it connect are kept out. You know where it was going to end from the start so you fill it in easily enough. For me, what really made the episode work is all the action elements, the smoothness in which Hera’s team is working these days, and some of the very amusing bits of humor that comes in through the cast interactions with Cham and his group.
Grade: B+
