It’s a bit surprising to see that Gary Whitta wrote this particular episode.  Not only should he probably have been the one to write “Ghosts of Geonosis”, so that it could actually connect to Rogue One more directly, but this episode is lacking anything resembling a hook or point of interest until the very end.  And that’s surprising, since I expect a bit more from the series at this point.

 

 

This episode was a great example of a simple idea that couldn’t be fleshed out into a full episode.  When a story is that simple, it’s usually a great opportunity to set aside some time for character development.  But I don’t feel like this told us anything new about Zeb or Chopper.  Everything that happened could have been a subplot in any other episode.

 

In fact, it’s hard to say that this told us anything compelling or new about Thrawn.  By now, we’ve seen Thrawn execute far more subtle plans to tease out information about the Rebellion and demonstrate his intelligence.  While I appreciate the idea that he seeded candidate worlds for the Rebellion base with specific types of infiltration droids in the hopes of narrowing the search, it’s not exactly a massive payoff to give an otherwise mediocre episode more heft.  It’s a formula that has already been used a few times this season, after all.

 

 

I’m disappointed because it’s also another episode that underscores the feeling that Star Wars Rebels has lost direction.  It came out of the gate swinging, and since then, we’ve seen the needle veer wildly in terms of the main focus.  Wasn’t this supposed to be about Ezra’s struggle with the Dark Side?  Instead we’ve had a lot more time spent on bringing in Rebel assets or waffling on the extent of that struggle entirely.  I’m beginning to wonder if the growing sentiment that Rebels is now hemmed in by the details given in Rogue One might have merit.