Star Wars Rebels Season Three (spoilers)

[Christopher]

Again, there's a much bigger war going on out there so they'll have no shortage of volunteers to be soldiers or even pilots. The ones that survive more then five minutes may even get promotions to squad leaders, Captains or even Commanders. People with long experience are more valuable and are needed more and more to manage things at the strategic level as more worlds join them, as territory gets occupied, worlds liberated and mass migrations of refugees.

Sure, you can handwave it after the fact, but it still rings false that the few characters who happen to be the series leads also happen to be the ones who are best qualified for those leadership positions, especially when they come from such disparate backgrounds and haven't really done all that much for the Rebellion. Leia, of course, was already a leader, and Luke would've made his name with the Death Star and been a committed resistance fighter from then on. But Han was at best a mercenary for the three years between ANH and TESB. Leia's line "I thought you decided to stay" suggests that it was a decision he'd made fairly recently, suggesting his affiliation with the Rebellion was rather tenuous and that maybe he'd come and gone in the intervening period. And then he spent six months as a wall decoration, which is not the sort of career experience that generally leads to a promotion to flag rank immediately afterward. It's just not very credible, and it smacks of sexism that he had to be equal in rank to Leia despite deserving it far less. Why couldn't he have been a colonel, even?

Lando isn't just some smuggler, he's the former Baron of Cloud City. Someone used to leadership, managing logistics on a large scale and with the wherewithal to do so for years without drawing attention from the Empire or the Mining Guild. That's valuable experience in and of itself and whatever he did at Taanab clearly convinced Alliance High Command he also has what it takes to lead people into combat.

Civilian leadership experience doesn't automatically translate to military experience, any more than being a businessman qualifies someone to be a president or cabinet member. It's apples and oranges.

That's when I remind myself it is make believe.............

Exactly. It's overthinking it to try to rationalize it as some kind of defensible, logical military practice. It's an arbitrary choice made in an '80s adventure movie aimed at children. It was done purely because these were the lead characters in the movie and that mattered more than any kind of internal sense. It's no more logical than a bunch of stone-age teddy bears being able to defeat the military elite of a galaxy-spanning technological empire because they have good and right on their side.

 

[Reverend]

Civilian leadership experience doesn't automatically translate to military experience, any more than being a businessman qualifies someone to be a president or cabinet member.

Which, as I said is where the Battle of Tanaab things comes in.

 

[ALF]

http://comicbook.com/starwars/2017/...s-showrunner-addresses-the-season-4-question/

"After tonight's new episode of Star Wars Rebels, fans may be questioning how much more of the show they're going to get. It had a real sense of finality, at least for the character of Sabine Wren, who left the team to go work towards uniting and freeing her people. While Lucasfilm and Disney XD remain mum on any official announcement of Star Wars Rebels Season 4, the show continuing on for at least one more year is likely."

(Interview with Dave Filoni)

"You always have an eye on it, and it's tricky. I have to be honest. It's tricky in TV having worked on a series that frankly didn't really have an all-out end like we had planned it. I'm always a bit wary. I'm thinking, 'Okay, where do we need this to go?'" he said. "Because I want to make sure that we take the audience in these Star Wars stories, I think, on this really, I hope, interesting and entertaining journey, and I want them to feel that they get a complete payoff for it, and that it's the story that we intended."

And while he wouldn't budge on any kind of sudden official announcement, he did imply heavily that the story they intended has more story to tell beyond season 3.

"From the very beginning, Simon and I, working with the writers and story group have had a goal in mind of where we would like to get to with this, and we've been taking steps towards it along the way, and some surprising twists and turns even to us, but we always have a goal in mind of where we want to be," Filoni said. "So, I think we have taken some strong steps towards that with always an eye on 'Does the adventure continue?' So we'll have to see. For Sabine, hopefully the adventure will continue. That would be great because then we can change her hair again. People love that," he said with a laugh.​

So that's interesting. FPJ (Kanan) has said before that seven seasons were locked in, but of course the showrunner Filoni is a lot more grounded in the reality of television. The only other thing worth mentioning is that Paldo Hidago tweeted a few days ago that Rebels "has the audience it is targeting" expanding upon his previous assertion that while The Clone Wars cancellation was a shock to us as fans, the truth is the show lost it's core audience (young kids) along the way.

 

[Christopher]

Which, as I said is where the Battle of Tanaab things comes in.

Which is still a lame excuse to justify putting the main characters of the movie in command roles regardless of their background. (And seriously, Tanaab? As in Bataan almost spelled backward? Lucas loved his WWII nods, didn't he?)

For Sabine, hopefully the adventure will continue. That would be great because then we can change her hair again. People love that," he said with a laugh.

Her hair color this season has been my least favorite. I liked both of her first two seasons' looks, but I'm not that fond of this one.

 

[Reverend]

(And seriously, Tanaab? As in Bataan almost spelled backward? Lucas loved his WWII nods, didn't he?)

Was that supposed to be some sort of well kept secret? It's not like the space Nazi's wearing Japanese Imperial uniforms were supposed to be subtle or anything.

 

[Christopher]

Was that supposed to be some sort of well kept secret?

No, but just spelling a name backward feels a bit lazy as references go.

 

[Reverend]

No, but just spelling a name backward feels a bit lazy as references go.

No you're absolutely right. Space fantasy movies where the planet of teddy bears defeat the evil Empire should have way more subtle references to the brutal Philippines Campaign. For shame!

 

[publiusr]

For those of you who like the Ghost--Randy Cooper is working on a model
http://www.therpf.com/showthread.php?t=272279&page=2&s=4a419f6403b4a18f20c16e84f480f08a

 

[kitik]

Wow, that was a surprising ending. That really felt like the end of Sabine as a main character, though I'm sure we'll see more of her. Maybe she can rejoin the cast midway through season 4 after things go wrong with the Mandalorian rebellion?

Though I do recall Filoni mentioning very specifically a month or two ago that while we saw the Ghost in Rogue One, we did not know the makeup of its crew in that movie. Wouldn't have guessed Sabine would be the first to go though.

 

[Ithekro]

I would guess she can at lease secure some Mando starships for the Rebellion as we saw some engaging Imperial forces in the trailer. What would appear to be the collecting of the Alliance to Restore the Republic.

 

[kirk55555]

Just watched Trials of the Darksaber. Outside of the ridiculousness of Sabine inventing some kind of special weapons (seriously, unless "mandalorians" are afraid of normal explosives that explode with different colored smoke, I don't see what weapons she could have "created" to help the empire, she's not exactly an inventor), it was ok. Her family sounds like idiots, I hope the next episode doesn't end with Sabine just making up with them,

 

[JD]

Did we ever find out what happened to Cad Bane?

I've been wondering about him too. I would love to see him pop up on Rebels.

In any case, sci-fi rank systems don't necessarily correlate to real ones -- as, for instance, in the rather odd Battlestar Galactica rank system where a commander is above a colonel, captain, lieutenant, etc. Heck, the Rebel Alliance seems to hand out generalships to anyone who's done them a favor. (Seriously, what the hell did Han Solo do to warrant a promotion to general for the Battle of Endor? Or had all their actual generals been killed off by that point?)

Besides rescuing Princess Leia from the Death Star, bringing the Death Star plans to Yavin, being instrumental in the destruction of the Death Star, and saving Luke on Hoth by going out into the freezing cold when no one else would, there was also three years of him fighting for the Rebellion between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back, for which General Rieekan said "You're a good fighter, Solo, I hate to lose you."

Promotions were being handed out in preparation for the assault on Endor rather then earlier because it was presumably the largest gathering of Rebel forces that had ever occurred up to that point, and there were multiple objectives, so they needed more commanders. Also, as you say, there had probably been a great deal of attrition in the ranks as the various Rebel cells had been taken out by the Empire.

Yeah, but military rank isn't just a pat on the head for a few good deeds. You don't put some freelancing smuggler who's helped out from time to time in command of more seasoned personnel as his first formal military position. Making him a lower-ranked member of General Leia's squad would've made more sense. I mean, Luke, Leia, and Han were all on the Endor team -- why the hell do you need three generals for one mission? And since when are generals on the front lines anyway?

Making Lando a general makes even less sense, though, since he'd only been with the Rebellion for six months at that point and he'd presumably spent most of it searching for Han. It was pretty obvious in ROTJ that generalship was a function of being a lead character in the script, whether it made sense in-universe or not.

Two people hardly constitutes "everyone".
Again, there's a much bigger war going on out there so they'll have no shortage of volunteers to be soldiers or even pilots. The ones that survive more then five minutes may even get promotions to squad leaders, Captains or even Commanders. People with long experience are more valuable and are needed more and more to manage things at the strategic level as more worlds join them, as territory gets occupied, worlds liberated and mass migrations of refugees increase.

Lando isn't just some smuggler, he's the former Baron of Cloud City, with a population in the millions. Someone used to leadership, managing logistics on a large scale and with the wherewithal to do so for years without drawing attention from the Empire or the Mining Guild. That's valuable experience in and of itself and whatever he did at Taanab clearly convinced Alliance High Command he also has what it takes to lead people into combat.
It paid off too. Remember he was the one that recommended to a reluctant Ackbar to engage the Imperial fleet at close range. That move bought the ground team the time they needed and even allowed them to overwhelm and eliminate the Executor.

I had no problem with Han as a General, at that point he had worked for the Rebels for years, and had taken part in some of their biggest and most important operations.
The only one that confused me was Lando, just due to the fact that he hadn't been with the Rebels that long at that point. @Reverend does bring up some good points about his qualifications though.
I was always under the impression that even by ROTJ the Rebellion was still a fairly small make shift group, so they probably still didn't have a ton of people qualified for generalships.

 

[Christopher]

I had no problem with Han as a General, at that point he had worked for the Rebels for years, and had taken part in some of their biggest and most important operations.

Except that he had no rank at all as of the last time he was with the rebel forces on Hoth, and he spent nearly the entire intervening time as a statue. The only things he accomplished in the interim were running away from the Empire until he got caught, and accidentally launching Boba Fett into the Sarlacc pit. So whatever experience he gained in rebel operations all took place before Hoth. The paradox is that he went from zero rank at Hoth to general's rank pre-Endor without contributing anything significant to the Rebellion in between the two. It makes about as much sense as Kirk's meteoric rise to captain in the 2009 Star Trek film.

 

[Ithekro]

Unless they meant that Captain Solo was his rank as oppose to just being in command of the Millennium Falcon.

 

[DimesDan]

So about the episode that just aired and not the discussion about the use of Generals and otherwise fictional military hierarchy of the Rebellion that has no bearing on it, did anyone else catch the use of "Emperors Hand" and if so, could Ms Jade appear at somepoint?

 

[Reverend]

So about the episode that just aired and not the discussion about the use of Generals and otherwise fictional military hierarchy of the Rebellion that has no bearing on it, did anyone else catch the use of "Emperors Hand" and if so, could Ms Jade appear at somepoint?

While obviously the use of that phrase is bound to be a nod by the showrunners to Jade, in-universe I think that was just a euphemism, not a literal title. Even if it is Gar Saxon's role bears no resemblance to the EU's force sensitive secret agents, answerable only to the Emperor himself. Plus: anyone else remember when the Inquisitor showed up and certain people took this as an indication that they were going to introduce Jerec?

Regardless, no I don't think we'll see Mara appear anytime soon.

 

[Ithekro]

She'd effectively be too young for the story at this point.

 

[Tallguy]

Wow. There was a moment there when I really seriously truly believed they had shot Sabine. Congrats, gang.

I'll be (obviously) very curious where they go with this. It's animation. I can't imagine we'll never hear from her again.

Re: General. General in the Star Wars universe has as much meaning as Resistance. The words sound important but they don't mean anything. (And certainly nothing like what they mean here.) (And Resistance starts with an R, just like Rebellion.)

I guess it was meant to tell the audience "Hey, our heroes are in charge now." Except it was confusing to anyone who had ever been even within two people of an actual military. Han didn't have to be a general to lead the shield generator assault anymore than Luke and Jyn had to be ranked personnel to be leaders in Star Wars and Rogue One.

 

[Christopher]

Besides, if you take the words literally, "General Solo" is kind of an oxymoron.

 

[Reverend]

Wow. There was a moment there when I really seriously truly believed they had shot Sabine. Congrats, gang.

That actually never occurred to me. I did however think that he'd instead shot her mother for a second there.

I'll be (obviously) very curious where they go with this. It's animation. I can't imagine we'll never hear from her again.

I don't think this is a "she's off the show" type of departure so much as it is an evolution of her role. I think we'll be seeing more of this sort of thing with the other characters as the show's scope broadens with the Rebel Alliance's founding. For starters I can easily see Zeb & Rex moving towards training/leading infantry & commando units and we now Hera is going to get a promotion before long.

The real mystery is what they'll do with Kanan & Ezra as we can be reasonably confident they weren't still a part of the rebellion by the time of Scarif & Yavin. There's a couple ways they can go with it, some obvious, some not so much. I have a vague suspicion that Ahsoka may have started a sanctuary somewhere or an underground railroad of sorts for force sensitive children, so perhaps they end up as their protectors?