In Review: Star Wars Rebels: The Occupation & Flight Of The Defender

Synopsis: Ezra and the Ghost crew are called back to Lothal when a new Imperial threat rises.

Review: When the rebel alliance get a call from Lothal. Ezra and the Ghost crew are sent by Mon Mothma on a covert mission to find out what they can about the situation. In order to get there. Ezra calls on one of his old contacts to smuggle them in.

On Lothal. Ezra finds it to be a different place than the home he grew up in and the rebellion on the planet has taken a mighty beating by the imperial forces who have the planet locked down in a state of martial law.

This was a really solid episode with some nice touches. I loved the fact that the bar, which Ezra’s friend used to run is now operated by an Imperial fighter ace by the name of Baron Valen Rudor, which could well be a playful reference to the World War One fighter ace known as the Red Baron.

The episode culminates in a chase through the sewers, which ends with our heroes being picked up by Ryder who takes them back to the rebel base and says he will show them the new imperial fighter, which could well be a force to be reckoned with.

A fun episode, with a nice lead in to Flight of the Defender.

In Flight of the Defender Ezra and Sabine steal an Imperial prototype Tie fighter but must rely on some unexpected help to escape.

Picking up from where The Occupation left off. Ezra and Sabine set about stealing the flight recorder from one of the new Defender Class Tie Fighters, but things go wrong when the ship yard they are stealing it from gets a visit from Grand Admiral Thrawn.

Again much as in The Occupation. We get some fantastic action and character beats. I loved the sequence in which Sabine and Ezra are pretty much given little choice but to take the new Tie Fighter and the dog fight through the landscape of Lothal was great.

Also a lot of fun was had with a few cats that are native to Lothal, which helped Ezra and Sabine by creating a distraction for them.

Unfortunately. Sabine and Ezra are unable to keep the Defender due to the fact that it has a kill switch, which is enabled when someone disables the transponder. So after crashing the ship the two rebels are left with little option than to steal the ship’s hyper drive and make a run for it.

As it occurs to them that they are outgunned and outmatched Ezra senses something and is soon helped by something rather unexpected, which could have significant meaning for him in the weeks to come.

Overall. Both these episodes were fantastic fun and action packed. I loved the darkness of Occupation and the fact that Ezra had somewhat of a struggle with keeping himself in check at the bar. It was also nice to see the whole team working together again, which is something we’ve not seen for awhile.

Hopefully we’ll continue to see episodes of this standard as we move toward the end of Star Wars: Rebels and hopefully onto something new in the future.