The Mystery of Chopper Base has the distinction of being an episode that I was enjoying but mostly ambivalent towards for most of it but had me completely hooked by the end thanks to a very well placed musical cue. Kevin Kiner continues to nail it this season. That last slowed down version of the Imperial March? Perfection. That Big Damn Heroes moment? Also perfection. But let’s break down the rest of the episode.
As mentioned in Rebels Recon, this episode served a sort of season finale for most of the crew of the Ghost. They found a new base for the Rebels and complete their mission. For the Jedi amongst the crew, we’ll continue to follow them next week so it was nice to get one last team up and see them work together to save Rex from the spiders on the planet. Sabine in particular gets some solidly good moments and even saves the day. If the Ghost family had been relying on their Jedi to save them, they never would have survived. Speaking of which…
Above all else, this episode showed how utterly screwed Kanan and Ezra are. They may have managed to take down the Grand Inquisitor but they are woefully unprepared to go after two Inquisitors plus (most likely) Darth Vader. Throughout the episode, it was painfully obvious that they aren’t even close to be as well trained as the Jedi of old. Obi-Wan and Anakin they are not… well except for Ezra probably falling to the dark side which has been foreshadowed and hinted at so strongly this season that they might as well have put up a giant neon sign saying “EZRA WILL FALL TO THE DARK SIDE”. But back to the Jedi… this episode really highlighted that, despite their training session at the start, they aren’t as strong as they think. I mean… they mess up a fastball special. That’s just not a good sign especially when we’ve seen them pull it off in the past.
And then we come to the Space Married duo. Look, when even Sabine was standing there going “Kanan, you need to go talk to the love of your life before you fly off to die because she’s not okay,” it’s a total confirmation that they’re together. (Okay, so perhaps those aren’t her exact words but they’re pretty close.) Since the start, Rebels has danced around the idea of Kanan and Hera being in a romantic relationship. We’ve certainly seem them as friends and partners with Hera even calling him ‘dear’ all the time. This episode though? This episode just hammered home even more how much their relationship feels like a romantic partnership. Sure Hera’s worried about Ezra too but she’s even more concerned about Kanan. Basically, it’s killing me that we haven’t seen them kiss and now we might never see them kiss or have their romance directly acknowledged since KANAN MIGHT DIE.
Really though, that’s just going to be all of next week. Jedi dying and/or falling to the dark side. (Are you ready? I’m not ready.) Overall, the Mystery of Chopper Base did a surprisingly good job of giving us a ton of character moments while also moving the storylines along of both our Rebels and our Jedi.
