Star Wars: Rebels recaps: Jedi Night/Dume
By Drew Koenig
Star Wars: Rebels returns with two episodes revolving around a devastating loss and the grief that follows.
This should go without saying, but if you haven’t watched the episodes “Jedi Night” or “Dume,” you should stop reading now and come back when you have.
A big thing that fans have been expecting with the final season of Star Wars: Rebels is the fate of the characters once it’s ended, specifically characters like Kanan and Ezra whose survival or, at the very least, prominent role within the Rebellion wouldn’t quite make sense post-A New Hope.
In that sense, we’ve been waiting for something profound to happen to at least one of those characters. Death seemed like the easiest option and it didn’t disappoint in that regard.
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After Hera’s failed attack against the Imperials on Lothal and her subsequent capture, the rest of the Phoenix Squadron leaps into action and quickly formulates a plan to rescue her.
In its conceit, “Jedi Night” is a fairly simply constructed episode, solely focusing on the rescue operation, but it is completely enthralling from start to finish. A significant part of what makes it so fascinating as an episode is the way that it all but telegraphs that Kanan expects to die on this mission, no doubt thanks to the interaction he had with the Loth-wolves.
“Jedi Night” makes practically no effort to hide the fact that Kanan is the one that is going to die and that enhances it in some strange way. Knowing that he won’t make it out of the episode alive, we get to really savor and enjoy the interactions he has with the rest of the characters, such as giving Ezra one last piece of advice or Hera and Kanan finally declaring their love for each other.
It works so well because we know it’s going to happen and it gives the audience something that the characters aren’t allowed to have: closure. We’re allowed to say good-bye to a character that we’ve spent so much time with over the course of the series.
Even with that knowledge, however, it doesn’t make his death any less impactful. It still hits you like heavy sack of bricks when the moment at the end of “Jedi Night” comes. It’s a wonderfully executed, entirely heart wrenching farewell to a beloved character.
“Dume” deals specifically with the aftermath of that loss.
While a bit broader in its scope, its primary — and perhaps only — priority is doing what it can to clean up the internal mess that resides within the Ghost crew now while setting up where the final chunk of the series can go from here.
For Sabine and Zeb, this means making a mess for the Empire somewhere, in whatever way feels the most appropriate to them. Ultimately, this means blowing up a speeder on a highway and going up against Rukh, Thrawn’s tracker.
For Hera, now mourning both the man she loved and the wasted time they squandered in the past and now won’t have for the future, deals with this loss the best way she can by remembering him the way that feels best for her: adding him to her heirloom that tracks her family. He was her family and that’s the way he’ll always be remembered as.
Finally, Ezra is the one that feels the most lost and, quite possibly as a result of that, gets chased by the Loth-wolves into the desert where he has a dream of a giant Loth-wolf essentially telling him to go to the Jedi temple because, at the end of the day, Ezra and the others a mission or they’ll stagnate in the worst way.
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Honestly, this could be wishful thinking on Ezra’s part because there exists a hollowness to him now with the loss of Kanan that needs to be filled with something now and the Jedi Temple just might have something for him, at least to him.
With only fives episodes left after this, anything could happen. Besides Hera (who we’ve seen pop up in other Star Wars properties), no one is safe and could die at this point. Who, if any, do you think will go next?