Star Wars: Rebels recap: Wolves at the Door/A World Between Worlds

Star Wars: Rebels jumps back into action with a new mission to save the Jedi Temple and protect the secrets it holds. 

The penultimate episodes before Star Wars: Rebels‘ series finale next week can only be described as impressively ambitious in its scope. After being given a stone tablet from the talking Loth-wolf last week, Ezra and the rest of the Ghost Crew set out to the Jedi Temple on Lothal to determine what the Empire is doing there, or if they’re there at all. To their mild surprise, they are with a rather large contingent of forces.

They quickly realize that this is not a normal military project, but is instead one under the supervision of a mysterious man called Minister Hydan (voiced by Malcolm McDowell), who reports directly to Emperor Palpatine (voiced by returning Ian McDiarmid) to unlock the hidden properties of the temple.

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Ezra and Sabine sneak into the Imperial camp and are able to decipher the wall holding the key to entrance and, using the stone tablet as a reference point, make the carvings on the wall move in a visually cool mix of 2D and 3D animation. Before they’re discovered, Ezra jumps through the wall and finds himself in a seemingly endless room that has the echoes of voices that we recognize from other Star Wars properties: Obi-Wan, Yoda, Kanan, Qui-Gon, Leia, but also Rey and Kylo Ren (!!!), which means that this is a room that not only transcends space, but time, as well.

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As Ezra walks along the paths, he finds multiple portals, like the one he came through, and one that shows the lightsaber duel between Ahsoka Tano and Darth Vader from the end of Season 2. Before collapsing rubble can fall on her, Ezra reaches through and pulls her back into the room, effectively saving her life.

This is a huge moment for the Star Wars universe that could potentially have universe breaking implications. Time travel now exists in Star Wars.

Let that sink in for a moment.

Granted, the temple is destroyed at the end of the episode after Ezra and Ahsoka run back to their appropriate times, but is it really? There’s nothing to prevent the Temple from returning in one way or another in the future.

It really can’t be stressed enough how much of a game changer this is, not only for what this means for Star Wars: Rebels, but what this means for Star Wars at large. More than that, at least for this show, is what this means for Ezra. He had an opportunity to save Kanan in another portal, but Ahsoka eventually talked him out of it and he agreed; saving Kanan would give him a future, but undo theirs.

Next: Star Wars: Rebels recap: Jedi Night/Dume

Assuming, as the episode does, that the Dume Loth-wolf was Kanan giving Ezra one final lesson, and one that Ezra came away and deeply resonated with, what could it have been? Is Ezra going to follow in his master’s footsteps and ultimately take one for the team or something else entirely?

This will no doubt be answered next week when Star Wars: Rebels ends.