Star Wars Rebels: “Kindred” and “Crawler Commanders” Review

Star Wars Rebels season four episodes seven and eight premiered on Monday, Nov. 6 with “Kindred” and “Crawling Commanders.” The first of was very strong, and the second was pretty good but not up to par with “Kindred.”

“Kindred” picks up where we left off in “Flight of the Defender,” where the Ghost crew is searching for the hyperdrive that Ezra and Sabine hid so that they could escape back to the rest of the Ghost crew. Ezra, Zeb, and Jai Kell look and end up finding the hidden hyperdrive when Rukh, who is Thrawn’s assassin, and the empire spot them searching for the hyperdrive. Zeb ends up stealing an imperial transport in order to move the hyperdrive back to the rest of the Ghost crew. Ezra and Jai Kell end up being chased by Rukh and they get a tracker attached to their bike so the empire finds where their base is.

Once the hyperdrive is back at the base, Sabine installs it into the old U-Wing ship where Jai, Kell, and Ezra arrive back at camp and warn the rest of the crew about Rukh. The empire then shows up, and everyone splits up, with Hera and Chopper boarding the ship and flying back to rebel command with the newly upgraded U-Wing. The rest of the crew follows the Loth Wolves, who show up at exactly the right moment. Zeb assures Ryder that when things get weird it’s a good thing. The crew follows the Wolves to a cave, and Kanan approaches the crew when the wolves go down into the cave. Once the group is in the cave, they see that there are drawings on the wall that look similar to the jedi temple on Lothal in season one. The wolves take the crew through a mystical path that leads to the other side of the planet. When Ezra and Kanan are alone in the cave, the Wolf says “Dume,” and Ezra asks what it means. Kanan explains that Kaleb Dume was his birth name, and the Wolves have a more direct connection to the force. I think the wolves will come more into play later in the season, since it seemed weird that they just disappeared without explaining why they were there.

The second episode, “Crawler Commanders,” felt like the weaker of the two episodes, mainly because it derailed from what we just saw in “Kindred.” In this episode, the crew finds a mining guild ore crawler that is stripping the planet of resources for the empire. The reason it’s important is that it has a long range communication antenna, which the crew can use to get a message to Hera. At the same time, back on Yavin, Hera has to convince rebel command to launch an attack on Lothal to destroy the tie factory because the new Defenders are way too strong for the rebels to destroy. This episode could’ve been a short scene, and we could’ve been brought back to Yavin and been shown the preparation for the attack that’s going to happen in next episode.

Next week, in the midseason finale, it seems as though the rebels are going to be taking heavy losses because the episodes are leading up to Rogue One, where the Rebel Alliance is lenient to go into all-out war against the Empire.

Rebels will continue with the midseason finale “Rebel Assault” on Monday, Nov. 13 on Disney XD at 9:30 p.m.