The downside to recapping Star Wars Rebels without watching the entirety of The Clone Wars is being a little clueless when the events of the preceding series start making an impact on the series. I know a little bit. but not enough to do my job perfectly. This is something I intend to fix. In the meantime, let’s talk about "The Holocrons of Fate."
(Spoilers beyond this point)
Darth Maul returns into the lives of the Ghost crew, demanding from Kanan and Ezra the Sith holocron from Malachor, and the Jedi one Ezra let it slip they have in the season 2 finale. The problem is, they don’t have the Sith one; Kanan took it from Ezra and left it with the Bendu, as thanks for his lessons.
Kanan and Ezra’s mini-quest to retrieve the Sith holocron continues last episode’s storyline of both of them reuniting with each other as teacher and student. While they’re still trying to grow back into that relationship after six months of separation, and despite Ezra’s Anakin-like thick-headedness, they’re on the way to fixing it. The little trip into the bowels of the Earth where the Bendu hid the holocron parallels the two going deeper into their bond. As Kanan imparts upon his padawan the techniques he learned in the last episode to get their prize, the time-created gap between them finally mends.
Maul, meanwhile, continues to surprise me. Like I wrote earlier, I don’t have a lot of knowledge of The Clone Wars, so beyond the fact that he was a major villain in the show, having survived The Phantom Menace (unlike George Lucas’s popularity), I don’t know much about him, and the season 2 finale didn’t help all that much. Well, after this episode he’s become one of the major reasons for me to check out the original cartoon alongwith Ahsoka’s journey. Voiced by Sam Witwer, he’s a very flexible villain, changing between subdued menace and rage when dealing with the Ghost crew, and then showing genuine affection towards Ezra, whom he dementedly considers his apprentice.
Ezra brings him the retrieved Sith holocron, and while Kanan saves their friends, he helps Maul with both holocrons (Maul found the Jedi one earlier on his own). The reason the Zabrak ex-Sith went through all this trouble is a special property of both types of holocron when used together: they allow their users to peer into {the Force} and find the answer for any question they want, though this being the Force, going too deep has disastrous consequences. Ezra jumps at the occasion, looking for a way to stop the Sith once and for all; while Maul claims to be looking for "hope." We don’t get to see their visions; all we hear from Ezra is "twin suns," suggesting he saw Tattooine, where a certain farmboy is living. He didn’t see much more than a few other places – some he knew, some he didn’t. Maul meanwhile leaves positively ecstatic, laughing to himself about how "he’s alive."
The nature of these visions will have to wait for another Jedi-focused episode. In the meantime, we’ve got next week’s "The Antilles Extraction," suggesting a certain Rogue Squadron pilot... and possibly a new clash with Thrawn. I’ll see you then.
Dominik Zine is a nerdy lad from northeastern Poland and is generally found in a comfy chair with a book in hand.
