Star Wars Rebels: The Lost Commanders Recap

Synopsis of 2×03: After a devastating defeat on Lothal, the Rebellion is left scrambling to pick up the pieces of their fractured fleet. While Ahsoka goes in search of answers she sends the others to seek out some old friends. But while she says they can trust them Kanan’s not so sure.

Rating: ★★★★☆

I’m so excited that Star Wars Rebels is finally back. After sort of starting the second season off with the TV movie ‘The Siege of Lothal’ over the summer we were stuck dealing with an even longer, continued hiatus. Seriously, Disney can be such a tease sometimes. Thankfully the wait is over and the second season of this fantastic show managed to kick off in full swing this past week.

While ‘The Siege of Lothal’ was a very dramatic, very fast-paced re-introduction to the story the tone of ‘The Lost Commanders’ is a bit more subdued. The Rebellion suffered a great setback by losing their command ship and with Darth Vader hot on their heels it’s a dangerous time for everyone. They have very few allies and very few safe places to run to and hide. Ahsoka sends the others offer to look up one of her old allies from the Clone Wars with a very stern, cryptic message for Kanan: “Trust him.”

That doesn’t exactly end up being easy.

The Clone Wars fans, on the other hand, should be overjoyed. The secret ally Ahsoka sends them off to find is none other than clone captain Rex. But while the others might be able to trust him, Kanan knows what happened at the end of the war with Order 66. It’s understandable that he’s not exactly going to welcome these folks with open arms. It doesn’t help that Gregor and Wolf do very little throughout the episode to gain his trust. Gregor ends up using Zeb as bait to lure in a giant white sand worm and Wolf ends up betraying them all to the Empire.

Granted, I can kind of understand where Wolf is coming from. It can’t be easy being a clone a good fifteen years after the war ended. He’s just as afraid of the Empire swooping down and killing him as our Rebels.

A lot of this episode focuses less on action and more on the emotions driving people and their actions. We see a heavy emphasis on how the war has affected Kanan and the clones. We see Kanan struggling with those memories and trying to work with their new allies. More striking is Ezra’s inability to understand where Kanan is coming from and his attempt to explain it all. After overhearing their conversation, Rex explains that not all of the clones turned on the Jedi. But while Rex may not have done so we don’t know when Wolf or Gregor removed their chips – and there are probably still scores of clone troopers out there who never removed them.

Wolf’s betrayal will have consequences for the rebels – it just didn’t in this episode. ‘The Lost Commanders’ is the first of a two-parter which will conclude next week. That means that technically the first four episodes of the show (if you count ‘The Siege of Lothal’ as the first two episodes) includes two multi-part storylines. This may hint towards the show moving towards a more serialize style of storytelling resembling The Clone Wars format. But that could also just be wishful thinking on my part.