Review: Star Wars Rebels – “The Mystery of Chopper Base”

As the Ghost is bringing the last of the supplies to the new Rebel base on Atollon, Kanan and Ezra spar in the hold. Apparently, they have been spending every free second training. While they do need to make sure they are on top of their game, it looks like they are taking it a little too far. They end up tying every time anyway. Though Kanan doesn’t count ties. He only counts losses since that means death.

Once they get on the surface, Rex informs Hera that they found a water source. The Rebels are working on putting markers around it to see if anyone else shows up. Unfortunately, the female pilot who got the awful job of putting these things up gets captured by some spider creatures. When she doesn’t check in, Sabine and Rex go to see what’s going on. And Rex gets taken by a spider-thing too. Those creatures are awful.

Meanwhile, Kanan/Hera and Ezra/Zeb are having sentimental moments before Ahsoka gets back and the Jedi have to leave. Hera is obviously disappointed that Kanan is leaving but Zeb is confident that they will return.

The rest of the crew join Sabine at the spider location to search for Rex. (I’d like to note that the female pilot is never brought up again.) Everyone heads into the spidery den, leaving Chopper behind to ready the ship. When the group breaks into teams, Hera insists that the Jedi go one way while Zeb and Sabine stay with her. She points out that they need to learn to work without the Force wielders.

Needless to say, they find Rex and free him. But they get surrounded by more spiders. Kanan and Ezra leap in to save the group from a horrible fate. Eventually, they all make it out of the den. However, the spiders have tied the Ghost down with webbing. The Ghost can’t lift off. Ezra comes up with an idea to retrieve the marker, which the spiders hate, and using the lightsabers to cut apart the webbing. The plan is for the Jedi to Force-throw Sabine over the group of spiders to the marker. They overshoot by a bit, throwing her into a pit instead. Thankfully, Sabine is a capable woman. She manages to crawl out of the pit and grab the marker before racing back to the ship. The Jedi cut apart the webbing and the Ghost flies off.

Back at the Rebel camp, markers now surround the entire base. They are safe from the spider creatures. But Hera is still upset that Kanan is leaving. With a little push from Sabine, Kanan talks to Hera. Their conversation ends in a rather romantic-looking embrace.

While this was a filler episode, there was some relationship building going on. There were hints that Kanan and Hera are more than just friends or co-workers. Zeb actually showed a little friendly affection for Ezra. I’m not sure that any of that required an entirely separate episode though. They probably could have accomplished the same thing by having the characters show all of these emotions in the first half of the episode where the Jedi actually leave. As it is, these scenes felt tacked on and overly dramatic. I wonder if Hera, Sabine, and Zeb will show up in the finale. It doesn’t seem likely at this point.