“Wow, you really do shoot like a stormtrooper.”

What They Say:
Stealth Strike – A new Imperial ship captures Ezra, Commander Sato, and his crew.

The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
While the Hera and Sabine character episodes were fun, they didn’t dig deep enough into the characters to really connect in a big way. They were enjoyable and expanded the narrative overall but it felt like we didn’t truly come away from either with anything meaty to sink our teeth into and draw us to them more. It’s a frustrating piece to be sure because both are solid characters with a lot of potential, but for now it’s just a matter of hoping that they’re used more as part of the ensemble until they can really be dealt with in a better way. This episode isn’t one that will do that though as it focuses on the men of the series a bit and putting Ezra back in the spotlight for awhile.

Ezra’s luck doesn’t hold up right from the get go here as he’s off on a mission with Sato, who is still not thrilled with the young Padawan, as they’re searching for a lost patrol shop. Interestingly enough, though, while on course to the location they get yanked out of hyperspace and forced into a shutdown mode once back in normal space by an unusual Imperial ship. Introducing a ship that has gravity well weaponry on it that’s in testing mode certainly provides for something new and it makes sense that we can get something that the team can take out from being used in the future, hence our not seeing it. That lets Ezra and Sato work the intelligence side of things once they’re captured while the flip side is that Hera sends Kanan and Rex to figure out what’s going on and rescue them. That’s amusing in itself as it again forces the whole Kanan problem with stormtroopers and clone troopers issue. I do like that they’ve been playing with it in good ways and not going for the immediate fix.

The fun of it all is watching Rex and Kanan working “together” while wearing stormtrooper gear and boarding the ship. It’s a nice opportunity for Kanan to use a little Jedi mind trick fun and some good playfulness between the two. It’s also nice reminiscent of the original film of course since the franchise as a whole likes the poetry of echoes and callbacks. The hilarious part is that when they get close to where Ezra is being taken it’s when Ezra performs his own escape and takes them down as well not realizing who they are. It’s a great bit of humor with how it plays out and some of what’s said, especially since Chopper plays a recording of the truth. Chopper’s still the odd character out in the show but he has some great moments from time to time that adds the right kind of comedy to it.

The mixture of action and stealth across the ship as Ezra works with Chopper to deal with the gravity well weapon while Kanan and Rex head off to rescue Sato works very well. Ezra’s growing confidence is nice and his action sequence has some really nice nods to both the Kenobi sequence from ANH and some from the Darth Maul sequence back in TPM all while letting him be his own person. Rex and Kanan have some really neat moments themselves as well, especially in how the two work together using the Force and his marksmanship to deal with the problem. Where it really gets neat though is when Rex gets captured and there’s some minor dialogue about how he turned traitor to the Empire, the order that he brought to the galaxy. Rex makes it clear he served the Republic and not this which is a really good way to bring all of it together in showing how all of this can be viewed.

In Summary:
While I’m still miffed that Hera and Sabine got weaker episodes overall, his is a really strong episode in the season. Kanan and Rex are your typical buddy cop pairing and it works really well since there’s some history there to work with. The banter between the two may feel forced at times but there’s just a lot of on the move kind of humor that comes from this. Similarly, we get some good bits of humor from Ezra as he does what he has to in order to keep things moving in the escape. His ability to get into bad situations is definitely there as is his ability to escape. His growing confidence is one of the better parts of the show at the moment and he really shines here. The real winners here though are Rex and Kanan as they’re definitely a lot of fun. I’m still wary of overuse of Clone Wars era characters, but having Rex as a regular is something that looks to be working really well.

Grade: A-

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnHGyCQbF4g&w=560&h=315]