‘Star Wars Rebels’ is gearing up to begin its third season on Disney XD this Fall, and the show has steadily been winning over Star Wars fans of all ages as it progresses, telling the tale of the key early days of the formation of the Rebellion. Set chronologically between the events of ‘Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith’ and ‘Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope,’ more and more references to and characters from the existing Star Wars universe have been popping up in recent episodes.
WARNING: Spoilers for seasons 1 and 2 of ‘Star Wars Rebels’ lie ahead, so stop reading now if you’re at all concerned about that type of thing!
We’ve got an extended clip from Season 3 for you, but first, some incredibly insightful words about the show directly from Executive Producer Dave Filoni. In speaking with io9 recently, here’s what Filoni had to say about the upcoming season and what fans can expect:
“Season 3 introduces some titanic differences from the other seasons we had. You’re going to start to see the struggle of this Rebellion take even stronger shape. We’ve kind of been scaling that up every season underneath the character development, but it’s clear by ‘A New Hope’ that the Rebellion has gotten pretty organized and a lot larger than the Empire thinks it is. So one of the ideas running about is there’s a group within the Empire, and you kind of see this portrayed in ‘A New Hope’ in the Imperial Fleet, when they say ‘These Rebels are a threat,’ and then he says ‘To your star fleet, but not this battle station.’ So there’s a division within the Empire [about] how dangerous the Rebels are. And we need to kind of get us up to earning that. So you’re going to see a little bit more of an increase to what the Rebellion is. We are [also] going to delve a bit more into things with the Mandalorians and Sabine’s story. Sabine’s story will grow greatly in importance in the third season, and she kind of comes up to stand next to Ezra as far as being an important player on the show. And she isn’t as much a supporting character, which I think is a great transition for her as a character.”
The clip you’re about to see shows us a much-changed Ezra Bridger than what we previously saw in the prior seasons, both physically and apparently mentally as well. When asked about Ezra’s Force-sensitive tendencies and whether he was truly wandering towards the Dark Side as the Season 2 finale seemed to indicate, Filoni had this to say:
“He has to deal with [the Dark Side] as everyone does. We’ll have to see. I think Ezra has been trained well by Kanan, but there are some big repercussions for them [in the Season 2 finale]. No one really came out of that unscathed. Ezra was bewitched and deceived a bit by Maul, and Kanan… went down a path that lead to him being blind. But we will deal with those things pretty head on. They’re very important to the story.”
One of the other things that happened in the Season 2 finale was Ezra losing his unique lightsaber/blaster combo during his battle with Darth Vader. Filoni explains a bit about that:
“[At the beginning of the show,] Ezra was so inexperienced that I thought ‘If this kid gets into a lightsaber fight, he’s toast! So I had to come up with something that could protect him at range. But he’s more experienced now, and I kinda didn’t want to keep him with his training wheels on so much. He gets a little bold there and takes on Vader—not the best idea—and the price he pays is ‘Bye bye, lightsaber.’”
While Ezra doesn’t end up with it, we did see him pick up a cross-guarded lightsaber in the Sith Temple that struck a chord with many, many fans. Filoni also elaborated on this point:
“Kylo Ren was really fascinating to me because he seemed to be a student of history, especially Sith history and Jedi history. So I asked if I could put a cross-guard saber among the artifacts among the ruins of this temple. I just wanted to put it in for one shot as a nod to [‘The Force Awakens’ team]. That thousands of years ago, there were some other Jedi who had it. So it absolutely was a Jedi’s.”
Check out the new clip from ‘Star Wars Rebels’ below! The clip begins right around the 3:40 mark of the video. Season 3 of the show is slated to premiere on Disney XD this Fall.
Source: io9
Tony Schaab wishes Mars would attack, just once – at least then we could all go back and watch the historical document ‘Mars Attacks!’ to see how our ancestors handled it back in the day. A lover of most things sci-fi and horror, Tony is an author by day and a DJ by night. Come hang out with Tony on Facebook and Twitter to hear him spew semi-funny nonsense and get your opportunity to finally put him in his place.
