Iron Squadron: Star Wars Rebels 3.8 Review
**Radio Ryloth will be fast and loose with spoilers. Don’t get your head tails in a twist!!**
This week’s Rebels episode introduced a band of youngsters, the self styled ‘Iron Squadron’, who are defending their home planet against the (so far) minor incursions of the Empire.
The rebels learn from new Fulcrum that the planet of Mykapo (the home planet of Commander Sato) is shortly to be invaded by the Empire. They send transports to evacuate the dissidents currently residing there. When they arrive they witness a small freighter taking on an Imperial ship head on and Hera breaks off from the main convoy to help out. Their help is rejected however (though they do take out some TIEs) and after the battle the crew meet this young band of resistance fighters. They are ill-equipped, with a ship lacking a hyperdrive and in poor repair, and also are completely green with little knowledge of what the Empire is capable of. Though they are resourceful we understand they have been lucky to survive against the Empire. Mart, their leader, is cocky and rejects any help. We discover he is Sato’s nephew.
Thrawn sends Constantine to secure Mykapo. Ezra and Sabine have stayed behind in the Phantom 2 to help fix the Iron Squadron’s hyperdrive and to try and persuade the crew to flee to safety with them. They make the decision to leave when Constantine arrives, and take Gooti and Jonner with them. Mart stays, and survives the ensuing battle despite his ship being left dead in space. The Ghost returns to save him, and they discover a mine attached to the ships hull. Chopper and R3 deactivate it and with the Ghost’s help they use the explosive against Constantine’s ship. Phoenix Squadron arrive and aid their escape as Thrawn arrives in his Star Destroyer, sending a chilling message to Sato before the Commander’s vessel jumps into hyperspace.
This episode was inspired by the 1984 Swayze/Sheen movie Red Dawn (remade in 2012), in which a group of teenagers defend their home town from an invasion. The names of the characters and home world are in tribute to various Star Wars staff members who work on The Star Wars Show and Rebels Recon (and basically have my dream job!) I absolutely love TSWS and RR, so I’m happy for these guys who are such a huge part of the way I experience SW on a weekly basis to have been given this fitting tribute.
The resistance movement is snowballing in season 3 so far, gathering momentum, strength, confidence and personnel. In this episode we gather three possible new recruits, and also revisit the story of the scrappy underdog with spirit, which reflects and symbolises the rebellion itself. This is all in all a classic SW story as it reinforces a number of the franchise’s major themes.
If I was to be super picky, I’d say this episode was slightly lacking in humour, leading to a rather uneven tone throughout — it was treated mostly like a lighter episode but there was potentially some real weight and pathos to the story being told. I think this was probably due to the fact that a lot of plot action was packed into the episode, leaving us perhaps wanting more from the character development.
Zeb says he is not up for a ship full of Ezras, and so does not feature much in this story, but the jokey interaction between him and Ezra (potentially many Ezras) is missed. In fact there is surprisingly little banter despite the opportunity to contrast these characters with the more seasoned Ghost crew. Instead we spend a lot of time hearing the voice of Mart, a textbook teenage boy character who has lots in common with ANH Luke. Idealistic, naïve and stubborn, he rejects the help of the Ghost crew, but we discover his actions are almost certainly due, unsurprisingly (this is SW after all) to his daddy issues. His late father is the brother of Commander Sato, and I hesitate to point out the complete failure to even mention his mother, for risk of sounding like a stuck record. See my thoughts on that here:
Also, as has been remarked elsewhere, the new characters comprised a 2:1 male:female ratio and the captain of the ship was male. I wonder what it will take for Rebels to achieve more gender balance. I really hope these three are recurring characters and that we get to see more development, particularly of Gooti who has great potential to be a favourite Rebel for this fangirl. I am interested to see how they interact with the other crew members and grow as part of the rebellion, and I see an opportunity for Ezra and Sabine to become mentors of sorts, which I think was what this episode was trying to touch on but did not get a chance to develop further.
I liked that Mart was related to Sato, this story point reinforces the personal stake the Rebels have as all their home worlds are under threat, and it represented some welcome character development for Sato who appears in many of the episodes but is somewhat of an unknown quantity to viewers. I also liked the hint that Thrawn was getting under the skin of Sato too, and was interested in what made him tick. It is interesting to me that Thrawn is presiding over all the rebel incursions, observing and manipulating at a distance whilst building a wider, and surely devastating, plan for their downfall.
Finally, there were some nice Chopper moments in this. I love Chopper’s expressive arm movements and I especially appreciated when they were working on the hyperdrive and he was kind of just bashing it with a hammer in a very non-technical fashion. The individual characters and abilities of the droids underpin the SW stories and it was good to see this with R3-A3, the new droid in this episode also. I’m eagerly awaiting the return of Chopper’s sidekick AP-5 who seems to have so far been left behind in season 2.
In summary, “Iron Squadron” is standard Rebels fare, enjoyable and well executed, but not a standout episode for me.
Ryloth out.
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Radio Ryloth celebrates the incredibly detailed storytelling, characters and themes of Star Wars. I’ll be examining the relationships between the characters, and how they develop in the on screen universe of TCW, rebels and the films. I’ll be talking Jedi and the force in the SW universe as a whole. However we’ll be firmly rooted in Clone Wars geekdom and lore here as that forms the basis for my own fandom.
Star Wars is a saga for our times. It depicts corruption, patriarchy, exploitation and violence all overseen by a privileged elite. It comments on, reflects and influences the real world in which we live. Let’s follow this saga with questioning minds.
Good to have you along, troopers!
