Star Wars Rebels Season 2 Episode 15
“The Honorable Ones” isn’t about genocide per se, but the specter of it literally lurks overhead in the form of the Death Star construction module. That’s the backdrop for a story of forced cooperation, in which Zeb and Agent Kallus are stranded together on one of the moons of Geonosis. Kallus isn’t so much fleshed out as made more sympathetic by dint of circumstance, and the episode just narrowly misses what could have been strong story beats. However, in the end, it does what it seems to have meant to do: moves both characters’ stories forward in a meaningful, positive way. Similarly, the episode bounces from plot point to plot point, stringing them together with Kallus and Zeb’s tentative alliance. The first five minutes of the episode are setup, but since the crew has arrived at Geonosis, what a setup it is – Rebels takes plenty of opportunities to dig back into the Star Wars saga to reference both the Death Star and the Battle of Geonosis. The moments where the audience knows more than the characters adds a nice bit of realism. From there, the ambush that ends with Zeb and Kallus stranded on the planet goes about as one would expect. After a surprisingly straightforward fight between Chopper and an Imperial droid, Zeb is separated from the rest of the crew. His “I’ll meet you at the ship” isn’t exactly an elegant way to assure that he stays behind, but it’s serviceable, especially once Zeb decides to take an escape pod to rendezvous with the Ghost. That’s when things get messy with Kallus. Despite the clear conflict between Zeb and Kallus, the episode takes its time in establishing exactly what aspect of their competing philosophies it’s going to discuss first. I liked how Zeb pulls the wounded Kallus out of the escape pod silently, letting the Imperial wonder what he’s going to do. Zeb has his own code of honor that dictates that he should let Kallus live until Kallus heals. However, that isn’t as interesting as the other big possibility for this establishing moment: the possibility that Zeb just can’t decide what he wants to do and whether he feels comfortable with killing Kallus outright. (We’ve had enough episodes about whether killing is an okay thing for protagonists to do on this show, though.) Zeb fighting his own code of honor is the simpler and more easily externalized version of that inner conflict, though, so it’s the one that gets used here. However, that thread doesn’t really go anywhere, except as a cultural touchstone: the Lasats that Kallus fought also had honor. After that, the show moves on to a completely different discussion, and whether Zeb will let Kallus have a fair fight after the Imperial heals becomes irrelevant. The emotional beats of the story never quite match what is physically going on, though. A shared battle becomes shorthand for emotional closeness, but the conversation before it was essentially a ‘he said, she said’ of whether the Empire or the Rebellion will win the war. That means that the conversation afterward starts at square one again, with Zeb and Kallus having to lay out a new set of points to debate. It’s an interesting square, though – Oyelowo is a convincing, enjoyable storyteller when he relays Kallus’ first encounter with a Lasat. We get some of Kallus’ backstory, but less of his motivation and nothing about how he joined the Empire. Maybe that’s for next time, since the episode’s darkly affecting ending indicates that Kallus’s emotional arc isn’t over yet. The episode wants us to believe there’s good in Kallus – it’s right there in the title – and almost succeeds, but without knowing what exactly he believes in when he believes in the Empire, we still don’t know quite what it will take to shake his faith. Then there are the Geonosians, the other massacre. Kallus says “I never asked questions” about the possible Imperial move against the Geonosians. That seemed a bit evasive, not so much for the character as for the script: would Kallus even be bothered by this at all anyway if he killed all the Lasat? That line doesn’t really reveal how he feels about what is otherwise a major plot point. I didn’t talk about the Ghost crew much here, since their purpose in the episode was simply to pick up the relay. However, it’s worth noticing that Rex is used well. Although he doesn’t do much, the old clone fits in nicely with the crew now that one of its members is having a plot of his own; splitting up the group means that each individual character has a bit more breathing room. Ezra takes a back seat, which is fine, but the dialogue given to Taylor Gray seems particularly stilted, and his big shout of “Zeb!” after the Lasat is left behind sounds a bit forced. This episode hit all the beats one would expect from fan fiction with a similar premise – and those beats work well on an emotional level, effectively establishing an unlikely friendship. The episode fumbles for a statement more specific than ‘fighting alongside one another helps people become friends,’ but makes up for it with a lot of warmth on a cold world.
