End of Star Wars Rebel Season 2

I really got excited for this season when saw the trailers and while it has a few bumps overall it's improvement over the first one. The big thing that finale has focused on is an ongoing subplot of Ezra's possibility of falling to the Dark Side. Much like Anakin in TCW, we have seen him skim close many, many times, and the finale really gave him another push after meeting somebody else everyone was excited to see when he was announced, myself included; Darth Maul.

Okay, now he's just calling himself Maul. He no longer sees himself a Sith, but he's still the same rotten bastard from the TCW, but in the years in between have shows he's gotten much better control over his temper and ego. Rather than a boiling mass of rage, he's now become crafty manipulator who manages to push Ezra, who has no idea who is for most of the finale, closer to the Dark Side with a number of lies, half-truths, and even some actual truths. While he doesn't end up making Ezra his apprentice like he planned, the damage definitely has been as by the end Ezra manages to open a Sith holocron, an artifact that requires thinking like a Sith. And well, he's not given much reason not to think like a Sith in the episode. The only thing he learns is that Maul is not to be trusted, he doesn't go through anything tells him he should throw Maul's lessons out the window.

Some people were probably expecting some reference to Revan or KOTOR in this episode, while the former sadly doesn't happen. We see Malachar, a planet that played a big part in the plot of KOTOR 2, but it's a very different place from that game. The being devastated by a technobabble superweapon part appears thrown out, but what is kept is the part about it being a Sith stronghold. A really fun nod to KOTOR is some of Maul's dialogue to Ezra is basically paraphrasing the Sith Oath in KOTOR 1, but it's not done in a way that makes it feel all forced. Nice.

Now that said this finale does have one problem; the Inquisitors. The two introduced this season were a huge threat at First but gradually they became less effective after Ahsoka defeated two of them. I had hopes of them making a comeback, but that doesn't happen. Maul is the main threat for most of the episode while they serve more as obstacles to be killed off. We even see a third introduced and killed before we even see his face.

But when other villains fail, the show still has Darth Vader. He does only show up at the end but he does steal the show when he does. While the fights with the Inquisitors were pretty generic his fight with Ahsoka makes up for it. Unfortunately their meeting doesn't quite have the emotion it should. At first she refuses to believe his Anakin until she cuts him across the face, then says she's not leaving him. What happens to her isn't made clear, and I really hope the next season clarifies it. Vader just like ROTJ made it clear he does not want any connection to his old self. Does that mean Ahsoka has a little meaning to him as Obi-Wan did? Guess we'll have to wait and see.

But overall this was a good end to a good season and I look forward to the next one. Right now we have the Rebels with a base, Ezra looking into knowledge that he probably shouldn't, and Maul is still out there as a wild card who could be an ally in desperate times an antagonist in the rest.

Anybody have anything they want to see next season?