8.9/10. I really enjoyed the mini-Ender's Game -esque premise of this one. Having Ezra infiltrate an Empire Cadet Academy, and meet other kids with their own motivations and personalities helped to flesh out the world and add stakes to the individual events of the episode. I particularly liked Leonis, who's doing basically the same thing as Ezra, but for different reasons, specifically to find out what happened to his sister, and the hint that the Inquisitor is using this academy as a way to identify and possibly root out those with force potential is an interesting idea floating in the background.
There were also a lot of nice touches in the third act. Again, I liked Leonis and Ezra working together to both save the third cadet and get the decoder so that Kanan and Hera could take out the kyber crystal (hooray call back to the Clone Wars story reels!). The climax of the episode, where you have Ezra and Leonis trying to spring the other good cadet on the one hand, while Hera and Kanan (whose fatherly/big brotherly concern for leaving Ezra alone on this mission is very sweet) are immersed in a dogfight, worked very well to keep the episode's energy up and included some nice kinetic cinematography and design.
Overall, I really enjoyed this one, as it had a nice mix of emotional stakes with the new cadets, intrigue and world-building with the introduction of the cadet academy and its purposes, and very well done action with clear stakes for both Ezra breaking his chums out of the facility and The Ghost fighting Empire forces in space.
(As an aside, the floating platform games the cadets played reminded me of the danger room scenarios a disguised Obi Wan Kenobi made it through with a cadre of bounty hunters back in Clone Wars.)
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParent2016-10-05T14:20:54Z
8.9/10. I really enjoyed the mini-Ender's Game -esque premise of this one. Having Ezra infiltrate an Empire Cadet Academy, and meet other kids with their own motivations and personalities helped to flesh out the world and add stakes to the individual events of the episode. I particularly liked Leonis, who's doing basically the same thing as Ezra, but for different reasons, specifically to find out what happened to his sister, and the hint that the Inquisitor is using this academy as a way to identify and possibly root out those with force potential is an interesting idea floating in the background.
There were also a lot of nice touches in the third act. Again, I liked Leonis and Ezra working together to both save the third cadet and get the decoder so that Kanan and Hera could take out the kyber crystal (hooray call back to the Clone Wars story reels!). The climax of the episode, where you have Ezra and Leonis trying to spring the other good cadet on the one hand, while Hera and Kanan (whose fatherly/big brotherly concern for leaving Ezra alone on this mission is very sweet) are immersed in a dogfight, worked very well to keep the episode's energy up and included some nice kinetic cinematography and design.
Overall, I really enjoyed this one, as it had a nice mix of emotional stakes with the new cadets, intrigue and world-building with the introduction of the cadet academy and its purposes, and very well done action with clear stakes for both Ezra breaking his chums out of the facility and The Ghost fighting Empire forces in space.
(As an aside, the floating platform games the cadets played reminded me of the danger room scenarios a disguised Obi Wan Kenobi made it through with a cadre of bounty hunters back in Clone Wars.)