2x19 Twilight of the Apprentice

9.8/10. I realized, watching this episode, that I care about the relationship between Anakin and Ahsoka one-hundred times more than I ever cared about the relationship between Anakin and Padme. There's lot of reasons for that. We've gotten see Anakin and Ahsoka's relationship grow and develop over the course of dozens of episodes, whereas Anakin and Padme get scattered parts of a few films and a handful of episodes for theirs to be developed. The writing and plotting on The Clone Wars and Rebels has easily surpassed the horrorshow of the prequels. And as a franchise, Star Wars has almost always been better at stories involving neophytes and mentors than it has at romantic relationships.

That is what the finale for Rebels's outstanding second season embraces as it brings things to a close. The episode focuses on Masters and apprentices, with Maul and Kanan warring over Ezra's soul while they're forced to be temporary allies, at the same time Ahsoka finally confronts her former master face-to-face. In the juxtaposition, we see the importance of that type of relationship, the way it can scar you or lift you up, no matter what side of the equation you're on.

That idea comes through in the effort to install the Sith holocron into the top of the temple. The race to the top divides Kanan, Ezra, Ahsoka, and Maul into different pairings as they make a plan to divide the Inquisitors and are forced to abide the temple's "rule of two" design. Kanan warns Ezra about trusting Maul, fearful about what his apprentice will do after the warnings he's received about Ezra potentially turning to the dark side. Ezra pushes back, claiming that Maul sees his full potential, in words that echo those of Anakin's own words to his master and the same frustrations and sense of being held back that paved the way for his turn to the dark side. Ahsoka, on the other hand, reassures Kanan that Ezra will be okay, since he has Kanan's training. The subtext there is that Ahsoka herself managed to be good, to stay on the right path, thanks to her own master's training, even after she left the order.

And Ahsoka is right. When Maul and Ezra are paired up, they're confronted by the Seventh Sister. Maul holds her aloft and demands that Ezra kill her. Despite the ways in which Ezra has found a kinship with Maul and begins to trust him, he cannot bring himself to do it, something that Maul chastises him for. (This doesn't really cohere with how many times Ezra's been willing to kill stormtroopers, but you know, you just kind of have to go with these things.) Later, after Ezra makes it to the top of the temple and inserts the holocron into the obelisk, it offers him the power to destroy life (in Mother Talzin's voice, which is a nice touch). There too, he demurs, taken aback by what's being offered to him and declaring that it's not what he wants. As Ahsoka predicted, Ezra is given a glimpse of the dark side, of the power that lures so many Sith, and turns away from it. Whatever the fears that Ezra may one day turn to the dark side that Kanan harbors, his instruction and the good nature of his ward keep him steadfast despite Maul's cajoling and the temptation placed before him.

(As an aside, the use of the junior inquisitors here is pretty disappointing. For the Seventh Sister in particular, there were hints at there being more to her, which felt like Rebels was building to something. Instead, she's killed off without being much more than a colorful but easily survivable threat over the course of this season. It comes off like a waste of a potentially interesting character and the talents of Sarah Michelle Geller. The fact that Maul basically takes each of the Inquisitors out helps establish his bona fides as a powerful force-wielder at this stage of the timeline, but their fairly quick deaths still make them feel less developed or useful as antagonists than they might have been.)

Maul, however, is convinced that he's swayed Ezra, and calls the young man his new apprentice. He reveals that the temple is a battlestation that he intends to use to take out the Empire through raw force, and blinds Kanan with his lightsaber as Ahsoka goes off to find Ezra. Kanan finds a temple guard mask, like those worn by the guards he faced in the temple on Lothal, and manages to defeat Maul in battle, sending him into the chasm below. That fight is a symbol for the way in which Kanan's influence trumped Maul's over Ezra, and to get even more grandiose about it, Kanan's injury represents a certain blind faith he has in his apprentice, that he believes he can succeed even if he doesn't have a perfect vision about what the future holds.

That training, however, cannot prepare Ezra for a confrontation with Darth Vader, who arrives and quickly overpowers the nascent force-wielder. It's then that Ahsoka arrives, saving Ezra and facing down her own former master. It's a powerful reunion. Vader making an offer not unlike the one he'll eventually make to Luke in The Empire Strikes Back, threatening to torture Ezra when she declines. It's then that, as Obi Wan once did, Ahsoka believes that Anakin is truly lost, that the man she knew would never do such a thing. Vader responds that the Anakin she knew was weak, and Vader "destroyed him." When Ahsoka vows to avenge her master, Vader declares that revenge is not the Jedi way, to which she responds with the line of the episode -- "I'm no Jedi."

It's the confrontation we've been waiting for from the very first episode of this season. There is so much power and history wrapped up between the two. Ahsoka is forced to look at what her dearest friend and mentor has turned into firsthand, and Vader is forced to look upon one of the last connections to his humanity, to the person he used to be. It's a charged moment from the very beginning, one wrapped up in all the struggles and shared history the two characters have up until this point.

As they begin to fight in the dazzlingly designed confines of the obelisk chamber, the episode juxtaposes one master and apprentice coming to blows with another coming together. Much in this episode focuses on the Sith rule of two, an ancient tradition meant to preserve a structure among the ambitious adherents, but "Twilight of the Apprentice" finds the goodness in that idea, that it may take two people working together to achieve these great things. That's why when it comes time to remove the holocron from the obelisk, to avert the potential disaster on the horizon, it requires a master and an apprentice -- Kanan and Ezra, working together, to accomplish this, a testament to the connection between them and the way they lift each other up.

Of course, even after retrieving the holocron, they cannot make a clean escape. Vader uses the force to stymie them as they head for their shuttle, but Ahsoka dives in to save the day, slicing Vader's helmet in the process. The temple begins falling apart as Ezra and Kanan try to leave and beckon Ahsoka to come with. It's then that Vader says Ahsoka's name for the first time in the episode. She turns to her former master and sees the man behind that helmet, the scarred face with the eye she recognizes. He speaks in the voice she knows from The Clone Wars, not the mechanical baritone of the monster she's seen this day. Faced with the choice to go with Ezra or attempt to rescue her former master, she force pushes Ezra onto the shuttle and speaks the words to Anakin that cut through me like a knife -- "I won't leave you, not this time."

It's an absolutely devastating line, one that speaks to the connection forged by this master and apprentice that survives even the horrors she knows Anakin has committed as Vader. It speaks to the guilt she has, the questioning of whether the man she once knew would have turned into something so twisted if she'd been there to help guide him in his hour of need the same way that Ezra was able to guide Kanan. Vader is too far gone, seeming to consider her help for a moment before returning to his attack, but in that, there is a glimpse of that humanity. There is a connection that emerges when people go through these events together, when they become teacher and student, mentor and padewan, instructor and friend, that allows them to, if only briefly, overcome all that's happened, all the betrayals, personal and ethical, that have happened between their time together and the present.

There is a sense of melancholy over the final montage, which portends so much for Rebels next adventure. In scenes with a noted visual devotion to symmetry -- representing the balance of the force -- a blinded Kanan and Ezra return to the rebels on Attolon. Rex's face falls when Ahsoka isn't with them. Maul flies away, out there to scheme and attack as before. Ezra begins to unlock the Sith holocron. Both Vader and Ahsoka limp away from their battle, their futures uncertain.

What is certain, however, is how those connections between masters and apprentice have defined the people enmeshed in them. Ezra stays on the right path thanks to the teachings of his master, and in return, he helps Kanan to survive the encounter at the temple. Maul is scarred and bitter at the way his master abused him, and it fuels his anger and resentments. And despite everything, Ahsoka refuses to give up on Anakin, even when he's encased in the horror that is Darth Vader, and that is enough to bring out the first glimpse of humanity we see from him since donning his new face. This type of relationship between people dominates the Star Wars universe, dictating who becomes a hero, who becomes a villain, who rises to the occasion, and who stands by the those who have brought them up, even in the face of unmitigated power and the threat of oblivion. In Star Wars, it always comes down to a master and an apprentice.

9.3/10. I'm going to do my best to rate these as two separate episodes, though they feel so linked that it's hard to do so. Still, I have occasionally referred to Ezra as "Space Aladdin" given the design similarities and street rat orphan qualities he and the Disney character share. That comparison has become less apt as Ezra has evolved and developed his own unique qualities as a character. But here, his experience in the Sith Temple on Malachor felt, once again, akin to a sequence from that movie, specifically when Aladdin ventures into the Cave of Wonders.

It has the same beats of that part of Aladdin. There's an old man promising a great reward, who turns out to be far less fragile and far more malevolent than he initially seems. There's a sacred object our hero must use his deftness and skills to retrieve. And there's a persistent sense that this is a place of foreboding, that contains great power but also great risk.

That's not a complaint though. Pairing Ezra with Darth Maul is a superb choice for the show. I love the detail that the Inquisitors have been hunting him down too, and that he's a threat and not an ally. I appreciate Maul's presence, both for the performance that Sam Witwer has perfected by this point -- one of the very best across the Star Wars animated canon, and for his being a wildcard among the force-wielders in the universe. Witwer does a stellar job as Maul here, doing a great job obfuscating age and infirmity to Ezra, and offering an unassuming, manipulative tinge to his interactions with the Jedi-in-training. At the same time, the way he speaks with such disgust about the Sith and mentions having his own reasons for wanting to see the Empire fall makes him very interesting as a factor here -- someone whose philosophy and temperament is markedly different from that of the Rebels, but who shares their goals and possesses impressive abilities to boot.

But he also works surprisingly well as the devil on Ezra's shoulder in contrast to Kanan's angel on the other side. There's been more focus this year on the potential for Ezra to turn to the dark side, and Maul's influence here helps make that seem more likely than a few ominous comments. It's striking how much Maul and Ezra have in common. The Clone Wars turned Maul into something of a tragic figure, having been torn from his mother, used as an instrument, and then discarded, ignored, and eventually punished when he did not meet the Emperor's standards. It connects him to Ezra's tragedy, having lost his own tragedy, and seeing how few options the Empire has left him. That makes Ezra's potential turn plausible, suggesting that there is pain in him that comes from the same place it did for Maul, and that it threatens to turn Ezra into the same type of force-wielder Maul became.

That ties into the pair's adventures getting into and out of the temple. I love the fact that admission to the temple requires the force powers of two people "no more, no less." Sure, it's a little implausible, but it works as a nice illustration of the Sith's rule of two manifesting itself into the temple's design. And by the same token, it's eerie not only seeing Maul coaching Ezra up at how to get through the temple, but how effective Ezra is when following Maul's instructions to use his anger. There's something kind of scary about how Maul describes that anger as a wellspring and how Ezra is able to lift the door when he gives into his negative feelings. Again, these hints toward Ezra as a potential powerful darksider do a great deal of work to selling that threat.

To be frank, much of Kanan and Ahsoka's fight with the Eighth brother feels like filler to give them something to do other than try to find Ezra. (And it is, incidentally, why I rated this half of the story lower than the second half.) There are some cool saber fights, which is always welcome. And the captive offers some cool if generically cryptic dialogue about there being more inquisitors and the hopelessness of the rebels fight. He also sets off the alert that brings the Fifth Brother and the Seventh Sister, and reveals that he's tracking down Maul, which moves the plot and adds some intrigue to Maul's wildcard status. But for the most part, the Inquisitor fighting feels like window dressing to the more important part of the story with Maul and Ezra.

Thankfully, that part of the story still manages to shine. The sequence where Maul and Ezra attempt to get the Sith holocron is full of the right kind of tension. At this point in the story, we don't really know what Maul's game is, and putting him and Ezra in what amounts to a trust exercise plays with the audience's emotions nicely. Ezra seems a little too willing to let this force-wielding stranger who admits he wasn't a Jedi throw him to the platform the way Kanan has. But it also speaks to the philosophy that he's picked up from Kanan and the rest of the rebels, of having faith in people, and shows an interesting side of these ideas for Ezra that have been planted since the series's very first episode.

That's where the Aladdin parallels come back in force. As soon as Ezra nabs the holocron, the temple begins reacting, lifting him out of reach. Ezra finds himself having to trust Maul once again, leaping from the platform and relying on his mysterious new partner to catch him. Maul does, and when he grasps his hand from the holocron that Ezra is dangling from, there's a palpable fear that he might pull a Jafar, taking what he wants from the young boy he's persuaded to assist him and leaving him to perish, Instead, the episode lets that moment linger but shows Maul pulling Ezra to safety, a testament to the idea that, at a minimum, he's not finished with his new young ward.

It's a cool moment, but one with worrisome implications. As much as Maul became more sympathetic in Clone Wars, he was still a man in search of power, who followed a mindset of ruthlessness even as his goals become more understandable. The connection between he and Ezra, the way Maul is able nudge Ezra to use his powers in a certain way, suggests that he might be corrupted by Maul's influence. The atmosphere of the temple is fraught, both from the idea that there is something unsettling about this place that threatens everyone on Malachor, but also in that it reveals a side of Ezra that is persuadable, and how the type of trust in others that Kanan and Hera have fostered in Ezra can be twisted to less savory ends.