4x13 A World Between Worlds

[8.2/10] I have issues with time travel stories. Too often, they open up big cans of worms that television shows and films cannot put back in their container. Too often, they introduce paradoxes that you either have to ignore or just accept as part and parcel with the various time travel shenanigans. Most of all, they create problems of both plot, continuity, and drama. If you can change some event in the past, why not go further back and avoid it altogether? And more to the point, why do any of your actions matter if they can simply be undone.

And yet, Rebels introduces what amounts to a time travel story, one that allows the show to revisit two of the series’ most heightened and dramatic moments, one that connects it with the past, present, and future of the Star Wars franchise, and one filled with chances to undo or redo the past. But it does so in a way that is not only satisfying in terms of mechanics and continuity, but which exists as an episode-length rejoinder to the notion of “let’s fix the past” that’s inevitably packed in the bones of time travel stories.

It begins with Ezra entering the eponymous “World Between Worlds”, a weigh station between places and across time. The design of this realm is instantly striking. It’s a series of transparent paths, looplining and intersecting across the vast reaches of space, and connecting to a series of doorways, empty recesses soon to be filled with bridges to places Ezra has been or could go. There is, admittedly, a sense of the place as a rejected Mario Kart track, but Rebels’ design team manages to make its setting unique and appropriate as a place of wonder and mystery.

Much of that wonder comes from the cacophony of voices that echo across it. As Ezra makes his way through this realm, trying to understand it, he hears echoes of words spoken in the Original Trilogy, in the Prequels, in the Sequel Trilogy, and in Rogue One, The Clone Wars, and Rebels itself. The paths are coming together, as Kanan put it, and Ezra finds himself at their intersection point, a rush of hopes and assurances and the presence of so many collecting in scattered bits at this one central marker.

It’s the nervous system of the galaxy, one that allows Ezra to step into moments past and present, and change their course, answering questions the fans have had for what feels like ages, and interfering in old events to give familiar faces a second chance.

That’s right boys and girls -- Ahsoka lives! Ezra follows an owl implied to be imbued with the mystical presence of the Daughter, and intercedes at the moment when Ahsoka is fighting Vader in “The Twilight of the Apprentice”, pulling her into that interwoven realm and away from the prospect of danger and doom that faced her in the temple on Malachor.

And therein lies the concern. As heartening as it is to see Ahsoka in the flesh again, poised to help the Rebels win the fight against the Empire, as hopeful as it is to see her spared being felled at her former master’s hands, this place and what it can do opens an avenue for the show to cheat, to take back any of the big choices it makes or any Star Wars property makes, and thereby leave the choices themselves a little less important or meaningful than they could be.

“A World Between Worlds”, however, has an ace up its sleeve. As tantalizing as it is want to see more and more of Ezra and Ahsoka in this unusual space, the episode also takes time out to show what’s happening in the regular world. Much of that is centered on an interrogation between a captured Sabine, and Minister Hydan, the Imperial functionary who’s attempting to decipher the symbols on the Jedi temple in order to help find Emperor Palpatine a way in.

For such a notable part, Rebels brings in Malcolm McDowell (marking the second time he’s played a bad guy trying to get into an interstitial realm in a star-based franchise), and his dynamic with Sabine is outstanding. Sabine is blasé, boastful, and challenging, and Hydan is, when pushed, harsh and cruel like we’d expect from an Empire stooge. But at some point in the interrogation, they both seem to have a genuine interest in piecing the clues of this place together, in understanding what those images mean, in ways that helps the audience understand the symbolism at the same time the characters do.

But Darth Sidious is trying to understand the symbolism too, and that’s what creates the threat for Ezra and Ahsoka in the other realm they find themselves in. It is an absolute thrill to hear Ian McDiarmid once again growling, chanting, and cackling his way through an attack on our heroes. The Emperor’s presence creates both the immediate threat and the narrative stakes for the episode. He gives incantations and blasts an engulfing fire toward Ahsoka and Ezra, trying to use one or both as handholds to pull himself into this place. He seeks to break the barrier, to find purchase there, so that he can use it to remake the past to suit him, to change these events to empower himself even further, to become a god who can alter what’s come before however he sees fits.

It provides the contrast and counterpoint to the lesson Ezra learns in the same place, guided by Kanan’s spirit, and aided by Ahsoka -- that the past shouldn’t be changed. Once Ezra figures out that he was able to save Ahsoka, he tries to do the same for Kanan. He runs to the right portal, conjures the image of the man who guided him through so much in his training at the moment where he died, and aims to save him, to stop him, from being consumed by flame and taken away.

It’s the kind of choice a Sith would make. It’s the kind of choice Anakin made, to defy the prospect of death because he couldn’t bear the thought of being separated from someone he loved. But it’s a choice that Ahsoka steers Ezra away from, because it’s antithetical to how a Jedi sees the universe.

When Dave Filoni, who wrote “A World Between Worlds”, crafted the finale of The Clone Wars, the wrote an arc that centered on the acceptance of death, on the inevitability of certain events, but on the good that could be wrung from each of these things. One of the overarching themes of Star Wars -- from Obi Wan and Yoda passing gentle into the next world in the original films, to Luke embracing both the mistakes and good graces that led him to the same point in The Last Jedi -- is an acceptance of the past and the notion that one’s path must end, realities and providence that the Sith do anything they can to elide.

It’s a lesson Kanan himself had to learn. While we’ve only had hints of it here and there, it’s clear that Kanan felt he strayed from the right path in his youth, and that much of his adventures with the crew of the Ghost, and his training of Ezra in particular, were efforts to make up for his past and ensure that Ezra didn’t walk down the same path he did.

But the past handful have episodes showed a different Kanan, one who accepted his path, and accepted his death, because both led him to, as Ahsoka puts it, the moment where he was most needed. That is what he wanted, it’s what the Force guided him toward, and Ezra realizes that as much as it pains him to have lost his master, the same way it pains Ahsoka, they both need to let go, because to do anything else, to tamper with the past or undo Kanan’s choices, would violate the precepts that his master believed in, the Jedi way, of finding that moment, rather than running from it.

So Ezra leaves the temple, just in time to prevent Sidious from gaining his foothold and using that space to do untold damage to the galaxy. And it’s just in time, as his exit, combined with the disruptive activities of the rest of the Ghost crew, lead to a daring escape as the temple on Lothal collapses on itself into nothing. Therein lies Rebels’ fix for the mechanics. It took a combination of the right moment, the right team, and the will of the Force to put Ezra into that realm, a feat which even the most powerful force-wielder in the galaxy could not accomplish on his own, making it unlikely that any random hero or antagonist could slip in there and threaten to remake the past once more.

But more than that, “A World Between Worlds” does the unthinkable -- it tells a story about time travel that is philosophically opposed to the reasons for turning back the clock and trying to alter the course of the future. It uses the prospect of those galaxy-shifting, life-saving changes to instead foster a sense of acceptance of one’s path and one’s end, as hopefully leading you to the moment when the world, and the people you care about, need you the most.

It is a work of television that indulges in the excitement and possibility of visiting any moment and altering it to meet the needs of our heroes, only to show them relenting, forbearing, accepting, that such a change would only make you feel better for a moment, and then make everything worse. Ezra and Ahsoka both lose their masters, but they stop a great evil in the process, and find a purpose and a principal, worthy of the masters the two apprentices followed before both were consumed in flame.

Lots of goosbumps in this one. All those voices from the different eras - that was heartwarming.

I really like the idea of what's being introduced here but it had to be destroyed. This is too much of a huge thing to add to canon what would ultimately lead to tons of problems moving forward. This would ultimately enable Disney to re-write Star Wars much like JJ Abrams did with Star Trek. But as a story tool it worked well for the moment.
I guess that meant then that Vader initially really killed Ahsoka. Since it is the old Ezra who pulls her out it hadn't happened, yet. Right ? Time is a *****. Also great that he didn't brought Kanan back, too. Not only was it the right thing to do (pulling him out, like Ahsoka said, would have meant killing the rest of them and, ultimately, Ahsoka, too), it would have made his sacrifice null and void. Even if it was genuine because Kanan could never have known that Ezra will be there.

Supplemental:

What I would really like to know is if this came all out of Dave's mind or if he based this on something George had planned. I'm sure they talked about it anyway so I'll just assume there is something from GL in it as well.