Warning: This recap contains spoilers for the Star Wars Rebels episode “The Antilles Extraction.” Jump into hyperspace and away from this page if you haven’t watched the episode yet.
As Star Wars Rebels continues, they make it a point of reminding the audience of the very high stakes. The Rebel Alliance is young, scrappy, and hungry (Hamilton references in everything forever), with an emphasis on scrappy. They’re ragtag and piecing together their forces bit by bit and person by person. “The Antilles Extraction” opens with the Rebellion losing some of the few pilots that they have in an fast-paced, tragic space battle. Once Sato hears about the losses, they realize it’s time to bring some Imperial cadets to their side.
Luckily, Fulcrum–a general name for the Rebellion’s agents, not just Ahsoka–gives them the heads-up that pilots training at the Empire’s Skystrike Academy are interested in making the jump. Since Sabine was an Imperial cadet and isn’t as recognizable as the other rebels (which is funny since she’s certainly the most colorful and noticeable of them), she heads the mission to figure out who the recruits are and to extract them. It wasn’t the easiest of assignments.
Now, Fulcrum. My fangirl self initially wondered if it could be Biggs, but I quickly realized he was still on Tatooine. But that voice? It sounded a lot like Kallus to me. They set the stage for his possible turn to the rebel side with “The Honorable Ones” in season two. We saw Kallus was affected by Zeb and the family-like, supportive nature of the Ghost crew. Is he actually acting against the Empire? I can buy into it. They’ve made the transition slow, and Kallus’ skills for his position within the Empire means he’s talented at hiding information. Plus, he ends up helping Sabine later in the episode.
Back to Sabine. Once she arrived at Skystrike, she was able to identify the defectors in short order–too quickly, in my opinion. Wedge Antilles, Hobbie Klivian (previously seen in the Battle of Hoth), and Rake are so young it’s not completely surprising that they would be dense enough to discuss their distaste for the Empire in an open space where anyone could overhear them, but it was all very convenient.
Perhaps that was sort of the point. Sabine owned the mission, but she was perhaps a touch overconfident. Her “we’ll figure it out” attitude was nice to see since it’s such a hallmark trait of the rebels. They fly by the seat of their pants and use their resourcefulness to solve problems. It’s a complete 180 from how the Empire handles things.
Though Sabine identified the new rebel recruits in a few minutes, Governor Pryce didn’t let them off the hook. She demonstrated the ruthlessness of the Empire when she destroyed Rake’s X-wing without so much as blinking an eye. I mean, given that we know Wedge and Hobbie from the films, he was marked for death. As much of a bummer as it was to see Sabine captured, it also gave an opportunity for her to shine. We’ve seen her in the middle of hand-to-hand combat before, but something was different about her fight with Pryce. She was Fierce. As. Hell. Because they both had the same training, they were well-matched and it made the fight compelling. I wasn’t sure who would prevail.
Fortunately, Sabine won the day. She and the new pilots made it away from Skystrike with the assistance of Kanan and Ezra. By the way, did Sabine and Wedge’s dialogue in the final get-away remind anyone else of Finn and Poe’s banter? As Kanan and Ezra waited to swoop in, they had a few moments that illustrated how their relationship’s developed–I like that we’re already seeing changes from the season three premiere. They’ve both faced some demons since then, and it’s evident in their interactions.
And before we wrap up entirely, I want to call out that Gary Whitta wrote this episode. He penned the initial story for Rogue One, and I believe he has more installments of Rebels in the future.
Okay. Head to the comments and tell me about who you think Fulcrum is because I need to hear all the theories.
Images: Disney XD
