Recap: STAR WARS REBELS Gives Us One Last Battle From THE CLONE WARS

Episode 306 “The Last Battle”
Written by Brent Friedman
Directed by Bosco Ng

This week, a certain clone trooper gets a chance to fight one last battle in his role as a soldier in the Grand Army of the Republic, as the team from the Ghost raids an abandoned munitions depot for weap

The planet Agamar, home of a Separatist munitions depot, where the Rebel Alliance figures maybe they can find a cache of weapons to use in their fight against the Empire. Kanan (Freddie Prinze, Jr.), Ezra (Taylor Gray), Zeb (Steve Blum), and Captain Rex (Dee Bradley Baker) offload from the ship to recon and identify anything they can salvage.

Finding the place wrecked, they figure easy-peasy lemon-squeezy, but not so fast! This outpost still has a group of battle droids, and they’re still operational. It’s a trap!

Caught by a ray shield, our heroes are taken to the command center, where they encounter Kalani (Gregg Berger), a Super Tactical Droid still in charge of the facility. This droid’s pretty smart, and he was able to deflect the shutdown code that went out to the battle droids after Order 66. The clone troopers and droids weren’t necessary after Palpatine took power, but ST figures it’s some kind of ruse, so he was able to intercept the signal and keep the outpost droids functional to fight one last battle in the Clone Wars.

Now, the Jedi and clone trooper arriving will give them the opportunity to run a war game to determine once and for all who won the war. With Zeb as the hostage, Rex and the Jedi will have to fight the droids (Matthew Wood) in a rescue attempt. Ezra makes the deal that if they win, they can take whatever munitions they want.

It’s almost like a scene out of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, with battle droids and destroyer droids firing fiercely at the Jedi and their clone army escort. Only this time, it’s just four against many. Kanan lets Rex take point, since he’s more experienced fighting the Clankers, and Rex has a plan. And it almost goes by the numbers, except for Ezra being pulled aside by Chopper, who’s managed to activate a droid shuttle and send off a distress signal to the Ghost.

Only the signal doesn’t get where it’s supposed to go, instead intercepted by the Imperial ships pursuing the Ghost. Governor Pryce (Mary Elizabeth McGlynn) and Agent Kallus (David Oyelowo) figure out that the rebels have a team on Agamar, and set course to capture them all.

On Agamar, the battle comes to a close pretty quickly, as battle droids malfunction and Rex feels his age. He wins, but Kalani calls him on a technicality. If the battle droids had been in top form, Rex would have lost. Ezra uses that to convince Kalani that the Clone Wars were a distraction, that neither side was supposed to win. While the Grand Army was fighting the Separatist Army, Palpatine moved in and established the Empire. So in the end, both the Republic and the Separatists lost.

That’s when the Empire shows up, and Kalani figures they have a common enemy. But as they coordinate their efforts to successfully beat back Imperial forces, Kalani does some maths. He figures the rebellion has less than one percent chance of winning over the Empire. So sayonara and farewell, he says, as his shuttle full of battle droids heads out into deep space.

The other shuttle meets up with the Ghost, where it will very soon get a new paint job and replace the lost Phantom. And Rex opines that one teenager did what a room full of senators couldn’t do. Of course, Ezra’s got the benefit of hindsight when he realizes the Clone Wars were all about making the Empire possible. Hard to see when you’re in the thick of it.

In the end, Rex is finally able to put the Clone Wars behind him, offering to tell Ezra some war stories — “If you think that was bad, let me tell you about the battle of Geonosis.” — and the show itself gets a sendoff from its sibling series, as the end title card sports the Clone Wars yellow, and the end theme is Kevin Kiner’s from TCW.

 

Star Wars Rebels airs Saturday nights at 8:30/7:30c on Disney XD.