I personally don't see the hype. This show can't decide if it wants to be cheesy and childish, or brooding and serious. Rather than spanning a wide emotional and spectrum, the tone of the show is just jarring and awkward. The stiff animation doesn't help, either, being a downgrade form The Clone Wars in my opinion. Maul, Ahsoka, and even the Emperor are shoe-horned in and don't add much to the larger arc of the narrative.
Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed it. There are some likeable characters that get some good moments and satisfying development, like Kallus, Kanan, and Zebb. The dogfighting scenes in outer space, although rare, are fun and exhilarating for the most part.
There are just flaws that prevent me from rating it as high as some people do. Ezra is an annoying and whiney protagonist and never gets better, just worse. Sabine is almost as insufferable. The ancient force stuff later in the series, Maul and Ahsoka's arcs, Chopper's shenanigans, and most of all the Inquisitors and just the overall tone are all just a bit too cheeseball at times for me.
Worth watching if you're a Star Wars fan, it has its moments. But I enjoyed The Clone Wars much more.
There are two great Star Wars films, several great video games, six and three quarter actual Star Wars films in total, and no series consistent enough to really stand alongside the film's canon. There are also too many books for me to judge, but I consider several to be good, and generally better than most anything else besides the two KOTOR games, and two to be the best works in all of Star Wars.
tl;dr Watch it if you want, but everything that it promises turns to shallow nothingness, and the vast majority of the time it's goofy Saturday morning cartoon little boy protagonist nonsense. If you still liked it at the end, you need a lobotomy enjoy your diet fiction.
Canon is what is good, and it's what you want it to be. The Clone Wars had some nice moments, told some stories that were really interesting for a kid's show, and I love some of the OCs it created. Or at least I used to before they were shoved into everything and used to do ret-cons - . -z . The art style was terrible, but got slightly better. It's still just a cartoon that requires much in the way of grading on a curve. I enjoyed it, but we still haven't [September 2022] gotten a TV series that deserves the Star Wars name. And no, 'Mando doesn't count either, because it ended up doing exactly the same thing this (Rebels) did, and that is to not just be bad all on its own, but to bring down the best of the original, just to serve as a fix-up job for hatchet-job sequels.
That said, while I did at times enjoy the darker tone that it sometimes had (amusingly, whenever they were on-planet and it was literally dark outside), the essence of this show was a kiddie show made to glue middle-schooler eyes to screens advertising toys, and it was an audacious affront to the setup and characters that were given to it by Timothy Zahn, after being tasked to re-write his Thrawn series and character to fit in with nu-canon. While Mary Elizabeth McGlynn is an American voice acting institution, the Arhinda Pryce in this show is a one-dimensional He-Man villain, as opposed to the character that shared main character duty with Thrawn in the first Thrawn prequel re-write.
This show has zero stakes as a general rule, and even if you watched it, wanting to like it, like I did, it will eventually disappoint on everything it teases, with its shallowness and nonsensical story choices, a majority of badly written and annoying characters, and infuriating missed opportunities. It also gets worse after season three, despite what some people say. Mortis was a fun diversion for the actors during TCW, but that's all it should have been, as it completely ruins the idea of the Force, and should have just been Anakin's fever dream, and should have been some race's myth concerning the Force-- not the actual Force itself. I also tried to re-watch the first original Mortis episode, and it's just awful. I remember the conclusion being somewhat better, but the writing of the first episode is so bad I couldn't continue. Here, they double and triple down on it, even bringing in a time travel ret-con, of course, to better serve the completely unplanned Swiss cheese storytelling of the Disney Sequel series, as a completely open-ended 'out' for anything and everything that doesn't make any sense-- also, so Filoni's best girl can continue to show up in everything.
Ezra is an obnoxious DisneyXD little boy protagonist, and it really never gets much better. And when it starts to try to, they make Sabine so ridiculously overtalented and over-accomplished that it's impossible to even try to root for her anymore. There's eventually something that gets set up that would have made him interesting (same thing that should have happened to Rey, but didn't) but they stole it from us, and Ezra continues to be an only slightly less obnoxious MC.
Also: lightsaber helicopters
'kin hell, if there were any doubt about how seriously they took any kind of consistency...
There are about three good characters in this show: Hera, who I love, and who is lekku above most other characters (and I swear must have had a single person assigned just for her facial animation, since it's better than the rest, and Vanessa Marshal brings her to life with depth and pathos, even when she's fussing with that insufferable trash can); Agent Kallus, who is about 10 times more interesting than Pryce, while being about half as interesting as the real Arhinda Pryce from the book; and Ahsoka. There's also a scene with her and one particularly important character on Korriban Moriband that's pretty chill-inducing. At least, it would be, if Ezra hadn't been in the same room, and there hadn't been jackasses with helicopter lightsabers ending the scene.
I find it hard to talk about this show without also comparing it to The Clone Wars. Overall, I found Rebels to be way more consistent in quality, as my biggest gripe with TCW was the inconsistency between episodes - some were amazing, others were down right terrible. But with Rebels, although it never quite reaches the same highs as The Clone Wars (aside from perhaps the season 2 finale) it was definitely more consistent. There were way less terrible episodes. In fact, the worst thing I could say about the show is probably that many of the episodes are just alright. Comparing this to TCW, I think that's maybe a good thing, as it made Rebels so much easier to binge and enjoy long term. With TCW, many episodes and arcs were so terrible or boring that it was a slog to get through them. I never really found myself feeling the same way at any point during Rebels. As I said, it never really hits the same high points as TCW, but it also never hits the same lows either, making for a much more balanced show.
Regardless, if you're a Star Wars fan, it is worth watching Rebels, especially if you want to know what happens with Ahsoka after The Clone Wars. Season 2 in particular is a great season of television.
Review by FinFanBlockedParent2020-07-08T00:11:51Z
When I saw the first trailer for Rebels I immediately dismissed this a goofy kids show. And even now, before starting this, I was sceptical regarding this show. I will admit I was wrong on both accounts.
There is some of the feared goofyness in it but even in it's early stages it was not that bad. And it got better with every season. It took my some time to get used to the new characters, especially Ezra whom I didn't like until probably to the final episodes. But while watching it I began to like Kanan, Hera, Sabine and even Chopper. It was interesting to follow their individual arcs. Bringing in known characters from the franchise and the whole world building further helped me connecting.
A kids show ? Hardly. Ther are indicators that put this into that category but the story telling is as complex as it gets. Like Clone Wars before, this show adds so much great content and it shows the potential that the whole SW story has. This is made by people who understand what they are working with. I can care for the fate of an animated character as much as for a "real" one. I applaud the writer as well as the actor voicing it for giving them a soul. I really don't make a difference between animated and live action any more.
I care for the story. It does not need to be loud and spectacular all the time. And Rebels finds this balance between action and character plots that keeps you wanting for more.