Star Wars Rebels Review: “The Wynkahthu Job”

While episodes like this and last week might recall the character focused ones of last season, they’ve found a middle ground by moving small, but important parts of the plot forward in regards to both overarching story and characterizations/character development. Last week’s didn’t balance that as well, but Wynkahthu or whatever did so wonderfully enough. It also helps this episode overall was a lot more fun, visually engaging, humorous, and somewhat thrilling towards the end, at least more so than “Iron Squadron.” Beyond all that, there were some great little nods and attention to the littler details and continuity: Hondo is still flying the Tydirium Shuttle he borrowed from the doomed Reklam Station in the S3 premiere, which he’s already decked out to Sabine-levels of markings; the Ugnaughts he “rescued” from the Station were still part of his crew, for awhile at least; and how Phoenix Squadron is still looking for proton bombs in their efforts to attack Lothal’s operations, something we last saw them looking for in “The Last Battle.”

This episode also made better use of all of the crew, even if Kanan’s biggest part was to be the butt of a few sight jokes from Hondo (which I loved). Hera had the appropriate and fitting reaction to seeing Azmorigan again after their encounter all the way back in S1’s “Idiot’s Array,” and his recollection of the events about her hitting him with the tray were just as fitting and surprisingly funny. Not only that, but she got to play the role of Space Mom again, at least more so than usual now that she’s so integral to the team’s section of the Rebellion. No one is happy Ezra still teams up with Hondo and Kanan is content to let the boy learn why he shouldn’t the hard way, but Hera puts Zeb in charge of the mission as a buffer between Ezra and Hondo for when the pirate does get up to his usual tricks. Sabine didn’t get as big a part however, but she was important to the episode’s finale and helping secure the cargo from the slowly dying cargo ship. And we actually got to see AP-5 again, the morose Imperial protocol droid who joined the crew after Chopper showed him friendship in S2’s “The Forgotten Droid,” and he had some entertaining lines about the mission’s percentage of success and forgetting to mention the sentry droids. Speaking of Chopper, besides powering the ship back on, he gets a pretty funny bit while escaping at the end. While other episodes have had many of the crew in it, “Wynkahthu” not only had them all but gave them all something to do, no matter how minor it ending up being.

But the real meat of the episode was Ezra and Zeb’s nephew/uncle relationship, which hasn’t been as big a part of this season as in the past and also brought Zeb to the forefront for the first real time this season. It seems Zeb still hasn’t learned about Agent Kallus helping Sabine back in “The Antilles Extraction,” or if he has we haven’t been privy to learning he knows yet, but for the time being any focus on the Lasat would be welcomed and thankfully “Wynkahthu” has that in spades. In a way we got to see how Zeb was as a Captain in the Lasan Honor Guard this episode, as his military training is put to good use as the leader, but I doubt he had to deal with such insubordinate and wily personalities back then as he as to now with Ezra, Hondo, and Azmorigan. The latter two are so focused on their own treasure hauls one ends up captured and the other does everything he can, slyly, to make it look like he’s interested in helping others when he’s still just out for himself. Zeb tries for a bit to reign them in, but he leaves them to their own devices when things take a turn for the worse, though he does what he can to get all of them off the sinking ship in the end. I hope we get to see more of Zeb’s military background seep through into missions going forward, as he’s a great leader and just as vital a member as anyone else on the crew, which is made clear here despite the lack of focus on him this year.

In the mean time, Ezra is actively trying to mess up the mission in the littlest of ways so that it proves Zeb is unfit to lead a mission again. He previously took issue with not having the lead of a mission in “Extraction,” because then he was worried for Sabine’s safety if he couldn’t be in control/lead of the mission, And even though he didn’t have much issue with Sabine taking point in “Imperial Supercommandos,” Ezra realizes Hera’s demand for Zeb to lead is more so to keep watch over him around the untrustworthy and yet still slightly influential to him Hondo Ohnaka, which he doesn’t feel he needs. Zeb would normally give as good as he gets with Ezra’s mocking, but he understands how important it’s to stay on track and finish the mission quickly, therefore not rising to Ezra’s bait throughout (which, like I mentioned before, is how he probably was as the head of the Honor Guard). By the end Ezra sees the strength in Zeb’s example and here’s hoping he learns from the experience; At the same time it seems Ezra’s learned a lot about Hondo and how he’s not to be trusted, as Ezra saw the true Hondo firsthand in the pirate’s refusal to help locate Azmorigan or how he treated the remaining Ugnaught member of his crew, Melch. It doesn’t mean Ezra won’t still try to get into more trouble with Hondo, as he always sees the good in people, but he at least might be a bit more wary and on his guard around him.

This episode not only had a great usage of characters, but its ticking clock conceit was inventive and visually intriguing (the cargo ship slowly doomed for a fiery death by a gigantic storm in Wynkahthu’s atmosphere) and the episode was packed with cinematic direction both in smaller shots and the scale of the final action sequence. I feel a good example of the cinematic look of the episode is shown when we see Zeb being attacked by a sentry droid play out in the shadows against a wall, much like you might see in a horror movie. And for the episode’s finale, there were many, interesting moving parts that made the team’s escape from the cargo hold more epic than it really was, as it included the cargo ship falling into the storm, various bits of cargo being hauled across the expanse to the Ghost, Zeb and Ezra hanging by a thread and battling sentry droids, etc. Even though I highly doubted anyone would die this episode, the way the whole scene played out I ended up feeling a little tension regarding their fates.