Star Wars Resistance Review: “The Children from Tehar”

– Spoiler Review –

In Star Wars Resistance‘s sixth episode, “The Children from Tehar,” Kaz considers collecting a bounty as a way to help the children being hunted, but he stumbles, as always, into something much darker and sinister in another great, expanding episode of the series.

In my first couple reviews for Resistance, I called it the youngest leaning animated show yet. And while it still is for the most part, the last few episodes have proven it doesn’t prevent the show from telling complex narratives and covering maturer themes, as this episode alone dealt with kids being hunted for a bounty/to be killed and said children revealing their entire village was murdered by the First Order. These are slightly more intense topics than I imagined Resistance would cover from the outset, but I’m very happy to have been proven wrong and I can’t wait to see what else it manages to dive into, despite its younger leanings.

The titular children from Tehar, Kel (Anthony Del Rio) and Eila (Nikki SooHoo), have a bounty out on them, which Kaz becomes determined to collect, not only due to wanting to help the children get home, but also because he can’t even pay for water and owes Tam a new part after breaking it. His earliest pursuit comes up short, but Neeku brings Kaz to his friends, the Chelidae (a turtle-like species, shell and all), maintenance workers who keep the Colossus in one piece, and they are willing to keep their far-ranging eyes and ears open to help them find the children. But Captain Doza of the Colossus, his own eyes and ears nearly everywhere, finds out Kaz is on the hunt and pulls him into his office. Remember, the Captain is curious about Kaz since the end of the previous episode, after Kaz was caught on camera sneaking around when the First Order came to Doza’s office, so the Captain wants to determine exactly who he is and what he’s up to. Doza chides Kaz for not even stopping to ask why or who put the bounty out, though declines to tell him, because Doza knows it’s the First Order, whom he contacts after Kaz leaves, trying to ascertain why they put such a big bounty on children in the first place. An all too nice (see: lying) Phasma tells him the children are from a high-ranking First Order, non-military family, and while Doza invites the First Order to the base to track down the kids, I don’t believe for a second he actually wants them to find the children/he doesn’t buy Phasma’s lies either. He doesn’t get in the way either, knowing how precarious his position is with the First Order, considering in “The High Tower” they revealed they knew about his dealings with the criminal underworld, putting him at a standstill with reporting them to the New Republic. Doza is playing a much larger game here, by offering the information the Tehar kids are on the base, he keeps the First Order happy…for now, though he has them play by his rules, without any help, keeping his hands somewhat clean no matter the outcome of their search. Seeing how Doza ducks and weaves through his relationship with the First Order, and how he might react and change once the show catches up to explosive events from The Force Awakens, is something I’m looking forward to, while I wonder how far his digging into Kaz will get.

Much like the ominous background detail that Kaz’s family is from Hosnian Prime, his dad its Senator no less, and what that means as the show closes in on TFA, what happened to the children on Tehar is just as dark, and features quite the name drop. Kaz and Neeku come running to the shell-people after leaving Doza’s office, as they have found Kel and Eila, and are keeping them safe. Kaz, despite Doza’s warnings about who would put a bounty on kids, assumes the best about the galaxy and imagines it’s someone who cares about them, also countering Kel’s claims he’s is only out for the money by saying he just wants to help them get home AND make a little money along the way. But Kel and Eila reveal the truth of what happened: their village was slaughtered by the First Order, and they just barely escaped with their lives. The agent of their destruction? Kylo Ren. That’s right, Ben Solo aka Kylo Ren, personally came to destroy Tehar! The fact he hands out the destruction could mean that whatever was happening on Tehar was quite important, as Phasma even mentions the “death” of the kids (more on that in a moment) means their plans stay secret from the Resistance, so maybe they were involved with helping build some type of weapon for them, much like Rose’s childhood where they build weapons with her planet’s resources and test it on them, or this was another round up of children to add to the First Order’s brainwashed soldiers, which would explain why Phasma was so directly involved/concerned with the hunt as she’s in charge of training them. If the second theory turns out to be true, this would be the third animated series in a row, not counting Forces of Destiny, where children being abducted for nefarious purposes by the bad guys is a plot-point, which is why I’m so inclined to believe Tehar was the latest target of the First Order’s stormtrooper program. In fact, this continues a storyline weaving across mediums, as I detailed heavily in my review of the comic Darth Vader – Dark Lord of the Sith #19, but in short The Clone Wars dealt with Sidious trying to steal kids and implant Sith spies into the Jedi Order, the aforementioned comic dealt with Jocasta Nu saving a list of children from getting into Palpatine/Vader’s hands post-Revenge of the Sith, and Rebels sees the Inquisitors now tasked with the hunt for Force-sensitive children, but Resistance and the sequel trilogy deal with parroting the Jedi children training method for stormtrooper purposes on all types of children (which actually began in the Rebels-era by General Hux’s dad, as seen in Servants of the Empire); it’s been very interesting to watch this thread sneak through series’ and multiple eras, and I wonder if Resistance will directly deal with that plotline. In the end, the name drop of Kylo Ren was quite the surprise, and while I never imagined we’d see him on the show, this made the chance of him appearing go up from 0% to 10%.

As Yeager said at the end of “Fuel for the Fire,” and Kaz humorously replied, “So I’m good at being a person?” Kaz has his heart in the right place, even when trying to collect a bounty out on children. It wasn’t hard to see Kaz’s intentions as anything but honorable, as that’s how he’s been portrayed by the series so far, and his desire to help the kids was front and center, even if the motivating factor was credits so he could both pay back Tam for the part he broke and enjoy the bare necessities. Once he realizes the true danger these kids are in, and how collecting the bounty would not help them, he immediately jumps into action to save them, proving once again he’s a good person. I really liked the plan they devised, as they opened up a grate with a clear drop to the ocean below, sending some of the shell-people and their ability to slow down their life signs (convenient, sure) into the ocean, so when the kids “jump” in as if they’d rather die than be taken alive, it looks like they did jump and died. Commander Pyre, a gold-plated trooper sent by Phasma to hunt them down, believes the ruse and reports in that all is fine. For the time being, the children are free from being hunted, getting to live with the Chelidae maintenance workers to keep out of sight, as Captian Doza might report them before someone else does, like say the spy Kaz has been sent to find. When the first preview of the episode went up, I wondered what Yeager would do if he was involved in the storyline at all, considering the hints about his family’s past in “Fuel for the Fire,” but he’s only seen briefly in the beginning and that’s it. Maybe it’s a good thing though, because if he is the First Order spy as I keep guessing, he might’ve found a way to get the kids back in First Order hands…or he still might, if he runs into them considering they’re staying on the Colossus. But a bigger problem is brewing for Kaz, as Tam remarks he’s full of surprises, after he returns the compensator he broke all fixed up by the shell-folk, and she wonders what other secrets he’s hiding. Of course Kaz plays it off as he’s innocent and has no surprises, but imagine the Colossus, or just the team, discovering there’s a First Order mole, and because Kaz has been so mysterious since his arrival, everyone points him out to be the traitor. For Yeager, if he truly is the spy, this would work wonders, as who would Team Fireball believe, Kaz or their long-time, friendly boss, Yeager? I’d bet Neeku could still side with Kaz if something like that went down, but if anyone is going to clear Kaz’s name in such a situation, we were introduced to the perfect group of people to do so: the shell-folk, who, as Neeku says it, have eyes and ears everywhere and I bet they’d have evidence to exonerate Kaz and damn Yeager. That’s all hypothetical, but these shell-folk weren’t likely introduced simply to serve a plot point like faking children’s death, and such an end-game for them would be a perfect fit.

The episode ends with Kaz reporting the details about Tehar to the Resistance, but instead of getting Poe on the other end of the line, he reaches Ello Asty, an Abednedo pilot first seen in The Force Awakens! Ello’s name is in reference to Hello Nasty, an album by the Beastie Boys, and is voiced by Matthew Wood, Supervising Sound Editor and General Grievous himself, in both the show and the movie. While Ello hasn’t heard about the planet Tehar, his response to Kaz mentioning Kylo Ren speaks volumes, and he says General Leia is really going to want to know about it. Add Ello as another causality hanging over this show, as he dies in the battle at Starkiller Base, and those events will mean any potential source within the Resistance to back up Kaz’s claims as their spy is out of reach, leaving him on his own once this show crosses over the events of TFA. As for Leia, I’m curious when we’ll see her again, especially with Kylo Ren being mentioned, and if Lucasfilm wised up and fired Rachel Butera after her despicable actions (as I outlined in the Few Other Things section in the season premiere), thus casting someone else. We’ll have to wait to see on that one, but getting a scene with her reacting to another atrocity caused by her son is too juicy to be ignored.

Here are a few other things:

The voice actor for the Chelidae, the shell-folk maintenance workers, is quite the legend: Frank Welker, a name you know even if you don’t realize it, as he’s the original voice actor for Fred from Scooby-Doo and has been Scooby-Doo himself since 2002, as well as Nibbler in Futurama, among many other roles! That’s a pretty cool surprise tucked away in this episode.
I’m actually assuming their name is spelled Chelidae, and therefore that is who Welker is voicing, as the episode guide/databanks haven’t been updated yet as of the publishing of this review, but that’s what the episode’s cast list has it as. ~~I’ll update when I know for certain.~~ This is their name, according to the episode guide!
Are there a bunch of puns hiding in plain sight for Resistance? In last week’s episode, the voice actor for Captain Doza, Jason Hightower, premieres in an episode called, “The High Tower,” and now Commander Pyre, the gold-plated stormie first glimpsed in early trailers, is revealed to be voiced by Liam McIntyre…get it, Prye, McIntyre? Or maybe I’m reading WAY too much into things.
The symbol on Kel’s wristband, which Doza still has by episode end…I wonder if we’ll learn more about it and what it means. Was it simply a marking of the Tehar, which is why Doza questions Phasma about it, and her answers helps him ascertain she’s lying, or is it a potential underworld organization’s symbol, which is why Doza is still seen clutching it in the end? Something focused on so much, though never discussed openly, feels like it has a much larger meaning down the line. Or not.

Star Wars Resistance continues to prove it’s a lot more than people give it credit for and “The Children from Tehar” is another exciting example of it.

+ Kaz, Neeku, and the Shell-folk saving the kids…for now
+ Kylo Ren name drop ramps things up a bit
+ Doza’s larger game

Ryan is Mynock Manor’s Head Butler. You can follow him on Twitter @BrushYourTeeth. You can follow the website @MynockManor.

STAR WARS RESISTANCE REVIEWS:

Star Wars Resistance Review: “The Children from Tehar”

+ Kaz, Neeku, and the Shell-folk saving the kids…for now

+ Kylo Ren name drop ramps things up a bit

+ Doza’s larger game

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