Star Wars Rebels established pretty early on that Zeb is sort of a “last of his kind” deal. In a technical sense, he is. You know, from a certain point of view. No, I will not stop linking to that, it’s still funny.
Okay, so he isn’t really. Hondo Ohnaka just happened to float some information about some refugees to Ezra, and they arrive to find that the Empire beat them there. Also, the refugees in question are Lasat; the only others Zeb has seen since the Empire attacked their homeworld. And one of them is really, really old. Which honestly just begs the question of how.
Hondo manages to pull off a crazy quintuple-cross in this one, going back and forth between the Ghost crew and the Empire. That being said, even his luck has limits (considerably, he no longer has his gang), and he zigs when he should’ve zagged. He completely forgot the words to The Gambler; now the Empire is going to break his legs force him to help them hunt the Ghost down. He’ll play it off as though it was his preference all along, of course.
The refugees are actually looking for a new homeworld for their people, as was foretold in an ancient prophecy. Zeb’s apparently part of it too, according to the old lady, Chava, but he’s completely skeptical of the entire thing. Doubly so when it’s revealed that he’s not the Warrior (nor the Fool) but the Child in the prophecy.
He gets super sulky until Ezra talks with him. According to Zeb, he was uniquely lucky to survive, considering he fought to the last. He was the captain of the guard, and survival was his shame. He was pretty broken until Kanan and the others found him. Ezra helps him realize that this is an opportunity to make up for his perceived failure.
They go back out to find that Chava’s (not the) force ritual is ready to figure things out via the holographic map. She asks Zeb to use his bo-rifle “as the ancients did”, and it turns out that the damn thing actually opens up. He channels some energy through it and her staff, and they find an outer rim planet in uncharted space, which she calls Lyrasan (not sure I spelled that correctly).
They run right into a big old space anomaly, however, and Kallus is right on their tail. They decide to fly right into it to get away, since they’re screwed either way, and as they do so, old lady informs Zeb that he is all of the archetypes mentioned at any given time; the Child, the Warrior, the Fool. Through the bullshit power (as is typical for this sort of story) of yellow lightening coming out of his bo-rifle getting channeled into the hull of the Ghost, they make it through where several TIEs were torn apart in pursuit of them.
It turns out that Lyrasan is inhabited by other Lasat, as it was their original homeworld. We don’t see any of them, of course, but it’s okay. I’d argue that as far as this sort of prophecy story is concerned, they did alright overall. And Star Wars Rebels promises some slightly better episodes in the pipeline, if the midseason trailer is anything to go by.
Final Thoughts:
– Fun fact: spell check hates Star Wars names. Makes it really hard to search for typos.
– It’s pretty clear that Hondo sees Ezra as a son/apprentice as far as the art of scamming is concerned.
– It’s nice that Kallus can actually show the sort of restraint Ahab and Khan don’t have.
– Steve Blum really sold that scene where Zeb was admitting all the guilt he felt over his failure, man.
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