Awaiting Thrawn’s arrival…

David Tennant gets to say the best line of Star Wars this episode and I’m not a little jealous. Beyond that we see the arrival of Sabine and Morgan in the other galaxy. It’s a week of revelations, small and large which will ripple through the Star Wars universe I think and I’m not even sure what they mean for existing continuity (especially for the final three movies who are obviously not a part of this story).

The single most interesting thing by some distance is the fact that Baylan Skoll is not helping Morgan solely as a mercenary, but he is there for something else, something beyond the payment of credits. This has me intrigued because it goes back to something from Rebels which may well be a huge spoiler (so I won’t talk about it here). Suffice to say it takes up a small part of the episode but casts a shadow over what’s to come in the last two entries. It also underlines just how much we’re going to miss Ray Stevenson.

The rest of the episode is paced glacially but I didn’t find that it dragged. There’s a lot of shuffling about and thinking. In a good way it felt at times like the second season of Foundation – big questions, big ideas playing out over long time periods with meaty considerations being given time to breathe.

There’s also the appearance of Ezra Bridger and, honestly, apart from a cheesy first moment he’s perfect.

The last thing to talk about is Sabine – who is closing her eyes to the catastrophe she has single handedly caused while refusing to countenance the danger and hurt she is creating with every single new decision she makes. I don’t quite understand where she goes from here but if I was her best friend and she kept this from me? It would be hard to forgive so I’m interested to see where this goes.

Rating? 8 turtle Pokémon out of 10

Stewart Hotston