REBELS REBELS
Star Wars Rebels co-creator Dave Filoni on the animated prequel’s fourth and final season
The Star Wars prequel series is in its last year – we have the key intel.
The season premiere centres on Mandalorian warrior Sabine. Why is that?
Because Sabine has really evolved as a character over the seasons. I feel in the end she’s every bit as important as Ezra as far as being a lead on this show. What’s interesting about her is that you have this woman who’s experiencing these things similar to Ezra but she doesn’t have this implicit connection to the Force. She’s not a Jedi. But that doesn’t mean she’s not subject to the same temptations and ability to go to the Dark Side and her more violent self. Can she reject that? One of the points of Star Wars is that we must all endure these struggles. She had a really dark experience with her home world of Mandalore and her family, and she’s basically trying to reclaim and recover that.
You’re bringing back another fan-favourite Clone Wars character…
We bring another character, Bo-Katan, played by Katee Sackhoff, into season four. That character becomes quite important as far as Sabine understanding her role and her relationship to her people on Mandalore. It’s one of those things that I’m always after. I love Luke Skywalker, but that’s Luke. How can we be different? It’s been a challenge on Rebels to show these characters have a journey like this, to find a selfless path, which is the endgame for enlightenment in Star Wars. Many fans are wondering how close Rebels’ finale will come to A New Hope.
Yeah. I would love to say, but for me what’s important is, if you know nothing else about Star Wars but Star Wars Rebels, this story has to work. The promises that we made about these characters at the beginning have to be fulfilled. It’s something that I really worked on with George [Lucas]. We can’t rely on the rest of the franchise. We always appreciated how much people knew about the Clone Wars, but we tried to tell those stories in a meaningful way, so that it works for the diehard fans but also works for the first-time viewers. What promises does this show have to keep?
The fundamental promise is, if you’re a kid and you sit down and watch the opening of Star Wars Rebels, all you really know is here’s a kid growing up underneath the rule of an Empire, and he’s the hero. So I feel like one of the unspoken promises is this kid will overthrow the Empire. How do you do that when as a Star Wars fan you know that’s Luke and his group of friends that does that? It took a long time but I think we found a way to satisfy an itch as far as what happens in this story. Does everything work out nice and peachy? That remains to be seen, but I think we came to a good conclusion. Bittersweet is a good word to describe it.
Star Wars Rebels’ fourth season premieres on Disney XD this autumn.