After 75 episodes and four seasons, Star Wars: Rebels is ending. Without going into spoilers, fans of the galaxy far, far away should know that Rebels has echoed the Clone Wars animated series in changing how we look at the Star Wars universe, especially over the last few episodes. Now, the Ghost crew will be going on its final mission in a three-part finale on Disney XD, but it won’t be during Rogue One‘s Battle of Scarif.
The Ghost ship was seen briefly as an easter egg in the first standalone Star Wars Story, flying into battle as Jyn Erso and Cassian Andor sacrificed themselves on the planet below, but that’s not where the story ends. Series supervising director and producer Dave Filoni explained to Collider that this was a conscious decision and padawan-to-be Ezra, Hera Syndulla, and Zeb Orrelios would find their own peace elsewhere. Or death.
Here’s Filoni’s lengthy interview with Collider discussing the end of the show and the intersection between the coming events in Episode IV, and the end of Rebels.
Filoni goes on to explain that if the “full Ghost crew” was on Scarif, Erso and Andor would’ve made it off the planet, but we know that recent events have left the crew thin and off balance. Additionally, this is Ezra’s story. For the finale to take place on Scarif would undermine that. “That moment isn’t significant for Ezra…it’s significant for the Rebel Alliance, but Rebels is Ezra’s story…I didn’t think that end of our series should be the climactic battle [from another movie],” he said.
The second animated series from Filoni and his team was a slow starter, but in recent years it has become an important and necessary story that enhances both the prequel trilogy and the original trilogy while adding weight to the story of Kylo Ren and Rey. Even without the easy “look at that!” finale setting, fans that have followed Ezra’s tale know this Star Wars is as good as anything else out there. And if you haven’t seen Rebels, it’s absolutely worth going back and watching the years between Episode III and IV play out.