Hera makes history and flies the first B-Wing!
Continuing with the character-based stories, “Wings of the Master” is a Hera-centric episode, and features some excellent visuals and voice acting by Vanessa Marshall. This episode finds the rebels attempting to help the people of Ibaar get food supplies since the planet is being blockaded by the Empire. Sometimes certain Star Wars plots/stories don’t elaborate on just how evil the Empire actually is, but this episode does. They were enslaving and starving people to death! Talk about cruel!
After suffering a terrible losses, the rebels, in need of some heavy weaponry, take Rex’s advice to see out an engineer with a new prototype starfighter. I’ve got to say this space battle scene was pretty epic; high in details and lots of action. It’s quite a show opener.
After some talk and encouragement from Kanan, Hera is chosen to make the trek to Shantipole to meet the talented, yet slightly eccentric, master engineer Rex spoke of, Quarrie (you know, like McQuarrie, another concept designer). First off, what great animation here! Hera, with Zeb and Sabine along for the ride, crash lands the Phantom (with no power) on a rocky outcrop on the planet. Hera has some serious flying skills, that’s for sure. The views of the planet are stunning – jutting rocks, hazy atmosphere, wispy clouds, a crashed ship and flying beasts, not to mention some really intense background music–just superb story animation.
Once the crew lands and meets Quarrie (how adorable is he, I mean, a short, little Mon Cal?), he shows them is prototype–a B-Wing. This is really the original of this type of fighter; we’ve seen it a few times in the original trilogy, but never knew much about it. B-wing stands for Blade Wing (new info!). The ship design is awesome–we have a cockpit that rotates so the pilot is always upright, a seriously powerful multi-laser canon, excellent speed, and the ship Quarrie has made is a deep burnt orange color. Nice.
Quarrie is not too keen on letting “just anyone” take his ship nor fly it (he hadn’t even flown it himself or any ships; which begs the question how did he get on Shantipole in the first place?). Here we get a bit of Hera’s backstory while she attempts to repair the Phantom. She describes her time on Ryloth during the Clone Wars when she was a child. She always wanted to fly, she felt the need to be up in the air. Vanessa Marshall describes Hera’s story with such feeling, she gets really in depth with emotions. This background also shows us how Hera expresses herself, that flying is where she feels best. She tells how she left her family to fly, to be a combat pilot to help others in need. Her compelling story convinces Quarrie to let Hera pilot his prototype, and Hera takes off in the B-wing for a test flight.
Hera gets to show off her piloting skills during this test flight; she pushes the B-wing for more speed, and gets exceptionally close to the rocky pillars to test its agility. Quarrie calls her flying “masterful.” We get to see the four laser canon stream firing power of the ship, way more powerful than I would have thought a B-wing would be. While this is happening though, the rebels have ordered a second attack on Ibaar’s blockade. They need the new B-wing ASAP. But the prototype doesn’t have a hyper drive…until Hera realizes they can use the hyper drive on the Phantom that Quarrie and his astromech installed for them to cart the B-wing to the impending fight. (Smart thinking by Hera).
Jump to the blockade fight (which seems a bit hopeless for the rebels); the Ghost takes heavy hits from the Star Destroyers. With triumphant music, enter Hera piloting the new B-wing with Sabine in the targeting bay! Great entrance. With Sabine’s targeting expertise, Hera maneuvers the B-wing into position and they use the powerful quad laser cannon to destroy a Star Destroyer! I sure hope we see more of these B-wings in upcoming episodes – what awesome abilities they have!
With the successful delivery of food to Ibaar, and the new ship from Quarrie, Hera gets promoted to Phoenix Leader. I think with Hera at the helm of the squadron, we’ll see more organization within the rebels, and better/smarter choices for the fighters. Also, this is showing Hera she deserves, and can handle, more responsibility within the Rebellion. Hera has become one if the strongest Star Wars pilots to date, and hopefully we’ll get to see even more of her masterful flying skills in future Rebels episodes.
FYI – if you haven’t seen Rebels Recon on starwars.com, we now know where Wolffe and Gregor are. They stayed behind/stayed retired on Seelos, only Captain Rex joined up with the rebellion.
This week’s new episode, “Blood Sisters”, looks to be another character-centric story, this time surrounding Sabine. And it appears it will be epic!
Courtney Martin is a graduate of Indiana University and works in publishing. She’s an avid Star Wars fan and wrote the recipe blog Courtney Cooks Star Wars on suvudu.com. When not enveloped a science fiction or fantasy novel, she is watching television with her husband and son, doing crossword puzzles, or playing with her Shih Tzu, Burt.