Season 1 Episode 10 – “Idiot’s Array”

Star Wars Rebels gives us another look at a famous Original Trilogy character with Lando Calrissian (Billy Dee Williams reprising his role). Yoda was featured in disembodied voice form last week so there was a risk that it could be too many cameos in too short a time.

Thankfully that wasn’t the case at all. It was great to see Lando again as he was always one of my favourite characters since his first appearance in The Empire Strikes Back. It was completely unnecessary to have Lando in this episode as none of his actions felt unique to him but it was more than welcomed all the same.

Lando is introduced at a point before he ran the Tibanna Gas Mine on Bespin’s cloud city so he’s lacking the maturity and level of responsibility he had at that point. He is played as being untrustworthy, manipulative and kind of annoying as he gradually rubs all of our characters up the wrong way.

Naturally he’s a ladies man and wastes no time in flirting with the female characters on the show. It’s somewhat creepy that he takes to hitting on Sabine who is only 17. Sabine was fooled slightly at first but quickly outed him for the kind of guy he is. It’s clear that he might have been doing it just to get his own way and not to show any kind of romantic interest in someone who is far too young for him.

His interactions with Hera were my personal favourite scenes of the episode and I liked how Hera never even slightly fell for Lando’s charms. She went from being annoyed to disgusted with him as the episode progressed which makes sense given how attached she is to her ship and crew. There’s no way that she would let anyone compromise that no matter how charming they seem to be. I have to give full attention to the scene where Hera punched him in the balls, it was a hilarious moment.

Most of this episode worked really well with a wonderful sense of pace throughout. Each of the characters were given plenty to do with the focus remaining on Lando. I enjoyed seeing more of Sabine and Chopper who both conducted themselves well in this outing. Chopper especially got a great hero moment that benefited the group in a significant way.

As I’ve hinted above the comedy works really well in most cases. Lando has a distinct interaction with all of the characters and really fits in with the cast well. I hope there are plans to bring him back in later episodes as he offers a nice comic foil for the cast.

Special attention should be given to Ezra’s surprise addition to his already unique looking lightsaber. I really like the idea of making it double up as a blaster. This is a really fresh twist on the popular weapon and makes it feel really different. It’s also nicely in keeping with Ezra’s resourceful nature and gives him something interesting to work with in the coming episodes.

If there is anything to criticise here it would be that the villain felt a little toothless. He didn’t feel like an adversary that should give Lando any trouble. I thought he was a little ridiculous to look at so made the jeopardy almost laughable. Having said that it was good to lighten the mood a little after a fairly intense run of episodes.