Zeb and Agent Kallus faced impossible odds — and each other — in Star Wars Rebels 2×17, “The Honorable Ones.”
We’re calling it: Star Wars Rebels is officially on a hot streak. This week, the animated series eschews an elaborate plot to tell a story that is almost devastating in its simplicity, and challenges viewers to reevaluate the series’ paradigm of good and evil.
The tension and craft of “The Honorable Ones” really begins when Zeb (escaping) and Agent Kallus (in pursuit) are ejected from a Star Destroyer in an escape pod. They crash painfully on one of Geonosis’ cold moons, and Kallus breaks his leg on impact. This is really the only reason why the two fighters — both armed with Lasaat bo rifles — don’t wind up killing each other in an ice cave immediately.
And that turns out to be a very good thing.
Zeb decides not to kill Kallus while he is wounded, which forces a stalemate. Instead of fighting each other (like they’d really like to do) Kallus and Zeb must fight the cold, the hungry creatures that dwell beneath the moon’s surface, and the possibility that each will be rescued by the wrong people.
Naturally, Zeb and Kallus are wildly suspicious of each other; they waste time arguing, and debating their respective loyalties. But when their only source of heat dies, Zeb finds a small, glowing meteor — and offers it to Kallus.
Herein lies the brilliance of Star Wars Rebels 2×17. Zeb and Kallus eventually come to make major movements of trust to each other, but their true collaboration is a matter of inches and tiny gestures. Zeb gives over the meteor, and Kallus almost nervously shares the origin of his Lasaat weapon; it was not taken as a trophy, but offered as a token of honor from the Lasaat guard Kallus defeated. It’s a gesture that would mean nothing to any other member of the rebels, but for Zeb, it becomes the entry point of understanding for man who has hunted him for so long.
And it turns out, there is quite a lot to understand about Agent Kallus — and a lot that Kallus himself does not understand. He does not understand why the entire population of Geonosis has disappeared. He does not understand why a Lasaat mercenary murdered most of his helpless Imperial squad, only to leave him alive. And in spite of taking credit for the atrocity, Kallus does not understand why the Empire ordered the genocide on Lasaan.
It is partly on the strength of these confessions that Zeb and Kallus build enough trust to work together and escape from the ice cave. But more crucial on a character level is the reveal of how much darkness Kallus lives in. His life is full of blank spaces — the questions, the atrocities, the cold impersonality of Imperial life.
It’s not that Zeb has the luxury of answers, or that he is at peace with Kallus’ actions. But his life is filled with a brighter purpose, with friends, with the knowledge that he is helping the helpless of the galaxy. He can, as he says, move on from the atrocities on Lasaan; Kallus, in a way, is still stuck there.
Whether or not Kallus is really seeking that kind of light in his own life remains to be seen. But the warm, jagged light of Zeb’s meteor now glows in his dim Imperial quarters. It’s not enough to brighten the space; not enough to provide any answers. But it might be just bright enough to show Agent Kallus the first few steps of a different path.