Ezra met the Dark Side and Ahsoka met Vader, but nothing is as it seems in the Star Wars Rebels season 2 finale.
Do you need a minute? I’ll give you a minute.
Better? Okay. (I understand if you’re not better.)
After a season full of creative highs and lows, Star Wars Rebels arrives at its dramatic season finale, an episode burdened with years of anticipation. A story born in The Clone Wars concludes in “Twilight of the Apprentice” — to say nothing of major developments in Ezra’s journey in the Force.
Aware of these weighty expectations, the Star Wars Rebels season 2 finale takes a twisting path toward their fulfillment. The return of Maul is deeply relevant on both story and thematic levels, but the enigmatic villain also as an entrancing distraction. The (former?) Sith winds Ezra, Kanan, and Ahsoka into his web with unnerving ambiguity, keeping them away from their goal until “Twilight of the Apprentice” can accomplish its own.
Maul’s ambiguity, at least as it initially appears, sets the tone for the thematics of the whole adventure. Ambiguity is the engine driving this story. The Sith Temple is a riddle with multiple answers; the battle fought there had no clear victor.
Ambiguity is what inclines Ezra to ally with Maul, what animates the conflict between Sidious’ former apprentice and his new Inquisitors. (Whether or not killing Vader’s murderous minions is wrong, it seems to take the strength of the Dark Side to accomplish it.) Toward the light, Kanan, who so recently found his clarity as a Jedi, is now left blinded — but not fully in the dark.
Of course, there is certainty between these shades of gray. Ezra (wisely, for once!) rejects the Temple’s befuddling offer of “the power to destroy life.” And the arrival of Darth Vader is an unambiguous knell of evil resonating through the Star Wars Rebels season 2 finale.
But interestingly (and frankly, tragically) it is Vader’s presence that inspires one of the most significant ambiguities of “Twilight of the Apprentice.” For all that she tries to push aside her confusion, Ashoka Tano cannot reconcile the idea that Anakin has become Darth Vader. The destruction of his mask, peeling away the skin of darkness, taunts her with a duality that no longer truly exists.
Even for those who approach Star Wars Rebels without the benefit of The Clone Wars, Ahsoka’s torment is heartbreaking to watch. She herself is an ambiguous force — “I am no Jedi,” as she tells Vader — and she continues to seek some ambiguity, some hope, beneath the shell of Vader. She fails to find it.
It is devastatingly appropriate, then, that the final battle between Ahsoka and the ghost of Anakin Skywalker is left unresolved for the viewer. Vader’s former padawan is, in a sense, representative of the ambiguity that Anakin no longer embodies. Her fate hangs on Vader’s whim, and that is an ambiguity truly too colossal for mere mortals to parse.
Ezra too, becomes an active question in the closing moments of the Star Wars Rebels season 2 finale. Grieving and guilty, he pours his energy into the mysterious Sith holocron… and unlocks it.
Was Maul speaking the truth when he said that only a Sith could unlock the device? Does the change in Ezra’s eyes mean he has crossed over to the Dark Side? Could Ezra, having rejected the colossal power of the Temple, fall now — safe on the Ghost? Or is something else at work here?
Fittingly, maddeningly, “Twilight of the Apprentice” asks the questions, and keeps the answers for itself.