I'll readily admit that I don't really like Rebels that much. I don't hate it, but it just has a number of things that make it lackluster for me. That said, of course we're going to make fun of it from time to time. But hey, I also make fun of Star Wars content I do really like, so it's all fair, right?
Rebel Scum I: Left for Dead
In the midst of an operation gone wrong, Ezra Bridger, who had already been roped into some weird terrorist type stuff on accident during some standard thievery on Lothal, had been sent into an Imperial ship by Hera to warn the other members of this little group that the jig was up. The vulnerable Imperial shipment of Wookie slaves had been a trap, and now some Imperial Agent and a whole bunch of Stormtroopers had closed in for the kill.
The escape from said Imperials had gone decently well for a little bit, having included some anti-gravity shenanigans and all, but just when everyone was about to make their escape, Ezra had been nabbed by Agent Kallus from behind. The only one to see this happen was Zeb, the weird hairless Wookie guy that was kind of an ass.
To his credit, Zeb stood in the doorway that would lead him to the safety of the Ghost for a few moments, judging whether or not he could, would, or should try to save Ezra from the Imperials who had captured him. However, the answer to that question was apparently no.
"Sorry, kid!"
With just that and nothing else, Zeb disappeared, beating a hasty retreat back to the Ghost. With but a moment or two of thought, he'd ditched Ezra to the Empire, something the young boy was very quick to shout after the hairless Wookie looking thing.
"Seriously?! I'm only on this ship because I came to warn you about the trap, asshole! I don't even know you and I still risked my neck, and that's after you and your buddies screwed over a great haul for me on Lothal! I hope the Empire blows you to hell!"
Agent Kallus cocked an eyebrow at their new hostage.
"Well... you're not going to be very useful to us if those rebel scum aren't willing to come back for you. Should we even keep you?"
Ezra was quick to iterate his idea on that front.
"No, please do! They'll probably come back, and when they do, please shoot that freak in his ugly face!"
"That's a pretty callous thing to say about someone you were just attempting to rescue."
Agent Kallus seemed awfully proud of himself for saying that, but Ezra and even the many Stormtroopers around all just eyed him with contempt and dismay. It wasn't particularly hard to see why.
"Alright, that was pretty low-hanging fruit, I admit."
Back on the Ghost, Hera had just recently bailed from the situation with the Imperial forces, her ship being safely in hyperspace with the entire crew, to the best of her knowledge. Breathing a sigh of relief, she turned her chair around to face the rest of the team.
"Well, that was a debacle..."
Kanan mentioned something about how troubling it was that the Empire was laying traps like this, to which Sabine agreed, but witnessing the exchange of words between her many allies, Hera swiftly got a bad feeling about something. Zeb was quietly ducking into his chair, Chopper was already in the cockpit, and the door was closed behind them all.
"Uh... where's the kid from Lothal?"
Unaware of any sort of problem, Sabine answered this question based on an assumption that nothing could have gone wrong.
"He was right behind us. Is he still in the cargo hold? Maybe he's not used to getting shot at, he could need a minute."
While this explanation didn't sound too unlikely, a certain uncomfortable look on Zeb's face made Hera believe that it wasn't the right answer.
"Zeb, where's the kid?"
"He uh, may have been... captured by the Imps."
Needless to say, the immediate reaction to this was not good.
"What?! Sabine said he was right behind you!"
"He was! And then he got grabbed, so..."
This time, it was Kanan's turn to be shocked.
"So you just left him?!"
"What was I supposed to do?! There were too many Stormtroopers!"
Sabine chimed in for this next one.
"Well you didn't exactly tell anyone there was a situation! You didn't even mention it until someone asked you about it!"
Quick to anger as always, Zeb tried to minimize the severity of his actions.
"Who cares?! The kid was a brat and a nuisance! We were going to throw him off back at Lothal anyway!"
"There's a big difference between dropping him off at Lothal and leaving him captured on an Imperial ship! Zeb, what the shit?!"
Frustrated for obvious reasons, Hera restrained some colorful language and turned back to the controls of her ship. Chopper cussed up a storm on her behalf anyway, berating Zeb for what he had done. Even the droid, usually an asshole himself, was appalled. Zeb wasn't particularly happy about that.
"Shut up, stupid pile of scrap."
Naturally, Hera was on the droid's side.
"Oh no, Chopper's right. We are going to go back and save him, and then you are going to have to find a different group to fight the Empire with. Seriously Zeb, that kid has never fought the Empire directly and he didn't even know us, and he still risked his life to come save yours. Yet you still abandoned him and didn't even mention that he was in trouble. We don't need someone willing to do that on the crew."
"What?! Come on, don't be ridiculous! I've been here for way longer than the dumb kid, this is an overreaction! You guys don't agree with that, right?"
Zeb turned to both Kanan and Sabine, looking for someone to take his side. But with icy and disapproving glares from all sides, he knew it was a lost cause, leading him to slump down in his seat.
"Whatever. You'll regret it when you need me for something later."
More irritable than usual, Hera finally said something she had always secretly thought.
"Zeb, you're the least useful member of the team. Chopper can hack things and take control of machines. Kanan's a Jedi, Sabine's a demolition expert, and I'm the pilot for our ship. You're the big strong guy. You hit things. That's literally it. You're not smart, particularly clever or imaginative, you can't do stealth or undercover missions very well, and you don't offer anything that great in a fight. I think we'll be alright without you."
The cabin of the Ghost was silent for a minute as Zeb stared at the back of Hera's head in shock. Everyone else looked uncomfortably away from him, though that didn't stop him from accosting them.
"H-hey, do you all feel this way? Really?"
Sabine looked pointedly away into the depths of space. Kanan cleared his throat but didn't really say anything. Chopper was the only one that beeped and booped in a way that was clearly 'yes.'
"Wow. Alright then. Tell me how you really feel, huh?"
This joke was pretty harsh on Zeb. But I'll be honest, I don't like him very much. For one, he really is just the big strong guy that tends to get angry. He doesn't really contribute that much to the team dynamic, either as a character or as a practical member. I don't hate him for that, but it certainly doesn't give him any points.
Why I really hate him is actually the crux of the joke here: literally in like, the first episode or two of the show, he totally abandons Ezra to potentially be tortured or die even after Ezra, who had no real obligation to try and save him and the others, risked himself to do so.
Now, it would be one thing if Zeb immediately went to the others and was like, "guys, the kid got captured, we gotta save him!" After all, he probably couldn't have taken Kallus and all of those Stormtroopers alone. So it would have made sense if he left Ezra momentarily to get backup. But he didn't. He not only left Ezra, he didn't even mention it to the rest of the Ghost crew until someone asked him about it. So basically, he was just like "well, sucks for that kid, bye" with no intention to try and help him in any way.
So yeah, basically, fuck Zeb.
Rebel Scum II: Rule of Cool
Having been trapped on a landing pad by Imperial forces during the second attempted rescue of the Wookie slaves they had been hellbent on saving before, a few members of the Ghost crew, Kanan included, were pinned behind some crates, which were the only things sheltering them from a hail of fire from Agent Kallus and his Stormtroopers.
A little fed up with hiding, and galvanized to reveal his true power for some inexplicable reason, Kanan decided he was going to go all out for once. That's right, he was going to use his lightsaber and show the Empire that at least on of his Order still remained.
Deciding that a dramatic entrance was absolutely vital, Kanan stood up and stepped on top of the crates he had been hiding behind, preparing to do some weird shit that required him to put two pieces of his lightsaber together for use. Really, he had no idea why he did that. Maybe it was because it would be harder to identify as a lightsaber if it was in two pieces, but there was still a kyber crystal in one of them, so that wasn't exactly a solid explanation. Besides, he was usually fighting the Empire, not having them rifle through his stuff, so why bother?
Either way, he was about to put his lightsaber together and make a cool entrance and shit, maybe even cock his head to the side to dodge a blaster bolt or two as he walked menacingly towards his opponents, but he never got the chance to. About a second after stepping onto the crates, Kanan was shot full of holes by the squad of Stormtroopers across from him. His body, smoking from the blaster bolts, swiftly fell to the ground next to his comrades. Sabine was floored not by the death of her friend, but by whatever ridiculous nonsense had been going through his mind at the moment before he died.
Yeah, he had the Force and all, and using it, he may have been able to dodge a singular bolt or two. But what made him think a squad of trained Stormtroopers were going to completely miss him for several seconds while he stood proudly out in the open? Speaking of which, didn't this make it even stupider that he had to put his lightsaber together before he could use it? What if he needed to defend himself on a dime?
Either way, this theatrical crap in which he presented himself to the enemy to shoot at their leisure was really stupid, and Sabine certainly thought as much, shaking her head.
"God damnit, Kanan."
One thing that I really hate about Rebels is the way it treats Stormtroopers. More than any other Star Wars media I've seen, it treats Stormtroopers like completely incompetent morons who can't do anything at all. They fall for stupid tricks, they can't shoot things right in front of them, and they're often killed for laughs (more on that later).
It's one thing when the bad guys can't kill the good guys because the good guys have lightsabers, because then, it's not that the bad guys are incompetent and can't shoot straight, it's that the good guys have precognitive magic powers and swords that can deflect blasters. But in this scene, Kanan literally just stands up in an elevated position, in plain damn sight of a whole squad of Stormtroopers, and he doesn't even have to move. They just all miss.
More than any other Star Wars media, the bad guys in Rebels feel consistently nonthreatening, like a bunch of doofus clowns that are no danger to anyone. Even supposedly major villains like the Inquisitors (more so the Team Rocket douche bags than the first guy) feel like a nuisance more than a serious threat. Darth Vader may be the one time in the show when the antagonist feels like he might actually be dangerous.
Rebel Scum III: Missing in Action
At a landing pad on Lothal, the rebels Agent Kallus had been trying to capture had gotten away, and with the Wookie slaves they'd come for no less. More importantly, Kallus and a lone Stormtrooper had nearly been knocked off the platform and too a grisly demise, with the both of them hanging on to a strut for dear life over an abyss as the Ghost got away from them.
Kallus stared after them with distaste, but the Stormtrooper beneath him tried to lighten the mood as he waited for rescue from his comrades.
"First time, sir?"
Already irritable and not feeling any better from a remark such as that, Kallus snarled and kicked the Stormtrooper beneath him in the head, knocking the helmeted soldier off of his hold and sending him screaming in terror into the abyss. Naturally, Kallus didn't feel any regret at the sight of it.
Heh, that was pretty funny.
Unwilling to wait for any sort of help, Kallus began climbing back up to the landing pad, feeling a little better about the situation now that he had killed one of his own men. He even managed to make the climb fairly quickly, he was in such a better mood.
However, the situation turned for the worst when he finally reached solid ground again, at about the time he managed to get his arms onto the ledge that he wanted to be standing on. There were a number of white boots right near his arms, prompting him to glance up at the rest of the squad of Stormtroopers he had brought to the conflict.
"Well, don't just stand there. Help me up!"
Each of the helmeted soldiers exchanged glances with one another, before promptly pointing their weapons right at Kallus' face.
"On the contrary sir, the only thing we're going to help you do is go down."
Stunned by the blatant betrayal of his troops, Kallus sputtered in protest.
"W-what?! How dare you! What would possess you to do this?!"
The Stormtrooper on the right spoke first.
"That man you just killed for shits and giggles was my best friend. We enlisted together!"
The Stormtrooper in the middle offered a different take.
"That man you killed for no reason at all was someone I've trained with since my days at the Academy. He was a good and loyal soldier!"
Finally, the Stormtrooper on the left sealed the deal.
"That man you just killed because you were in a bad mood had a family. He enlisted to secure a steady income for his wife and kid!"
Needless to say, it seemed that all of Kallus' soldiers were hellbent on killing him. Maybe he should have considered whether or not they witnessed him kicking their comrade to his death.
"Y-y-you traitors! I'm an officer! You will all be executed for this!"
The soldier in the middle made it clear how he felt about this, just as he raised his leg into the air.
"Nobody is going to know about it but us, so I don't think anyone will question a KIA report. After all, our comrade fell to his death out here too. So why not you? See you in space hell, asshole."
Kallus was about to protest further, perhaps try to bargain, but a booted hell smashed into his face, sending him careening to the abyss below, screaming in a way very similar to the soldier he had ruthlessly killed earlier.
On the platform, the three remaining Stormtroopers shook their heads in disgust and sorrow.
"Well, I guess we should go to the bar and pour one out for Gary."
Another thing I hate about Rebels, but moreso about any media really, is when murdering a goon or a mook is played for a laugh. It's one thing when an evil asshole kills one of his own men and it's played seriously, to show how much of a piece of shit he is. But Rebels seriously has Imperials killing Stormtroopers as funny. Like, "haha, did you see that Stormtrooper get thrown off a cliff by one of his own, because the bad guy was a little testy? It's funny because we've dehumanized them!"
It's just really, really fucked up. The Clone Wars never did something like that to a clone trooper. A random schmuck trooper was never killed as a joke, as something to laugh at. Droids were, sure, but droids are droids. Ignoring the in-universe discussion of their sentience and cognizance, they aren't people. But Stormtroopers are. They've got dreams, hopes, families, homeworlds, hobbies, passions, and all of that. Playing the needless death of a human being as a joke is just extremely poor taste and will always lower my opinion of media. Not to mention, Rebels is supposed to be even more kid-friendly than Clone Wars, yet they pull this? It's a terrible moral/lesson to be showing to anyone, much less kids.