Star Wars Rebels Had To Completely Re-Stage A Confrontational Scene In The Finale
"Star Wars Rebels" is one of the best things to happen to "Star Wars" since the release of "The Empire Strikes Back." The animated series built on the success of the "Clone Wars" TV show to expand the lore of the galaxy far, far away and fill in gaps in the story, all while telling a classic adventure tale.
"Rebels" follows the crew of the Ghost as they go from making their way through the galaxy doing odd jobs to helping kickstart the Rebel Alliance. At its core, it is a pure "Star Wars" adventure, with a pair of Jedi, a scoundrel, a rusty old ship, and plenty of formidable enemies, but it's also much more than that. The show brought closure to the stories started in "The Clone Wars" by bringing back Maul for an exciting final duel, and by giving Rex one last fight (one actually worth fighting), yet it also changed everything we knew about the Force and the franchise at large.
Sure, "Rebels" had its flaws, especially at first when DisneyXD didn't know what kind of show it had on its hands and executives asked for silly additions. Eventually, however, it became one of the most emotionally mature, dramatically complex stories in the "Star Wars" universe, leading up to a phenomenal finale that delivered plenty of classic "Star Wars" action — but again, it took some work getting there.
Speaking with IGN in 2018, "Rebels" co-creator Dave Filoni talked about tweaking and re-tweaking scenes in the series' final episodes until late in the production process. "There was a previous version of Ruhk's confrontation [with Zeb] that I just thought didn't really go anywhere, and it didn't play out right and it didn't feel special," he said. "It felt like something we'd always seen before, so we completely re-staged that portion of it."
Zeb vs. Ruhk
According to Filoni, the "Rebels" creative team wanted the show's final two episodes "to set things up with such a bang and really have the fans get the ending that they deserved, so everybody did a great job at being flexible and working hard to get the best possible ending we could." That meant re-tooling key moments to make them as good as they could be, Rukh's death included.
Rukh was introduced in "Star Wars Rebels" season 4 as Grand Admiral Thrawn's latest lackey. Hellbent on destroying the nascent Rebellion, Thrawn enlisted the Noghri assassin to track and then hunt down the Spectres Rebel cell as well as the Lothal resistance. He succeeded in capturing Hera Syndulla, the leader of the Spectres, which resulted in a rescue mission that led to the death of Kanan Jarrus. In the two-part finale, Rukh faced off against Garazeb Orrelios (aka Zeb) in the bowels of Lothal's shield generator. Things look dire until Zeb uses his feet to trap Rukh and chain him to the electric coils, jumping out right as the generator turns on and fries Rukh in the process.
This is but one of several fateful confrontations in the "Rebels" finale, which also included Thrawn's big defeat (an event that kickstarts the plot of "Ahsoka"), Ezra facing off against Emperor Palpatine, and much more. That even an otherwise forgettable character like Rukh would have his final scene retooled until it was just about perfect simply goes to show the care that went into crafting "Star Wars Rebels."
"Star Wars Rebels" is streaming on Disney+.