Last week, we lamented the fact that Star Wars Rebels leans heavy on film and Clone Wars references, particularly with regard to guest stars. Fortunately, this week’s episode steps just a little bit further into the broader Star Wars mythology by taking a trip to the planet Concord Dawn, home of the Mandalorians. You know, the guys whose armor is worn by Jango and Boba Fett. But aside from a throwaway line that might have been a slight nod to Boba, “The Protector of Concord Dawn” focuses entirely on our band of intrepid Rebels for once.

This week, the crew of the Ghost is looking for new hyperspace lanes, and a potential route is available through Concord Dawn’s system. The problem is that the Mandalorians aren’t known to be friendly, so a small envoy of fighters–headed by Sabine and Hera–is sent to engage in talks with the Mandalorians. Unfortunately, their leader Fenn Rau remains loyal to the Empire, and after an enjoyable A-Wing vs. Mandalorian dogfight sequence, the Rebels escape with Hera badly injured.

The fledgling Rebellion is left in a difficult spot. They need these hyperspace routes, and the Mandalorians would make terrific allies against the Empire, but Fenn doesn’t appear to be willing to switch sides. Worse, the crew’s resident Mandalorian expert–Sabine–is pissed that Hera’s been injured. After deliberation, Kanan offers to go to Concord Dawn alone to try to negotiate with Fenn. However, on his way he’s discovered that Sabine has snuck aboard his ship.

It’s here that the show takes a curious turn, where Sabine–normally a spunkier member of the crew–takes an apparent turn for the darker. While Kanan seeks to peacefully persuade Fenn to switch loyalties from the Empire to the Rebellion, Sabine engages in open combat with his underlings and invokes the Mandalorian code: combat to the death in revenge for Fenn’s earlier injury of Hera.

This is all ultimately a ruse on Sabine’s part, with it really being a strategy to blow up the nearby Mandalorian fighters and separate Fenn from his goons, kidnap him, and bring him back to the Rebellion to forcibly get him to support the Rebel cause. It works, but it shows a bit of a nasty streak on her part where Kanan’s Jedi ways attempted to bring about a more peaceable solution. It’s possible that Kanan’s way would have failed, but we’ll ultimately never know for certain since Sabine’s plan kicked off before Kanan had the opportunity to fail. It works, so we’re left with an “it’s all good” kind of ending where Hera and Kanan lovingly approve of her proactiveness without considering the broader consequences of her endangering the mission. It’s not the first time this kind of rebellion within the Rebellion has happened–consider the team’s efforts to find the missing Kanan’s whereabouts against Hera’s orders last season–but we miss a chance for real character growth when we never see these little infractions go bad.

That aside, “The Protector of Concord Dawn” does have some fun action sequences and does bring the focus back on our cast. Next week’s episode apparently focuses on Zeb (who didn’t even have a part of note this week), so let’s hope this becomes a pattern in the few episodes we have left before the finale.

Other points of interest:

• This episode gives us our first look at the planet Concord Dawn in the new canon. In the old Expanded Universe, the planet was first identified as the homeworld of Boba Fett, and was tweaked after the release of Attack of the Clones to be Jango’s homeworld in the comic Jango Fett: Open Seasons. The official Star Wars story group recently recanonized it as Jango’s homeworld.
• Then again, it’s not a strict adaption of the EU. In the comics, Concord Dawn was a rural farming planet. Here, it’s another bleak, rocky world, which illustrates Rebels‘ unfortunate CGI limits. It seems like every planet besides Lothal is a bleak, rocky world on this show.
• Sabine mentions her mother as having been a member of Death Watch without further elaboration. It’s speculated that she’s the daughter of Rook Kast from the Darth Maul: Son of Dathomir comic, but this remains otherwise unanswered for now. But it’s nice to see some callbacks to Mandalorian culture from the Clone Wars cartoon.
• The Mandalorians refer to Sabine as a “bounty hunter” and assume she’s stolen her armor. This appears to be a nod to Boba Fett, who–as far as we know in the current canon–was never a Mandalorian himself. We applaud Rebels for avoiding the temptation to make this a Fett-centric episode.
• It looks like there’s nothing Hera can’t fly. Not only is she the pilot of the Ghost, but she’s now flown both a B-Wing and and in this episode, an A-Wing.
• Kanan mentions that he was at “the third Battle of Mygeeto” where he first encountered Fenn Rau. Mygeeto must have had a lot of battles, because that’s where Ki-Adi-Mundi was killed in Revenge of the Sith.