If we strictly limit Star Wars to the canon material, then we haven’t seen a lot of family dynamics. What we’ve gotten are either substitutes for family (the crew of the Ghost is a surrogate family, and Obi-Wan acts as a father to Anakin) or the effects of the family dynamic being broken. Ezra’s an orphan, Anakin and Padme never had a settled marriage, and even the new film shows Han, Leia, and Ben as a warring, estranged unit. So tonight’s episode of Rebels is nicely comforting in showing us that there are still some family units out there, even if they need a bit of repair work.

“Homecoming” concerns the growing Rebellion’s need for a permanent fighter base. A pretty dramatic opening space battle (one of the better ones we’ve seen all season) has the Rebel fleet’s A-wings being picked off too easily. The Rebellion determines that a mobile base might work in the form of a massive Imperial carrier. The problem? It’s located over Hera’s homeworld of Ryloth, where her father Cham Syndulla is leading an ongoing war against the Empire.

Ongoing viewers will recognize Cham from The Clone Wars animated series way back in that show’s first season. It’s been an open secret that Hera is Cham’s daughter, but “Homecoming” is the first episode to confirm it in-show. It’s a nice organic reference to the previous show, in contrast to the forcible insertion of other Clone Wars characters into the Rebels story.

Hera and Cham don’t exactly have a strong relationship, however. What could be a mutually beneficial operation to remove a major Imperial ship from Ryloth turns out to be a major sticking point. Hera wants to claim the ship as a mobile base, but Cham wants to destroy openly to rally the people. This turns out to be indicative of the larger split between father and daughter: after the Clone Wars, Cham devoted himself solely to the liberation of Ryloth, while Hera wanted to open herself to freeing the whole galaxy.

Cham temporarily agrees to join a ruse with Hera and the Ghost crew to sneak aboard the carrier in a stolen TIE Bomber and take control of the carrier. However, Cham quickly turns the tables by sabotaging the raid–he plans to blow up the carrier from within after all. We end up with dueling tensions as the crew not only need to contend with seizing the ship from the Empire, but also Hera’s dad as well.

Obviously, it all goes well. In the magic of 22 minutes, Hera persuades Cham that the war against the Empire is much bigger than Ryloth, and bigger victories await if he can expand beyond his one world. So unsurprisingly, the crew once again manages to pull off a last-minute escape, this time with a honkin’ huge carrier which will now house the Rebel fleet. And bonus, a fractured father-daughter relationship is restored, making it one of the few major ongoing parent-child relationships to be patched up that didn’t result in the father being thrown onto an Ewok funeral pyre a few minutes later.

The downside of the episode is, naturally, the rapidity at which Hera and Cham patch up. For characters who’ve been estranged for years, it’s silly to think that they could just patch up that quickly after one inspiring speech. But it’s television for kids, and so we have to accept that conversions like that are going to happen as quickly as Zeb’s religious epiphany two weeks back.

The upside is that we did get some very impressive space battles with some higher stakes than we’ve seen of late. The loss of two A-wings in the opening really did have a sense of loss to it, even if it’s generic pilots who took the hit. And the gun battle at the episode’s climax seemed to be an intentional callback to the Millennium Falcon’s escape from the Death Star, with a few pilots added for fun. “Homecoming” wasn’t particularly deep, but the fun factor managed to make up for that.

Additional points of discussion:

• We’re finally getting origin stories on the Ghost crew, this week obviously giving us much more on Hera. But it also gave us hints on Chopper, with a brief mention that Hera found him during the Clone Wars. Chopper never appeared in the novel A New Dawn which chronicled Hera and Kanan’s first meeting, so this needs to be reconciled when we finally get a full Chopper story.
• Hera takes on a very weird accent during one of her talks with Cham. I guess they’re trying to show her reverting to her upbringing, but it was downright weird.
• In addition to the space battles, we got some impressive use of the Force tonight. In a scene reminiscent of The Phantom Menace, Kanan and Ezra use the Force to move at superspeed, only in this case, it’s to propel each other through rapidly closing doors. This was fun.
• On the other hand, Ezra’s still got some learning to do. He figures out–after some effort–to use Force Hypnosis on an Imperial commander. His results are a little cocky, though.
• Lastly, Kanan became like a teenager on a first date when he meets Cham for the first time. Kanan/Hera shippers are going to love this moment; of course he’s going to act like a goofball when he meets his girlfriend’s dad. If Kanan/Hera is a thing, of course.

Rating: Four A-Wings out of Five.