User blog:Brandon Rhea/Star Wars Celebration: Star Wars Rebels Panel Reaction

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending the panel for the cast of Star Wars Rebels. All of the main actors&mdash;Freddie Prinze Jr., Vanessa Marshall, Tiya Sircar, Taylor Gray, and Steve Blum&mdash;were in attendance, along with executive producers Dave Filoni and Simon Kinberg. The first half of the panel involved the cast discussing their love of Star Wars and their love of working on the show, but the real meat of it came in the second half when it was time to see the trailer for the show’s second season. That trailer is below:



After the trailer, the voices of Ahsoka Tano and the clone troopers&mdash;Ashley Eckstein and Dee Bradley Baker, respectively&mdash;took to the stage and talked about their experience moving on from Star Wars: The Clone Wars to Star Wars Rebels. Their characters, Ahsoka and the clones (including Captain Rex!), will be familiar to fans based on how they were during the Clone Wars, but will nonetheless still be older and more wizened from their experiences in the war.

Probably the coolest part of the trailer, and the one I'll focus on since everyone else can come to their own conclusions about the trailer, was the reveal of Captain Rex, Commander Wolffe, and other surviving clone troopers. The biggest question there, of course, was how those characters could have made it through Order 66 unscathed. After all, as revealed in "The Lost Missions" clone trooper arc, all clones had a bio-chip implanted into their heads that triggered Order 66 on command. That's the tragedy of the clones; despite all of their efforts to be individuals, there was a ticking time bomb in their heads that would instantly render them mindless drones of Darth Sidious.



So how did they avoid that? Filoni pointed to the episode "Orders," part of "The Lost Missions" arc, in which the clone trooper Fives discovers the Order 66 conspiracy&mdash;and tells both Captain Rex and Anakin Skywalker. Filoni said that those episodes are key to understanding how Rex and the others made it through Order 66. Just like in classic fairy tales, the truth is a powerful weapon that can break even the strongest of spells. We'll learn more moving forward, especially as Kanan Jarrus has to deal with clone troopers for the first time since Order 66.

Bryan Young of the Full of Sith Podcast also pointed out an interesting screengrab here:

RexRebelsScar

As you can see in the circles, the clones have scars on their heads, possibly from having cut out their bio-chips.

What did you think of the trailer? Any thoughts about Captain Rex and the other clones? Share your thoughts in the comments below!