Hello there! Welcome to my latest review for Star Wars Resistance. It took me a few weeks to get into the show, but by the end of “The High Tower” I knew that I was in for the long haul and have decided to start writing about it. This post will be focusing on episode 9: “The Platform Classic”
Plot Summary
Captain Doza asks Yeager to come out of retirement to race in the Platform Classic. Yeager refuses, which Doza expected, so the captain then reveals that Yeager would be competing against famous racer Marcus Speedstar. Yeager reveals that Speedstar is his brother, but still refuses to race or speak to Speedstar.
“The answer’s still ‘no’. My racing days, like my days of dealing with him are over.”
Speedstar comes to Yeager’s garage to try talking with him, but Yeager still has no interest in his brother, who he says will do anything to get the fame he wants. After Speedstar leaves, Yeager explains to his crew that the brothers made an agreement not to race again. The crew comments that Speedstar must be the better racer provoke Yeager to go challenge Speedstar, expecting him to back out, however Speedstar agrees to race him in the Platform Classic as the Guavian Death Gang have just taken his mechanic Oplock as collateral until he pays the 20,000 credits he owes. Yeager is shocked that Speedstar accepted but as Kaz reminds him, he is now unable to back out.
Speedstar tries to speak with Yeager again to explain he needs to win to get Oplock back. Yeager does not pay attention but gives Speedstar his “best” mechanic (Kaz) to help him prepare. While working on his ship, Speedstar tells Kaz some of the details about his and Yeager’s history after the Rebellion, including some details of the incident that caused the brothers to split – an incident in a race where Speedstar used hyperfuel to try beating Yeager but caused them to crash and ruin everything.
“There, you’ve got my best mechanic.”
“Your best mechanic?”
“I didn’t say what he was best at.”
Right before the race, Kaz tries to convince Yeager to forgive Speedstar and reiterates the danger Oplock is in, however Yeager still refuses. The race begins and it is mainly a battle between Yeager and Speedstar throughout. As the race goes on, Speedstar continues to try convincing Yeager to let him win and tells him that he came to the Colossus for Yeager not the race. Yeager responds that he can never forgive Speedstar for what he did – the crash caused the death of Yeager’s family. Speedstar apologises and explains that he was initially to ashamed of himself to apologise but has been trying to ever since.
As they close on the final ring, Yeager is still leading but pulls away to let Speedstar win and use the prize money to pay off the Guavians. Before leaving the Colossus, the brothers begin to reconcile, Yeager saying that they are not good, but will be one day. After Speedstar has left, Yeager tells Kaz that he was right about the importance of forgiving people.
Review
While this hasn’t appeared to push the story forward as much as recent episodes, I think this was a good episode as it really expanded Yeager’s story and character. We have not really had much expansion of Yeager since the pilot other than the reveal he had a family in “Fuel for the Fire”. What I really like about this episode is that the episode does not end with the brothers being a happy family again but instead on the way to healing, which is much more realistic. It was a nice way to end the episode too with Yeager admitting that Kaz was right and it looks like the connection between the two of them has been growing nicely over the last couple of episodes to the point that I am becoming more convinced that Yeager will be more involved in Kaz’s mission as the season continues.
“Yeager! You know, you should forgive your brother, for… whatever he did.”
“You don’t know what you’re asking of me.”
I continue to think that the animation is at its best when we are seeing pilots flying so it was great to see the race being such a big part of the episode. The Aces were heavily marketed ahead of the show – just look at the image above which prominently features Torra Doza, who has barely featured, and the Aces’ ships – but this is still one of the few times we have seen them in action, so I really hope that Yeager’s return to racing in this episode is not considered a one-off but actually leads to more racing or interacting with the Aces moving forward.
While the general storyline over the season does not appear to have been pushed forward, I really liked the way that this episode contained nods to so many of the earlier episodes: “Fuel for the Fire” showed us the dangers of hyperfuel and hinted at Yeager’s past; “The Recruit” introduced the idea of being unable to back out of a race and we even got a moment showing the Chelidae from “The Children from Tehar” working on the platform during the race.
Moments in canon
- Marcus Speedstar is describe as a 3-time winner of the Five Sabers, a race that Han Solo was known to help oversee
- The New Republic military was downsized after they won the war with the Empire
- The Guavian Death Gang also featured in The Force Awakens, chasing down Han Solo as he owed them 50,000 credits
What did you think about the episode? Thanks for reading and May the Force be with you…
The Canon Padawan 