Hello there!
I’m back with another episode review for Star Wars Resistance. This is the second and final season of the third animated show in canon, focusing on Kazuda Xiono and his friends on the Colossus as they attempt to get away from the First Order and find the Resistance. These will take a very similar format to previously: an overview of the plot (so it goes without saying, there will be spoilers!), my thoughts on the episode and a few Moments in Canon – things I picked up on that linked to other stories or the larger galaxy as a whole. Today, I will be looking at episode 16: “No Place Safe”
Plot Summary
While giving the Aeosian queen a tour of the Colossus alongside Captain Doza, Yeager notices Kaz in the marketplace looking out to sea. Yeager goes over to see why he isn’t racing with the other Aces. Kaz tells him that he can no longer sit out the fight and that it is time for him to leave the Colossus and join back up with the Resistance.
“I think it’s time for me to leave the Colossus.”
Kaz contacts Norath Kev to arrange a rendezvous, planning to be with him within 2 rotations. When Kaz finishes speaking to Norath, he finds that Doza has come to wish him luck. Kaz tells Doza that he understands why Doza doesn’t want to join the fight, but that’s not who Kaz is. He tells Doza that he hopes Aeos Prime will be the safe haven the Colossus has been looking for.
On board Pyre’s Star Destroyer, Pyre orders a number of orbital probe droids to be dispersed, with hourly updates as they cannot overlook even the smallest detail if they want to find the Colossus. In the hangar, Rucklin speaks with Tam, who is frustrated at how they are being held back from flying.
“How can you just take off?! You’re an Ace! Aces stick together!”
Kaz packs and prepares to leave, saying his goodbyes to Neeku, Torra and Synara. Yeager tells Kaz that he can take the Fireball and tells him how proud he is of the person Kaz has become. The pair say their goodbyes and Kaz flies away to make his rendezvous. However as he is leaving atmosphere, he is picked up by one of the probe droids, which attacks him. He manages to take out the probe droid, but the Fireball is heavily damaged and left drifting, with CB-23 also losing power.
On Pyre’s Star Destroyer, the Fist Order receives a transmission from the probe droid, which includes an image of Kaz in the Fireball. Tierny notes that Aeos Prime was home to a race of Rebel collaborators. Pyre orders a course plotted to Aeos Prime and the pilots to their fighters.
Kaz manages to reroute the emergency power cells to jumpstart CB-23, who begins to fix the Fireball enough to fly it. Rather than continue to his rendezvous with Norath, Kaz returns to the Colossus to warn everyone that the First Order may be on their way. As he is giving this warning to Doza, Pyre’s Star Destroyer arrives and dispatches squadrons of TIE fighters and bombers. Doza begins the process of having the Colossus rise out of atmosphere to escape and scrambles the Aces to defend the station in the meantime. With the Fireball heavily damaged, Yeager lets Kaz take his racer to help the Aces. The Aeosian queen also promises Doza that her forces will help protect the Colossus while they escape.
“Soon, we’ll have control over the entire galaxy, and you and I will make our mark.”
The Aces and Aeosians have some success against the attacking TIEs, but the Aeosians are unable to continue helping once the Colossus rises out of range and the Star Destroyer is targeting the Colossus‘ engines. Kaz suggests attacking the Star Destroyer directly to buy the Colossus time and the Aces form up to attack, with more TIEs being launched to intercept them. Torra is in a TIE and seeing the aggressive move, realises that it must be Kaz leading the group rather than Yeager. Tam pursues Kaz and gets a target lock, Kaz fires a missile at the Star Destroyer’s bridge and Tam is forced to abandon her attack to take out the missile, causing damage to her TIE but not enough to stop her limping back to the hangar. The Aces return to the hangar and the Colossus jumps away just before they lose their shields.
Talking to Yeager, Kaz tells him that he thinks it was Tam who had a lock on him, and that he thinks she would have taken the shot had he not fired the missile. Yeager tells him that she turned her back on them, and they may have to do the same to her.
“I know you cared about her, we all did, but she made a choice, and she turned her back on us. I know you don’t want to hear this, but we’re gonna have to do the same to her.”
Back on the Star Destroyer, Tierny and Galek visit Tam in her quarters, telling her that she has been promoted to Second Squadron Commander for her skill and bravery.
Review
The string of good episodes continued, and I really liked this one! It’s just a shame that it took a couple of months to start getting consistently strong episodes.
“I truly hope this place will be the safe haven you’ve been looking for.”
While I liked this episode, I will start with a couple of quick negatives. First of all, it was very disappointing that after only reaching Aeos Prime in the last episode, we’ve already left there. I can’t help feel that the series would have benefited from the Colossus getting there earlier int he series and being based there for half of the season, then having some adventures either on the planet or sending people out to nearby systems. I also feel that Neeku was too over the top again in this episode, which was especially annoying as Kaz was clearly trying to deliver important news to Doza but getting cut off by Neeku’s hugs. Furthermore, this focus on Neeku’s goodbye meant that Torra’s felt somewhat small by comparison, and Synara didn’t even really get one. Maybe this episode would have benefited from being spread over 2 episodes, so that more time could be spent on Kaz’s decision to leave and his farewells, while not diminishing from the rest of the episode. My final little thing here is just the odd decision to air this on the same day as “The New World” as they did not feel like they were explicitly connected. If 2 episodes needed airing on the same day, I would have thought that it would have been better to do this with “The Missing Agent” and “Breakout“.
Other than that, though, I really enjoyed this episode. The dogfight may have been my favourite of the entire series, with the Aces now looking like accomplished combat pilots and working well with the Aeosians in a similar (but more realistic) way to the Ewoks helping in the Battle of Endor, while having Tam finally involved in one of the dogfights is something I’ve been hoping for for ages and it was great to also see First Order TIE bombers, the first time we have seen them on screen. The score during this scene was also great and really added to the moment.
“You’ve changed a lot since you first got here, Kazuda. You’re not the awkward kid that came here with Poe. I’m proud of you.”
Kaz’s farewell with Yeager was a very poignant scene and I think that they did a great job with adding in a little bit of comedy with Bucket’s protectiveness for the Fireball. Though he still has his goofy moments, Kaz has developed a long way from the first ever episode and it was great to see Yeager really being that father figure, especially when you look back to the early days when the pair couldn’t connect. I also really liked the return of Norath as Kaz’s contact in the Resistance as it would have felt a little jarring for Poe to suddenly appear as a contact at this point.
The one interesting thing now will be Tam’s future. I have been expecting her to leave the First Order, but seeing her come so close to shooting Kaz and sacrificing herself for the First Order leadership has left me wondering if (with just 3 episodes left) we may actually see her stay with the First Order. I think that we will still see her turn back to the good side, but I really hope that it does not feel rushed.
“My father would prefer that I don’t get involved, but that’s just not who I am.”
A few final thoughts:
- With this being such a large-scale dogfight and so close to the end of the series, I was almost expecting one of the Aces to be killed, and was unsure how I felt as I still don’t feel that we’ve got to know them well enough to be fully invested in them outside of Torra and maybe Hype
- I really wish that Tam’s loyalty to the First Order appeared to be more than just the chance to fly
- It will be interesting to see if there are any consequences to the Aeosians helping the Colossus, though I doubt it considering that would probably be too dark for the main age demographic
Moments in Canon
- Kaz and Norath’s rendezvous was said to be near Batuu, home of Black Spire Outpost (Galaxy’s Edge)
- The First Order has secured the major systems in the galaxy
What did you think about the episode?
Thanks for reading. May the Force be with you…
The Canon Padawan 