Why I Love Star Wars: Resistance

Welcome back to my series “Why I love Star Wars”. This is a series that was inspired by reading Ken Napzok’s Why We Love Star Wars: The Great Moments That Built A Galaxy Far, Far Away, a countdown of the top 100 moments from Star Wars that made him love it all, including canon stories from every medium. As I was reading this book, I found myself thinking of some of my own favourite moments and wanted to discuss them.

While there are certainly some films that I do not like as much as others, every movie has some wonderful moments that I would always say outweigh the bad, so for that reason I wouldn’t say that I hate any of the Star Wars films. With the way that too much Star Wars talk has gone down a dark hole in recent years, hopefully reminding ourselves of the great moments and focusing on the positives will help the fandom recover.

Why I Love Star Wars:

Unlike in the book, I will not put the moments in any specific order (I do things like that enough in my Top 10s!) as the order would probably change on every viewing. With all the movies now covered, I have enjoyed doing these so much, I have chosen to carry this on to cover the series. Today I will be looking at Resistance

Now, I will start by saying that I really struggled with Resistance compared to Rebels and The Clone Wars, as I found it really targeted a younger audience and seemed rather aimless for much of the second season. However, even in a show that I found myself struggling to sit through for large swathes, I still managed to create a shortlist to pick my 5 moments from.

Beware: this will contain spoilers for the series!

Droid swap

From season 1 episode 17 “The Core Problem”

With BB-8 accompanying Kaz for much of the first season, but the show taking place close to The Force Awakens, we always knew that his time in the show was probably limited. With the introduction of fellow BB-unit CB-23 as Poe’s replacement for BB-8 while he was away, it became just a matter of time before she took BB-8’s place as Kaz’s partner.

It was fun seeing the pair start to appreciate each other the more time they spent on missions together with Kaz and Poe, and it eventually led to this lovely moment towards the end of “The Core Problem” where the pair had to switch fighters so that BB-8 could go off with Poe and CB-23 return to Castilon with Kaz. What followed was a beautiful moment as Poe’s X-wing and the Fireball flew inverted, allowing the droid to be propelled out of their sockets and across to the other ship. As if it wasn’t beautiful enough, the quick wave between the droids as they passed by each other was the perfect extra touch.

Monkey mayhem

From season 1 episode 7 “Signal From Sector Six”

Sometimes, I pick moments that are inspiring. Sometimes, I pick moments that are emotional. For this pick, it’s just a moment that just made me laugh out loud – and I’m still not even sure why I find it so funny.

As Kaz, Poe, BB-8 and CB-23 investigate an abandoned freighter, they come under bother from a group of Kowakian monkey lizards. These “monkeys” give our heroes all sorts of problems, including one managing to temporarily steal Poe’s blaster. The sequence is so childish butto the point that I can’t help but find myself laughing and being entertained, such as when BB-8 pulls one of the creatures off CB-23, spins around to build up momentum and throws it away, only for it to land right on the face of Kaz, who has only just detached another from his face.

My absolute favourite moment though is when Poe arrives and fires at the ceiling of the hallway to get everyone’s attention and scare the monkey lizards… only for one to drop from the ceiling dead from the blaster shot!

The Hosnian Cataclysm

From season 1 episode 20 “No Escape: Part 1”

star wars the force awakens hosnian cataclysm armitage hux phasma

star wars resistance s1e20 no escape part 1 armitage hux hosnian cataclysm

One of my issues with Resistance is that there were too few times the show went away from its more childish humour and low level of threat. The ending to “No Escape: Part 1” was one of those exceptions.

While sneaking around the Colossus (now controlled by the First Order), Kaz and Torra come across a group of stormtroopers massing to watch a holographic transmission. Quickly, we the fans recognise this to be Hux’s speech from The Force Awakens and along with Torra and Kaz – whose parent live on Hosnian Prime, something we are reminded of earlier in the episode – we can only watch as we Hux’s speech finishes and the transmission continues, showing the destruction of the Hosnian system by Starkiller Base.

It was an emotional gut-punch to end the episode and raise the stakes ahead of the season finale. I was hoping that this would be the point where the show started to grow up, similar to the Ghost crew’s first encounter with the Grand Inquisitor. Unfortunately that wasn’t the case, but it doesn’t take away from this moment.

Vonreg’s end

From season 1 episode 21 “No Escape: Part 2”

Though Commander Pyre and Agent Tierney slowly took over as the main villains in the latter stages of the season, he remained the big threat in the air – though that was somewhat limited by us never seeing him take out anyone of note.

After a number of skirmishes involving him and Kaz throughout the season – going as far back as the opening scene of the series – the season finale featured their climactic battle, which ended badly for the First Order ace. Kaz was a chore at times due to the way he was written as a clumsy fool, but he was at his best in the cockpit and seeing him weave his way through the Colossus to take out Vonreg before he could shoot down Yeager was a highlight.

Personally, I still feel that this would have been better had we seen Vonreg have some success in previous dogfights, while again I feel that the sow didn’t continue on from this moment, but it was still a great moment in an exciting season finale.

Leaving for Dantooine

From season 2 episode 17 “Rebuilding the Resistance”

When the show started, I was hoping to see a lot of great moments focusing on Resistance pilots during the Cold War. Unfortunately, we ended up not getting much of this, but this final moment from the penultimate episode was exactly the kind of content I had been hoping for.

In a short sequence, we get to see a group of Resistance pilots led by Venisa Doza, along with Kaz, Torra and Hype, getting into their ships and leaving the hangar for Dantooine. The interactions between the pilots before getting into their cockpits felt so natural, while the music as each pilot launched out of their hangar was great, made even better by the presence of X-Wings but also some more individual ships.

I just really wish that season 2 had included a lot more of this.

What are your favourite moments from Resistance?

Thanks for reading. May the Force be with you…