#captain kallus

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO KALLUS 🎉

"The day I betrayed your empire, Governor, was the day I finally stopped betraying myself" 😭

Away but not Apart

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Happy New Year everyone! i’ve been wanting to do this piece for a while, as sort of a response to 2020. Without a doubt the last year has been difficult, but despite everything I’ve found that in some ways I’ve been more connected with friends and family than I have been in previous years (even if that’s digitally over video call etc.) This gave me the idea of doing a post Season 4 Rebels crew, all keeping in touch despite having all gone their separate ways. You can’t tell me that Hera wouldn’t be raising Jacen without frequent calls to Aunty Sabine and Uncle Zeb (plus Uncle Kallus and Aunty ‘Soka)

So we all know the Ghost Crew were redesigned for season 3, but I’ve never looked closely at Zeb.

S1/S2: He’s wearing armour that, besides the slight paint job that was probably done by Sabine, holds no personalisation. It’s generic. It means nothing to him. He’s just a soldier. Now some of y’all might remember the baby hunting episode, where Zeb describes himself as ‘Garazeb Orrelios, honoured soldier, feared rebel... baby hunter.’ But follows it up with. ‘At least I’m good at one of those.’

He doesn’t think of himself as an honoured soldier, or a feared rebel. He doesn’t think of himself as anything. His armour means nothing and as far as he’s concerned, he does too.

But that slowly begins to change...

S3/S4: He learns that there’s more Lasat, he’s not the only one, and they remember him as a hero, not a coward. They rebellion welcome him, he gains friends, new people that don’t remember the tragedy that scarred him, he begins to change.

Then there’s Kallus, who’s always seen him as a bad guy, and yet, the man trusts him on instinct. He knows about Lasan. He was there. He saw Zeb’s failure and remembers it clearly, yet, he trusts him.

All these events combined, along with having Yavin VI as a home base, Zeb’s opinion of himself begins to change. Slowly, he becomes proud of his heritage again, of Lasan and Lira San.

He loses his armour, and wears his culture. He realises that everyone has their own traumas, that’s just the nature of being at war, and it doesn’t make him a bad person. He realises that the Ghost Crew love and need him. They never lost faith in him, they never felt betrayed and they never saw him as a failure. They see him as family.

Losing Kanan seals this.

The kids feel lost without their SpaceDad, so they turn to him for comfort. They see him as a big brother. They need him.

Eventually, despite the war and fear and trauma, Zeb forgives himself. He comes full circle.

He was never supposed to be a soldier, that wasn’t his job, he was supposed to be a protector.