'Star Wars: Young Jedi Adventures' Season 2, Part 2, Review
Image Source: StarWars.com
Young Jedi Adventures has followed a different release model to other Star Wars shows, dropping substantial blocks of episodes for both Seasons 1 and 2. The second batch of episodes, made up of Episodes 12 to 23 for Season 2, arrived March 19th, and on the whole, serves as a good wrap-up for the show. There is room for more Young Jedi Adventures in the future, but at the same time, if this was the final series of episodes, a number of questions remain unresolved, while some character and storytelling choices are a drawback.
WARNING: This review contains SPOILERS for Young Jedi Adventures Season 2.
Let’s start with the good of Young Jedi Adventures. As always, there were plenty of new side characters and creatures for our main cast to interact with, representing all sorts of canon alien species and analogs to real-world animal species. There were also some new villains and returning villains, whose defeat at the hands of the Jedi was as enjoyable to watch as their scheming. We even got a few new locations, but alongside this, continued expansion to the lore of Tenoo itself, at least in terms of flora and fauna.
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We should also praise the voice acting and storytelling for many of the characters seen this season. Our three main Younglings, Lys, Nubs, and Kai, were faced with new challenges and were seen to have learned from past experiences due to how they advised and guided others. Even newer characters like Wes Vinik showed the same growth. There were also some strong, intense emotions on display by various characters, with their actors handling that voice work incredibly well.
But now we come to two characters who had some issues. One of these was Raxlo, a former villain of the series who was gradually redeemed in previous episodes and who appeared in Episode 13 as an ally of the Jedi. However Episode 14, entitled “The Helpful Harvester/Lost Little Droid”, seems to confirm that the show’s stories must be sometimes told out of order since it depicted Raxlo as incredibly selfish and greedy, a stark and difficult to understand contrast with what had just been witnessed in Episode 13. If this is not the case, then Raxlo showed negative growth in this batch of episodes, and their status as an ally in the finale is confusing.
Image Source: StarWars.com
Another area of some difficulty was Prince Cyrus Vuundir, who was revealed to be the pirate Taborr at the end of Season 1 with his dual identity causing him issues in Season 2’s first batch of episodes. This batch starts out with the reveal to Kai, the other Jedi, and their allies, that the two are one in the same. Cyrus’ rejection of Kai trying to reach out near the end of Episode 12, after a mixed reaction to the discovery, came across as a bad choice due to what followed. When he later reappears in Episode 18, he says he has no remorse, lies to Kai, and humiliates him, without any trace of their previous friendship impacting his decisions despite Kai’s repeated efforts. While we get glimpses of his eyes, and see some conflict in his face, we also see his actions as being on the side of evil. After giving us direct hope and hints since Season 1 from figures like Master Yoda that Cyrus would be redeemed or changed, his lack of remorse and generally dismissive attitude once revealed deflates this element of this character significantly and dissipates a lot of hope resting with the character.
His story also has some of the smaller questions we still don’t have answers to. For instance, we have no idea how his parents react to the reveal of his double identity. We also don’t have firm answers on where and how Taborr met his crew, the droid EB-3 and Gamorrean Pord, making his absence for most of this batch of episodes feel like a missed opportunity. There are some other questions, like learning more about the pirate droid Blackbolt who played such a notable role in the first half of this season, yet who only appears in Episode 23 for this batch of episodes. Questions about Kaliah Kublop and her Jedi friend Master Staas Ragnabi from earlier this season are also left unanswered, leaving this reviewer hoping we get more of the series sometime in the near future.
Despite these issues, at the end of the day, this batch of episodes was a good send off to Young Jedi Adventures, if it is a send-off at all. The High Republic as a publishing initiative is coming to an end this summer, but no wording in announcements regarding the show indicate this is the last we’ve seen of it. But, the final episode this season did feel like a finale, full of action and character appearances that could suggest a closing chapter. If this is the end of the show, it ended on a great note, and we can only hope to see more of these characters in future Star Wars storytelling, regardless of the medium.
Rating: 8/10
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