The heroes of Star Wars: Rebels are the Artful Dodger and your weed dealer

Chopper.
No, not the reindeer.

There's still no release date for Star Wars: Rebels but Lucas Animation has been steadily releasing information about the show's characters for the last few months. Their first announcement was of the series' main droid Chopper. He looks a bit like an orange R2-D2 model somebody built in their garage and has the acerbic personality to match. But aside from providing comic relief and being a jerk robot in the tradition of Aaron Stack and Marvin the Paranoid Android, Chopper doesn't really tell us much about what the dynamic of the show is going to be.

Thankfully the next two character reveals gave us a better idea of what this is going to be like narratively. So who are our protagonists? A Jedi with a surfer haircut and a 12-year-old con artist.

Okay, I kid. The characters do have some potential and they give some idea of how Rebels is going to work.

I'll elaborate below,

First the Jedi with the surfer haircut. His name is Kanan and the crew describe him as a "cowboy Jedi". Apparently he's been in hiding since Order 66 and has become more of a gun for hire. Voiced by former Fred from Scooby-Doo Freddie Prinze Jr., he's the leader of the rebel crew and is very sarcastic with a dark past. More of an anti-hero in the Han Solo mold. I get the sense that Kanan was a really young and inexperienced Jedi when Order 66 happened, his glib exterior hiding the pain of whatever he went through, so part of his character arc is going to be re-embracing his Jedi nature and the responsibility of leadership against the Empire. And yeah, as io9 said he does kind of look like a guy who sells pot.

Kanan, after selling some bad pot.

Brief aside, but this just bugs me. How many goddamn Jedi survived Order 66? The entire point of that sequence in Episode Three was to show Palpatine eliminating any opposition to his takeover. It was to happen quickly, taking the Jedi by surprise while they were still shocked that their troops turned on them. There was no time for them to react before the clone troopers shot them. I could understand a few high-ranking Jedi like Yoda feeling it coming through the Force and surviving, but it seems like every other story in the Expanded Universe is about some no-name Jedi who managed to go into hiding. It really paints the Army of the Republic as incompetent.

Anyway next up is Ezra, a street urchin from the planet Lothal, the show's main setting. This actually feels like a very natural character for this setting. Ezra is a pickpocket and I'm guessing orphan. That's a hard life to live even under a nice government but under the Empire it's even worse. So it makes sense that a character like Ezra would end up with people rebelling against them, for safety if nothing else. His arc seems like it's going to be more about moving past his own cynicism and becoming part of a larger group, having higher ideals than mere survival.

Ezra in a standard "Main Character" pose.

But to me the most interesting thing about Ezra, and the thing that will make his relationship with Kanan interesting, is his use of the Force. This is another element that comes from his living under the Empire. Back in the days of the Prequels, the Jedi would have whisked this kid away as a baby but now he grows up without guidance. Worse, it may make him even more of a target for the authorities. This isn't like Luke Skywalker having Obi-Wan show up and tell him he's special. This is a kid with strange powers he doesn't understand and seeing him come to terms with them has the potential to create an unique character in the Star Wars universe.

It's kind of obvious from the videos linked above that Kanan and Ezra are going to become Master and Apprentice and that could be very entertaining. I guessed Kanan was very inexperienced Jedi when he went into hiding and Ezra is in no way a traditional apprentice, neither really gets what their role is supposed to be. So I bet their apprenticeship will be more fluid and outside the box than the more traditional Jedi apprenticeship we saw with Anakin and Obi-Wan. I like this angle. It grounds the audience in a dynamic familiar to setting but provides a new take so they don't feel like they're seeing something rehashed.

Kanan and Ezra seem like they'll make good co-leads for the show. But with this setting, the Empire tightening its control over the galaxy and the birth of the Rebellion, I think there's a particular character type this show needs. A character who at first is excited about the prospect of the Empire coming to their planet. Maybe they're a bigot who has problems with certain people, or a naive soul who buys into their propaganda, or just someone who doesn't like their planet as it is. But then the Empire comes in, does their evil empire thing and the character realizes how wrong they were and joins up with the heroes. But only after they've already betrayed them to villains and made the situation worse of course.

Rebels looks to be a worthy successor to Clone Wars and these character reveals are encouraging. But with the focus being on a group of rebels on a beat-up spaceship (presumably) carrying out criminal enterprises while avoiding the agents of an oppressive government, is this just going to be Firefly but with Star Wars? Because I might be okay with that.