Summary
Star Wars Resistance Season 2 suggests a more mature, serious tone that the slapstick-y “Into the Unknown” doesn’t quite live up to, though the potential is there.
Here’s what I can say for certain: Star Wars Resistance Season 2 definitely has promise. With the Colossus floating dangerously through outer space, and most of its technology kaput, it’s vulnerable to the First Order. And the First Order has a new member: Tam (Suzie McGrath), who dons one of their signature black helmets in the final shot of “Into the Unknown” — not coincidentally the premiere’s best moment.
What I can also say for certain is that the show isn’t quite in a position to capitalize on that promise just yet. Star Wars Resistance Season 2, Episode 1, while managing to communicate that feeling of isolation and impending doom to some extent, still doesn’t have a handle on its characters and set-piece design. Nobody currently embroiled in this deadly situation seems overly concerned by it. And while “Into the Unknown” plays for a kind of horror-tinged vibe as a First Order droid pursues Kaz (Christopher Sean) and Neeku (Josh Brener) through the Colossus’s underbelly where gravity has been disabled, the action itself is mostly slapstick and silly.
I get it. Star Wars Resistance is still a family show, and it can’t go crazy with its tone — but it could at least choose a consistent one. While it has always skewed younger than both The Clone Wars and Rebels, the very fact “Into the Unknown” ended how it did suggests that the show is perfectly capable of darkening its storytelling. But it doesn’t seem willing to commit to that yet, which makes its scenes of Captain Phasma (Ellen Dubin) threatening her troops and Tam both ignoring the pleas of and taking up arms against her friends feel at odds with the laidback atmosphere onboard the Colossus, where nobody seems to have realized — with the possible exception of Captain Doza (Jason Hightower) — what kind of peril they’re in. Or perhaps they have realized and just don’t care, which is obviously worse.
Still, the potential is there. Star Wars Resistance Season 2, Episode 1 has that promising coda, and its setup is well-suited to a more mature narrative. Let’s just hope that the show commits to it rather than its final season going out with a whimper for all ages.
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