Summary
“Live Fire” contrasts the flying lessons of the Aces and the First Order pilots in a bang-average episode with a hokey teamwork makes the dream work point to prove.
Anyone clamouring for more of the Aces will find their wish granted in “Live Fire”, though despite finally getting around to delving into an aspect of the show that was always promised to be important but never quite became so, Star Wars Resistance Season 2, Episode 3 mostly uses the Colossus’s elite racers to make a hokey, played-out point about teamwork making the dream work and contrasting the lessons with those of the First Order.
It makes sense after the previous episode that Captain Doza (Jason Hightower) would want the Colossus crew to be more prepared for aerial combat, at least. He assigns Jared Yeager (Scott Lawrence) to the task since he has been underused this season and Kaz (Christopher Sean) as his training assistant since he’s the protagonist and has to be doing something, though “Live Fire” wisely reduces him to more of a supporting player so focus can be given to Hype Fazon (Donald Faison), Torra (Myrna Velasco) and the rest of the Aces.
This, on a character level at least, pays off in Star Wars Resistance Season 2, Episode 3. The cliquey patter of the Aces helps to exclude Kaz and his plot-mandated preferential treatment, and it’s refreshing to see other characters be genuinely sceptical and resentful of him, New Republic flight training or not. It’s also another way for lingering bitterness over Tam’s departure and the Colossus’s current predicament to manifest and gives a voice to those aboard the station who aren’t necessarily named core characters.
What lets “Live Fire” down is how clumsily this stuff is juxtaposed with Tam (Suzie McGrath) and Jace (Elijah Wood) learning to fly TIE fighters for the First Order. The Darwinian undercurrent is obviously incompatible with Tam’s team-first instincts, but the show, as ever, is too family-friendly to display the real ruthlessness of the First Order, so their ideology just seems a bit arbitrary. Despite some intriguing wrinkles about how the Aces have had their sense of normalcy and hierarchy turned topsy-turvy by circumstance, this is an episode that once again fails to really do much with the concept, instead boiling away the complexity in favour of a tried-and-true narrative arc. Not awful by any means, but something of a shame nonetheless.
For more recaps, reviews and original features covering the world of entertainment, why not follow us on Twitter and like our Facebook page?
