As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.
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Season 1
Part One: Master and Apprentice
- Seeing the normally adventurous Sabine isolating herself in her tower where she is clearly hurting from Ezra’s disappearance and suffers nightmares over it. While blowing off the ceremony comes off as funny at first it also shows her pushing everyone away.
- When Ahsoka says she has a lead on Thrawn's location, Hera protests that he died in the Liberation of Lothal. That's fine and well until you realize that she's been under the assumption that Ezra has been dead for years as well. While Ezra's final message was optimistic he'd come home one day, Hera evidently did the math and assumed her adoptive son had given his life for Lothal and his family, right after she'd lost Kanan.
- Ryder also honors Ezra for apparently giving his life to save his home, showing he also assumed the worst, which hurts especially because he was freed from prison by Ezra's parents. Ryder has been left to assume that Ezra shared the same fate as his parents.
- When Hera tries to make a friendly jab at Ahsoka over her being difficult for her master, Ahsoka laments how she walked away from Anakin, the Jedi order and Sabine. Showing how running away from her issues hurts her. It's even implied that she feels that her leaving the Order - even for the right reasons - led to Anakin's fall, making it worse is that her leaving did, in fact, contribute to that event.
- If you take a closer look at Huyang it implied that Ahsoka's departure also saddened him.
- With the indication that it was Ahsoka that cut off Sabine's training and left her, this would have meant that Sabine’s abandonment issues would have kicked in. Given everyone else that she's lost this would have been really hard on her, making her bitterness towards Ahsoka understandable.
Part Three: Time To Fly
- Knowing everything Mon Mothma sacrificed for the Rebellion, it's disheartening to see that even with her as the Chancellor of the New Republic, her administration is falling victim to the same rot and complacency that plagued the Galactic Republic and the Empire itself. Her Senate Committee is too stingy to even send a team to confirm Hera's well-founded suspicions, some of them didn't even fight in the war, and she's becoming aware of a growing threat of Imperial loyalists who want everything she fought so hard to take down to come back. And with the rest of the timeline known, Mothma's legacy will be tarnished by her demilitarizing the New Republic in a desperate attempt to prevent another Palpatine from rising, only to provide fertile ground for the First Order to rise and strike back.
- Hera finally loses her temper when Xiono spitefully says that he thinks Ezra is dead, just to bite back at her for humiliating him for not having participated in the war. The sad thing is that it works and helps further paint Hera as unreasonable to the already unconvinced Senate.
- When Jacen tells Hera that he also wants to be a Jedi like Sabine is trying to, Hera gets a sad smile on her face at the idea of her son following in his father's footsteps.
Part Four: Fallen Jedi
- For Rebels fans, it's a pretty hard Gut Punch when Baylan claims that Sabine's family died on Mandalore, most likely during the Night of a Thousand Tears, when Moff Gideon completely destroyed the surface of the planet.
- This episode's climax is the latest step of the Trauma Conga Line that is the life of Sabine Wren.
- At the start of Rebels she had been abandoned by her family after she spoke out against the weapon she created for the Empire, and it took years for her to reconnect with them and redeem herself in their eyes, only for her to be forced to watch as two members of her surrogate family, Kanan and Ezra, sacrificed themselves.
- Shortly after she reconnected with her original family, they were killed in the Great Purge, and she blames Ahsoka's lack of trust in her for their deaths. At the start of this series she's cut herself off from everyone. After being given a map to Ezra's possible location and managing to figure it out, she's then attacked and grievously wounded, with the map stolen from her in the process.
- She reconnects with Ahsoka nearly a decade after they had separated in the hopes that they can retrieve the map and bring Ezra back, and the two begin to repair their relationship, only for Ahsoka to ask Sabine to destroy it if the situation calls for it; shortly thereafter Sabine is forced to watch as Baylan throws Ahsoka off a cliff into the sea. Baylan then proceeds to press all of these buttons in an attempt to stop Sabine from destroying the map, and by the time he's done talking Sabine is on the verge of tears. She hands over the map after he promises not to harm her, only for her to be forced to watch as their hyperspace jump knocks past the Ghost, leaving what little family she has left in serious danger, while she is being brought to the man responsible for the death and sacrifice of the lost two of her surrogate family. Things are not looking good for Sabine.
- When Morgan successfully makes the jump, Jacen looks very distressed and tells Hera he feels bad. Not only is this unavoidable proof to Hera that, like it or not, Jacen is going to take after Kanan in some way; but it's also something she truly cannot help due to not being Force-sensitive. Her young son is in pain and there's nothing she can do to help him.
- While the reunion between Anakin and Ahsoka initially seems a happy moment, the final chords of the episode's score slip into the Imperial March, offering a hint that this seemingly happy meeting might not be what it first appears. . .
Part Five: Shadow Warrior
- When Hera finds Huyang he is holding Sabine's helmet sorrowfully saying how he asked Sabine and Ahsoka to stay together but they never listen. When he turns to Hera his eye optics look like he would be crying if he could.
- You could interpret "they never listen" as referring to Jedi in general, not just Ahsoka and Sabine. Huyang has spent thousands of years watching the Jedi younglings he trained grow up and die.
- The flashbacks really hammer home how much of a traumatizing experience the Clone Wars were for Ahsoka, being forced to fight and command soldiers (and feel guilt when things go wrong and they're sent to their deaths) while still a teenager.
- Ahsoka goes over to one of the wounded, possibly dying troopers whose face is covered up and places a hand on his arm to give him some comfort. The trooper silently, slowly places his hand on hers to return the gesture. Even facing death, this trooper just wanted to comfort his commander who he has nothing but loyalty and respect for, even when she has anything but that for herself. It gets even worse when you remember that if this clone survived, one day he would be robbed of his humanity by Palpatine and forced to carry out Order 66 against his will, and seek to kill the same girl he once shared a moment with.
- We get to see Anakin at the height of the Clone Wars, when he was struggling between the light and the dark. Torn between the Jedi call to defence and the Sith call to vengeance. We get to see Ahsoka mourning the hero he was and the monster he became.
- Anakin appears to struggle slightly to pull out of the Vader persona, suggesting whatever state he is in now is still not free from the pull the Dark Side always had with him.
- It's subtle, but it's implied that Anakin had spent that whole time after death looking back at all that he had done as a Jedi and a Sith until he finally accepts the legacy he had left behind, as both Anakin and Vader.
- Ahsoka becomes visibly solemn when she finds out that Baylan took Sabine beyond their reach.
- Hera is informed by Mon Mothma that as a result of her actions in going AWOL, the Senate Oversight Committee is considering stripping her of her command permanently, which shocks both Hera and Carson when they hear it. Hera is a highly respected war hero who endured many personal griefs and sacrifices in the course of fighting for the rebellion, yet now she is faced with losing it all as a result of trying to do the right thing.
Part Six: Far, Far Away
- Despite the happiness of Sabine's reunion with Ezra, she chooses to delay in telling him how she was able to find him. A sense of dread hangs over her on how he will react when he finds out that she gave Thrawn a way to return to their galaxy.
- Her last shot pretty much reinforces this, just the look on her face conveys all the uncertainty and fear that she felt when Ezra asked how she got there. She probably doesn't even know how to start explaining everything. While Ezra might take it well, the fact that his sacrifice at the end of Rebels might be undone by Sabine just because she couldn't let him go might not sit too great with him.
- Ezra's demeanor briefly shakes when he snarks that "it worked, didn't it?", only to pause and ask with legitimate purpose, "didn't it?" He has had absolutely no way of knowing if his sacrifice did any good for almost a decade, and no way of knowing if his family and friends were able to pull through, let alone the state of the wider galaxy. Thankfully, Sabine at least confirms that Ezra's actions did work... at the time.
- Even her line on how she just wants a moment to be happy that she found him indicates that she hasn't been generally happy in a long time, and she doesn't want to lose that.
- The way Sabine treated her howler after it ran away from her fight with the locals is a clear reminder of how her life has been: First she was hung out to dry by her own family. Then she got a chance to be with them for a brief time until the Night of a Thousand Tears. Then she lost effectively her "dad" (Kanan) to the Empire and shortly afterward her close friend (Ezra) who went somewhere she couldn't follow. And then she was effectively abandoned by Ahsoka who was less than inclined to be her Master. And now, her mount ran off, leaving her to fend for herself against the nomads. It's obvious that whenever someone leaves her, she isn't in the best of moods to be forgiving.Sabine: YOU! You abandoned me!
Part Seven: Dreams and Madness
- Baylan leaves Shin. After she's defeated by Ahsoka, Sabine, and Ezra, and abandoned by her master and the night troopers, she looks lost and confused for a few moments.
- Baylan's facial expressions after Ashoka steals his ride could add to this. He clearly seems a bit conflicted, likely due to the fact that he knows Ashoka will go help Sabine and Ezra, thus Shin has no chance to win. He probably was even considering heading there to help, even if for a moment, but ultimately he decides that his plan (whatever it might be) is far more important than her. Either way, Shin is probably either a rageful mess or an alone and scared mess by the time she escapes the crew's sight.
Part Eight: The Jedi, the Witch, and the Warlord
- Hera's reaction upon seeing Ezra again is heartwarming, but his presence minus Ahsoka and Sabine likely has her already fearing the worst.
- Despite their best efforts, Sabine and Ahsoka are stuck on Peridea, just like Ezra was. It's even worse when you think about the fact that Ezra will have to break the news to Hera. The thing is, Ezra lost Ahsoka once, now he lost her again.
- While Shin has found the bandits, escaping the danger of death by exposure, she still looks lost and sad after being abandoned by her master and her allies.
