Video: You know, if there’s one place I did not expect Disney’s female-character-empowering Star Wars shorts to go, it was absolutely going to be the ethical treatment of prisoners. But here we are!
Image: Lucasfilm
“Imperial Feast” – excellent name, in hindsight – wants to sell you on the fact it sees Han and Star Wars Rebels‘ Hera Syndulla interacting for the first time (even if chronologically the two Alliance Generals are old comrades at this point) being set during the end of Return of the Jedi. But that isn’t the real draw.
Han meets Hera in Star Wars #ForcesOfDestiny: “Imperial Feast.” pic.twitter.com/rwEcDPNZb5
— Star Wars (@starwars) October 30, 2017
The real draw is it’s actually about Han trying to get some rations off Hera so he and Leia can bribe the Ewoks with them before they roast their Stormtrooper prisoners alive and eat them. These Ewoks aren’t messing around! I’m honestly surprised Forces of Destiny went there, even if it did so in a fairly jokey way, and spent more time with Hera and Han bantering than Leia’s presumably yelling “DON’T EAT PEOPLE” at a bunch of cutesy furball guerrilla fighters.
But man, this further reinforces the now-canonical fact that Ewoks served as therapy pets for Alliance soldiers after Endor is creepy as hell. How are you meant to be relaxed by a creature that, months beforehand, was totally OK with nibbling on their foes like they were an elaborately packaged boxed lunch!? Maybe that will be for another Star Wars story to answer.