Jedi (Late) Night: Why Kanan’s Death Doesn’t Really Work

How Do Heroes Die?

Just like in life, nothing shakes the foundations of a story quite like death.

Death can serve as a meaningful turning point in a story, altering the course of the plot or even the theme and tone of the story entirely. Death is as integral to life as survival - everything comes to an end eventually, for better or for worse.

There’s a line from Guillermo Del Toro’s retelling of Pinocchio from 2022 where a blue sphinx that fulfils the role of Death in the movie tells the wooden boy:

While tragically true to life, in stories the life and death of characters are determined by the author. This means that a character's death can be executed to varying degrees, whether to shock, sadden or vindicate the course of a plot.

In that regard, a good character death is something that can often be hard to pull off, especially when it is a beloved character.

The Setup To The Episode

Episode 10 of Season 4 of Star Wars Rebels is titled “Jedi Night”, and centres around the Ghost Crew (the main heroes of the story. You know who they are if you’ve watched the show) trying to rescue their best pilot and pseudo-leader, Hera Syndulla, from Imperial capture.

The episode plays out in a very typical ‘rescue mission’ fashion (which will be discussed in greater detail later), ultimately culminating in a dramatic escape in which Kanan sacrifices himself in one of the most awe-inspiring, impressive, and heroic displays of Force power ever made by a Jedi of his calibre. 

The episode ends with Kanan engulfed in a fireball as his friends, his apprentice, and the love of his life flee into the night. The title card rolls, fading to white and raining ash, for the first time in the series’ runtime, marking a dramatic shift in the status quo, as now the main heroes have to figure out how to carry on without one of their centrepieces.

The episode that follows feels the full impact of these consequences and deals with the immediate fallout of losing a loved one, but we’ll save that discussion for later.

This scene is subjectively one of - if not THE MOST - iconic scenes in the entire series. A quick search of the scene on YouTube will immediately deliver a list of emotional, shocked and even heartbroken reactions from fans of the show, and for a good reason.

Kanan Jarrus (AKA Caleb Dume) is one of the most well-developed and meaningful characters in the entire show (so much so that they dedicated the opening of The Bad Batch’s first episode to showing series audiences his role in Order 66 where his character journey began). As such, killing him off was no small ask, as it inexplicably changes the power balance in the show. By this point in the series, not only has the Rebellion lost two of their most capable Jedi, but the Ghost Crew is also forced to carry on without one of their most experienced members - someone with actual war experience from his time as a commander during The Clone Wars.

Have I emphasised enough how big of a deal Kanan’s death is?

(Personally, if I were to rank the most iconic scenes in Rebels, Kanan’s death would sit uncontested at the #2 spot, just below Kenobi and Maul’s final duel and just above Ahsoka and Vader’s confrontation.)

This is why Kanan got such a dramatic send-off. Going out in a blaze of glory in the most Jedi way possible; protecting the ones he cares about. And in a poetic twist, the Force healed his eyesight so that he could look upon the face of the woman he loves one last time, just as he promised he would.

This scene is a brilliant capstone to Kanan’s character arc…

At least in isolation.

Kanan’s Force(d) Death

Choosing how a character dies is always a tough job for an author. The author's perception of the character doesn't always align with how readers perceive them. If an author opts for a demise that fails to do justice to the character or lacks respect, it risks alienating readers.

There has to be a sense of poetic justice in stories - good characters have good things happen to them, and vice versa for bad characters. This term was coined by the poet Thomas Rymer, and can be found in works by William Shakespeare. When discussing characters in Shakespeare, there’s often this common understanding that many of his characters “get what they deserve” in the end.

Romeo and Juliet die both tragically and comically after disregarding their familial duties for a few nights of passion and romance. In ‘Much Ado About Nothing’, the trickster Don John is exposed, amends are made and everyone lives happily ever after.

Star Wars fans frequently reference George Lucas' renowned quote, "It's like poetry, it rhymes," when discussing the themes, symbolism, and repetition within the saga. This connection likely stems from Lucas drawing heavily on story elements from Shakespearea.

This is part of what makes Kanan’s death work. A large part of Kanan’s identity as a hero - more specifically a Jedi Knight - is sacrifice. Sacrificing one’s own personal wants, needs and survival are ingrained in the Jedi’s dogma; it’s part of what makes them easy to identify as ‘the good guys’, so Kanan’s death is both satisfying to the theme and story behind his character.

In fandom discussions about characters, phrases like "x deserves better" or "the writers did x dirty" get thrown around alot, and the same is true for Kanan. Although Kanan won't have the chance to live happily ever after with Hera, witness Ezra's Jedi journey, or see the Empire's downfall, it's abundantly clear that Kanan’s friends wouldn’t have survived without his sacrifice.

Keeping all of this in mind, I still think that Kanan’s death felt forced.

Let's look at the rest of the episode.

The whole episode revolves around the Rebels’ plan and mission to rescue Hera. During this time, Kanan says his subtle goodbyes to Ezra and Sabine, knowing he might die to rescue Hera. This is fine, as it was foreshadowed by his encounter with the dimension-crossing Loth Wolf in the prior episode. After all, why wouldn’t Kanan take the time to say goodbye to his friends if he suspects his death may be pre-determined?

The problem lies in the pacing of the remainder of the episode, which maintains an overall lighthearted tone. While there are moments of tension during their infiltration and initial escape, the episode largely fails to take itself as seriously as it should.

On top of that is how the episode decided to turn Hera into constant comic relief due to a minor dosing of truth serum.

I mean, you’re going into a rescue mission understaffed and underhanded, and you already suspect that you might die. Why would you risk the lives of the rescue target - and your friends - by stopping to banter and reminisce on the past?

Sure, the argument could be made that the tone is this way because Rebels is, at its core, a children’s cartoon, but many other children's cartoons have handled darker topics better.

In Book 2 Episode 17 of Avatar: The Last Airbender - titled “Lake Laogai”, Aang and his friends find a lead on Aang’s missing sky-bison Appa through their one-time frenemy Jet. Jet is a masterclass in morally-grey characters - not just for children but across storytelling at large. Speaking from personal experience, I found equal reasons to sympathise with Jet as much as I did hate him. Which is why it comes as a shock when he’s killed near the end of the episode.

The scene leading up to Jet’s death is also expertly well done. The heroes are inside the secret base of the shadow government running Ba Sing Se. It’s creepy, dark, and there are rooms full of brainwashed women. It sets the tone for a high-stakes rescue mission while also finding time to include moments of levity.

Comparing ‘Lake Laogai’ to ‘Jedi Night,’ the tone is night and day despite having similar story beats

I’m not expecting a complete tonal shift in post-Kanan Rebels, but the show has a hard time taking itself seriously, even at pivotal points in the story. The ‘Filler’ episodes are especially guilty of this - and while often necessary to expand upon the worldbuilding, take a more lighthearted approach to the story through low-stakes plot and slapstick adventures.

One way the show could have kept the tension high was to make the audience feel like Kanan was in perpetual danger - that he could die at any moment. The audience already knows he’s going to die, they’ve seen the death flags for an episode and a half by this point. All they needed to do was show us the rocks in the water to get audience members on the edges of our seats.

An example that comes to mind is how Bodhi Rook (the Imperial pilot-turned-rebel in Rogue One) was taken out. During the Battle of Scarif, he was one of the few characters you could fear for his life. He was a pilot first and foremost, which meant that anytime he wasn’t behind the cockpit of a ship, he was plot-vulnerable. Furthermore, its made abundantly clear that he wasn’t much of a fighter, so to put him in the middle of an active warzone, and give him the difficult task of drawing a hardline connection to boost his ship’s radio, put him in a state of perpetual danger.

We all felt the relief when he was able to get back to the ship and send a signal to the rebel fleet in space, but that’s when the show decided to deal Bodhi a foul hand when a thermal detonator landed inside the ship’s bay - sealing not only Bodhi’s fate but the rest of Rogue One’s.

There are a lot of parallels that can be drawn between Kanan and Bodhi’s final missions, but what makes Bodhi’s stand out is that you don’t know if he’s going to make it or not (and no, the fact that Kanan is a Jedi has nothing to do with the plot armour the show writers draped over Kanan, The Clone Wars made it very clear that Jedi are just as mortal as any other frontline grunt).

Just imagine how much more pulse-racing the episode would have been if Kanan was perpetually hunted by Rukh, Thrawn or some other imposing villain figure (Death Troopers come to mind) throughout the episode, making it unclear if he would make it to Hera and get her to safety.

Then, in their quiet moment at the fuel depot, the audience is led to believe that Kanan and Hera will both survive the ordeal.

Only for Governor Pryce to show up in her walker.

The tonal dissonance in the show has always been a weak point for me - oscillating wildly between a compelling Star Wars show and a weekend cartoon for kids, but this is all easily forgivable because of what happens after.

The Follow-Up

Episodes 11 - 13 (titled Dume, Wolves and a Door, and A World Between Worlds, respectively) are some of the most hard-hitting episodes in all of Rebels and provide a satisfying conclusion to Kanan’s final arc, allowing the show to put him to rest with absolutely no need of a resurrection to tie up his character’s story.

(Episode 13 is particularly self-aware about this, using it as an opportunity to instead grow Ezra’s character.)

The episodes deal with the immediate fallout of Kanan’s death, with consequences for both the hero and the villain. In the very next episode, we see the surviving members of the Ghost crew go through different types of grief: Ezra seeks meaning and purpose in Kanan’s death and a direction forward, Sabine and Zeb decide to lash out and take their anger out on The Empire, while Hera and Chopper sink into mourning and depression.

These arcs are handled in…varying degrees of success. Still, as an exploration of grief in a “children’s cartoon”, it’s done surprisingly well - and all without bringing Kanan back as a Force Ghost (technically).

Even the villains don’t come out unscathed in this, with the cost of Kanan’s death on both Governor Pryce and Admiral Thrawn proving far more than the trouble it took to kill him.

All of this culminates in one of the most lore-important episodes in all of Star Wars: A World Between Worlds. In it, Ezra stumbles into what I refer to as a ‘Force Nexus’ where he can travel up and down the corridors of time, hearing and seeing events from across the Star Wars timeline.

In short, it’s a time travel room.

There, Ezra is guided by a Force Spirit in the form of an owl to pull Ahsoka out of the moment of her duel with Vader, creating a ripple-less divergence in the timeline (saving Ahsoka changes nothing in the events leading up to the episode, assuming she stayed in hiding all that time).

This shows Ezra that he has the power, here and now, to go back in time and fix his mistakes, and the one he immediately jumps to is Kanan’s sacrifice.

Ahsoka is quick to try to talk him down, suspecting something is up with the convenience and coincidence of it all, but Ezra is too determined to right his wrong to consider any alternatives.

That is, until Ahsoka reminds Ezra that by saving Kanan, he puts the rest of the Ghost crew at risk - himself included. While we don’t know enough about how time travel in the Star Wars universe works, ignoring the likelihood of a paradox this choice creates, this scene serves as a lesson to both Ezra and the viewers that death can set others on a different path - sometimes, maybe the one they were always meant to take.

These defining character developments and the lesson the show sets out to tell are why Kanan’s death is such a memorable and important plot point to the whole series and why it lingers in the hearts of so many Star Wars fans.

Plot Device or Plot-Derived?

I’ve been on both sides of the fence when it comes to the discussion on whether or not Star Wars has gotten better or worse since it was bought by Disney. I went from liking the sequels to finding them…messy and pitiful in a weird way.

The same could be said about my attitude towards Rebels. When I found out that Disney had effectively axed The Clone Wars in favour of a watered-down, ‘E For Everyone’ kids, I was ready to be disappointed. And for a while, that’s what Season 1 felt like.

But, like myself, the show matured over time and began to show some grit.

It pulled its punches just enough that moments like Vader v Ahsoka, Maul v Kenobi, and Kanan’s death were delivered emotionally.

Personally, Kanan’s death was always a certainty. From the moment he was introduced in the show’s first trailer, I knew the Imperial era would not be kind to him. The show injected enough lighthearted moments to give Kanan’s character some levity while never truly steering away from his backstory as a child soldier thrust into a war where every side wanted him dead.

Is it weird to say, then, that I was looking forward to his death?

Jedi survivors have always been a strong selling point for me in the Imperial era leading up to ‘A New Hope’. I’ve collected reading material for that era, like the ‘Coruscant Nights’ series, the Endgame graphic novel and several others, so it is safe to say that how these noble knights chose to live and die after the collapse of their order has always been a point of interest to me.

Looking back on it, Kanan Jarrus hits all the right notes. He has doubts, he has trauma, he finds joy in a new family, and ultimately, he is willing to give his life to protect it.

So why do I have so much trouble with the way the show decided to kill him that I put in the time to write an article about it?

Because Kanan deserved a perfect send-off. What we got was good, no doubt, but choosing to pace ‘Jedi Night’ like the sombre suicide mission Kanan knew it would be would have made it perfect.

Despite all of this, Kanan was still one of the best-handled characters in the show, right alongside Chopper, and is my personal pick for best character in the series, and I don’t think I’d have it any other way.