For those who have been missing Hondo Ohnaka and a bit of good old scavenging, The Wynkahthu Job was surely a good episode. For the rest probably not as great.
The Wynkahthu Job starts in the way we have seen so many times already during the first season. There’s a load of Imperial cargo open for the taking. The one to tip off the crew about it is none else than Ezra’s old “friend”. Accompanied by an even more unlikely associate, the crew eventually agrees to participate, given that proton bombs are part of the cargo.
Zeb is given the leading position on this mission, much to Ezra’s dislike. The rest of the episode runs according to the usual pattern, bickering – unforeseen trouble – resolution. It consists mostly of Ezra being mean to Zeb, Zeb taking full charge and putting the ungrateful associates in line, and including the revelation that Hondo is more of a scoundrel than we had thought. But we actually did think that, didn’t we.
I must say that I had hoped for more character development, given that plot-wise this episode was basically another filler. Ezra’s relationship to Hondo does not seem to really change, even though that seemed to be the premise. There are a couple of moments when the boy glares in Hondo’s direction disapprovingly, but no change of heart comes from it. Hondo himself shows a tiny little bit of a surprising character trait in the end – or rather a way to deal with things – but it is nothing worth pausing at. It rather seems that from Hondo’s point of view, his philosophy throughout the whole episode could be summed up in a tagline “ugly pigs are collateral damage”.
As for the plot, the proton bombs are in the best case a poor link to A New Hope, where the Rebellion uses them to attack and destroy the Death Star. So now we know where they come from. Okay, maybe there is some value in recalling the image of Hondo hanging from a crane in a storm whenever you see Luke firing his last shot. But then again, maybe not.
This episode was lighthearted, despite all the attempts at serious digging into questions of trust and friendship. It did not supply anything we haven’t seen before. I was not sure about characterisation, either, especially regarding the Ezra-Zeb relationship. After seeing Zeb stand up for Ezra after the messed-up job with Hondo at the beginning of the season, it seemed strange for Ezra to be so negative, even condescending to Zeb from the beginning here.
Let me be constructive here – so what could have been done better? Well, since we got such an unlikely company, maybe a bit more focus on the trust between the Rebels and the obviously bad criminals altogether. Less repeated pictures of two criminals tugging at the same crate and instead, one more scene where the crew discusses why in the name of the Force should we cooperate with those scoundrels. But I see, this is a show also for kids, not a two-hour psychology drama.
As a random episode, The Wynkahthu Job was decent and had its fun moments (Hondo, of course, was funny). But if you are in no hurry to watch everything immediately, this is the kind of episode one can save and watch together with another episode on some long winter evening.
