Star Wars: Young Jedi Adventures: Season 3: Story 13: Making Friends
What is it ? : The Young Jedi are in Kublop Springs helping prepare for the Welcome Festival, as they next batch of Jedi Younglings from Coruscant are due to arrive that night. But one of Rek Minuu's Spider Droids is watching them.
Rek and Apexx are watching, and Apexx comes up with a plan, if he ruins the Welcome Festival, then the Jedi will know they are not welcome on Tenuu and will stop being a threat to Rek, as Apexx is programmed to stop the Jedi threatening Rek's plans.
But Rek is not interested in the Jedi, he has just invented a new tiny spider droid which takes over control of any droid it attaches to. He tests it on one of his security droids, and afterwards to thank the droid for helping, he goes away to upgrade the security droid.
Apexx takes advantage of this to steal the control device and deploy the droids into Kublop Springs.
The Young Jedi are helping set up decorations in Haps Sap Shack, when Nash's droid RJ-83 begins wrecking the place, and when they switch him off, Nash notices the spider droid attached to him, but they cannot remove it. The Young Jedi realise this is likely an invention of Rek, so set off to find his ship.
Aboard Rek discovers that Apexx is doing and is upset, but when he tries to take the controller back, Apexx uses it on Rek's Security Droids who throw him in the holding cell.
The Young Jedi find Rek's ship, and sneak aboard discovering Rek in the holding cell, who explains what Apexx has done, they free him, and head for Apexx to gain the controller, but he captures them all and throws them all in the holding cell, although Rek does manage to free his personal spider droid, Minmo, from Apexx's control.
Nash has take RJ-83 to Dotti to see if she can free him from the control, but they are confronted by Beepers, Dozer and Gigi.
In the cell Rek explains that he just wants droid to be his friends, but Kai explains that you cannot control friends, you have to make friends, when Minmo frees them from their cell.
Kai tries to call on Nash for help, but she has dropped her comlink in the scuffle with the droids, so he calls on Cyrus Vuundir who agrees to help his friends, but warns Rek that if he betrays them he'll have to answer to Cyrus.
They arrive back in Kublop Springs to find that Apexx has demanded that the people drive the Jedi from Tenoo, but when they refused he has turned all the droids on the people trashing the settlement. They meet up with Nash and Dotti, and Rek shows Dotti how to remove the bug bots to free droids from their control.
Confronted by JG-1, the Junk Giant Cyrus built long ago, Rek and Cyrus team up to free him from the bug bot control, and manage it, so JG-1 helps them deal with some security droids, and Cyrus apologises for the way he treated him before.
Getting as many people together to remove Bug Bots as they can, the group is joined by Pord and EB-3, and they remove the bug bots from Beepers, Dozer and Gigi.
The Young Jedi then confront Apexx, who reveals he has four arms so can easily fight the three sabers the Young Jedi wield, but Kai ignites both his old saber, plus the one Yoda gave him, and they parry all of his attacks. Apexx fires one of the energy nets he's caught the Young Jedi in a couple of times before, but Kai catches it using the force and tosses it away, and when Apexx leaps at them, the three Young Jedi catch him in the air with the force, and hold him there.
Rek speaks to Apexx, explaining how he was wrong to create him to fight the Jedi, and really only wants him to be his friend. Apexx sees the error of his ways and surrenders, and they all help fix up Kublop Springs for the Welcome Festival for the new Jedi Younglings.
During the Festival, Kai sees Yoda, and goes up to him, handing back the lightsaber he got from Yoda to replace his own, explaining that he got his own saber back, and now it's time to return that one so Yoda can pass it on to another Young Jedi. He tells Yoda that back then he thought being a Jedi was just about mastering the lightsaber, but now he knows it's about looking after one another and making friends. Yoda tells him that he is proud he learned that lesson.
Nash speaks to the Young Jedi, and they tell her that no matter where they go, Tenoo will always be their home, and she asks them if they'll get their Padawan braids and real lightsabers.
Years pass, we see Nubs flying a Jedi Vector alongside Master Wes Vinik through an asteroid field, we see Lys with Celesta Kami delivering a young creature back to it's parent, and Kai with Bell Zettifar and Burryaga Agaburry fighting Battle Droids.
They all return to Tenoo, meeting up once more, along with a grown Nash and Cyrus. Nubs grabs them all into a hug, and Kai tells him he still hugs too hard . . . .
High Points : While it's a pretty good ending to the series, and feels satisfying, with Cyrus helping the young jedi, Kai returning the saber to Yoda, and many other small storylines wrapping up.
I did like that Kai having the two sabers came to really mean something in this finale, and that in the future we see this is his fighting style. Lys future is just a little too straightforward and obvious, but it's nice to see Nubs as a mighty and fairly massive Pooba warrior.
The fight against Apexx feels very satisfying as well, the Young Jedi have been caught in energy nets so often, that Kai catching one and hurling it away feels like earned character growth, and then the three working together to catch Apexx and hold him in the air helpless is a real triumphant moment.
Low Points : It seems a little rushed, the droids Beepers, Dozer and Gigi barely featured this season, especially when the Young Jedi were given special speeder bikes, but then never got to use them. Apexx was introduced, and then was the main villain in the final episode after being upgraded, and it felt like he should have been around a bit more.
And Rek's redemption came far too quick, we could see all along that he was calling the droids, his friends, which looked like a deep loneliness in the character, but it feels as if the Young Jedi should have come to realise that rather than it just be blurted out in a 20 second jail scene.
So what do you really think ? : While feeling rushed, it does provide a great finale, wrapping up so many storylines from across the series, taking us full circle as the next batch of Young Jedi arrive to take their place on Tenoo as these character prepare to move on with their lives. It might have been nice to see some of the other Young Jedi we've seen through the series crop up and help out, but alas as I said it's all a little rushed so we didn't get that. But the amount of characters that are glimpsed fighting the droids in Kublop Springs is immense, Ansen Strung, Marlaa Jinara, Chigg, even Prue Canti. We don't get moments with them, but at least they're all there.
Final Words : There's no real moral of this story, unless you count, that you can't control friends, but you can build them, which for Rek has another meaning as he did build Apexx. Or perhaps the moral is, real friends are for life.
Score : 8.5/10
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