Elijah Wood of Lord of the Rings fame guest stars in Fuel for the Fire, the fourth episode of Star Wars Resistance.
He plays a hotshot young pilot who befriends Kaz Xiono and gets him into all sorts of trouble across the Collosus station. Soon enough, their friendship is revealed to be a ruse. There’s a whole lot of starship booster fuel that Yeager is holding on to for safekeeping and Wood’s Rucklin thinks that’s just the edge he needs to become a serious pilot aboard the station.
This episode of the show felt very much patterened after the old trope from Saturday morning cartoons where the cool kids come in and befriend the hero and the hero is completely taken in by it, but it turns out it was bad news for everyone. At the end, the hero learns who their real friends are and things go back to normal. It’s really standard, but it works very well in this context, especially given the intended viewing age of the show.
For his part, Wood brings a charming menace to it. He’s intensly likable at first but turns by the end and you can hear it in his voice. It’s not as pronounced as his turn as Frodo when he’s to take the ring for himself, it’s much more subtle. He did excellent voice work here and I hope we see Rucklin back at some point.
As far as the other thing I really liked about this episode is how it deepens the characters for us, particularly Yeager. I think that’s absolutely what this show needs. As Kaz is sneaking around in Yeager’s office, we see two holophotos of Yeager’s past: one at the Battle of Jakku, the other of his family on Batuu. Not only does it tie the galaxy together in an interesting way, but it gives us a window into Yeager that I’m not sure we had before. What happened to his family? Why is he out here on this platorm by himself? Are they grown and gone and his wife is dead? Is he an outcast? Do they not speak to him?
I want more answers about him. Star Wars is at its best, in my mind, when it’s giving us answers that lead to more questions and our trip through Yeager’s office was exactly that.
The action throughout the episode offered a lot of surprises, too, but it also led me to ask some questions. How does the racing on the station work? Do you have to sign up for races? Are races going on literally all the time? What does anyone do here? Do the pilot racers work as security as well? In the previous episode they all snapped to attention like military when the pirates were attacking. None of that seems to make any sense yet, and I’m hoping we’ll get to a point where it does sooner rather than later.
Despite some of those lingering questions, this episode was incredibly entertaining and might be my favorite of the season so far. It had a lot of fun elements and the gag about Kaz losing things off the side of the station made me laugh so much. I’m giving it a 7.5 out of 10.
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Season 1 Scorecard
- The Recruit (Parts 1 and 2) (7 of 10)
- The Triple Dark (7.5 of 10)
- Fuel For the Fire (7.5 of 10)
Season Average – 7.25 of 10