Season one of Disney’s Star Wars Rebels is wonderful. So wonderful in fact that I was a tad bit worried that season two would end up slightly disappointing since it had such large shoes to fill. Happily I can say that within the first few minutes of the opening episode of season two those worries were quickly put to bed.

For those of you that haven’t caught on to Rebels yet I have to say it’s a must-watch for Star Wars fans. The show is cannon and takes places 14 years after the events of Episode III: Revenge of the Sith and five years before Episode IV: A New Hope. It’s similar to a lot of the franchise in that this particularly series follows a small group of Rebels attempting to do battle with the Galactic Empire. What makes Rebels so interesting is that this is still the fairly early stages of the Empire and they’re still in the process of gaining control over the galaxy. This doesn’t mean the Rebels are playing on even footing of course, they’re still a ragtag group consisting of misfits and outcasts, but it does make things a little less certain and a lot more interesting.

The first season of Rebels introduced us to our 5 main characters – Ezra, Kanan, Here, Sabine and Zeb – but it was more of a quick overview of each one. Yeah, we got to know little things about them, but the show never took a deep dive into the personality of each of them individually. This is because in season one virtually every episode features the team doing battle as a whole. All of this makes sense, of course. In season one the table was being set.

With an idea of what’s going on already established, season two gets to dig a little bit more into the rich backstories of characters and really let the world building take shape. There’s still plenty of episodes featuring the team as a whole fighting in epic battles, but a lot more time is spent giving characters their own episodes to shine. The show no longer has to make sure all 5 members of the Ghost crew get equal screen time per episode. Ezra, Sabine, Zeb, all get to go off on their own separate missions.

It’s that ability to create an entire universe in great detail and allow each character to have their shining moment that makes Rebels such a joy to watch. There’s a lot more freedom that allows the characters to breathe and grow organically in the television format that isn’t really available in the films, at least not to the same degree. And it’s not that stand alone episodes don’t further the overall story arc of the series, because they do, they just do so in a way that allows the focus from each episode to shift.

In addition to further building up pre-established characters from the first season, Rebels introduced a slew of new characters from all strokes of the galaxy, some of which Star Wars fans are very familiar with. The show stealer is without a doubt Darth Vader (James Earl Jones returning to do the voice!). Vader only appears in a handful of episodes but he is the primary villain out to capture and destroy our heroes. This is Vader at his darkest, his most sinister. There isn’t an ounce of good in this Vader.

The Blu-ray is fantastic. The 3D CGI animation and visual style inspired by the original Star Wars concept art by Ralph McQuarrie looks glorious. Before I got into the series I was actually a bit worried about how the animation would work out. Having CGI animation look this good for a television show is tricky business. There could easily be inconsistences from episode to episode with the timeframe to get things done, but thankfully that isn’t the case. Every episode is beautifully animated and the Blu-ray brings everything to life in a wonderful 1080p transfer.

The special features on season two aren’t as loaded as they are on season one, but there’s still plenty of bonus context to scratch your Star Wars itch. Much like season one, this season comes with all the Rebels Recon segments offering behind-the-scene looks at each episode. There’s a short, but really cool feature called Connection the Galaxy that lets the viewer know how Rebels connects with the rest of the Star Wars universe. And finally there is a little feature on the history between Vader and Ahsoka.

Star Wars Rebels is everything one could possibly want in a Star Wars television show. It’s fun and exciting but isn’t afraid to show the dark side of the force. I can’t recommend this enough and I cannot wait for season three!

Star Wars Rebels: Complete Season Two is available on Blu-ray from Disney now.