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'Star Wars Resistance' Season 1, Episode 18 "The Core Problem": Poe Dameron Almost Blows The Whole Thing [SPOILER REVIEW]

The Disney Channel's Star Wars Resistance animated series has been on a collision course with the timeline of Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens ever since the show premiered this season. In this week's episode "The Core Problem," Kaz (Christopher Sean) and his friends on the Colossus find themselves smashed on the windshield of the events in the Star Wars films. Poe Dameron (voiced by Oscar Isaac) shows up to pick up BB-8 and take Kaz on one more rather ill-advised journey before Poe leaves on a fateful mission for General Organa (Carolyn Hennesy). Shields up! Spoilers will be raining down like blaster fire.

The first minute of "The Core Problem" was actually the trailer for the episode. Poe Dameron is back on the Colossus to gather BB-8 the day before a very important mission to Jakku for General Leia. Before Poe can head to Jakku, Kaz reveals the map he stole in last week's episode to Poe. Kaz thinks that the map shows that the First Order is gathering fuel and supplies for a fleet in unknown space. The Colossus is the closest refueling station to that region of unknown space, and Kaz thinks the First Order wants to occupy it in order to keep it out of the hands of the Resistance. Poe and Kaz decide to head out to unknown space to check it out with only their droids and their ships.

Let that sink in for a minute. The day before a vital mission for the Resistance – on behalf of General Leia herself – Poe Dameron sneaks onto a First Order-occupied station in order to get his droid. Then, Poe decides to take a young, inexperienced Resistance pilot into an area of unknown space thought to be inhabited by the First Order to see what is there. Kaz and Poe head out with no back-up, just their droids and their ships (one of which is so unreliable it is called "The Fireball'). I don't pretend to be a television show writer or a military strategist, but this seems like a horrible plan and a giant plot hole to me.

Kaz and Poe make it out to unknown space and find a star system that has been cored. As in, the star is no longer there and the core has been drilled out of all of the planets. Once again showing COPS -level poor judgment, Poe and Kaz fly blind through the middle of a cored planet, only to be caught in a gravity well and almost crash. On the other side, they land on a moon that has signs of a temple and a completely decimated population. Walking around the moon, the two pilots are spotted by a probe droid and destroy it, but not before it has called in the red trooper and a squad of tie fighters. Using the gravity well, Poe is able to lead Kaz out of the dogfight intact – but the situation could have been much worse.

Yes, we know throughout the episode that Poe and BB-8 survive, because The Force Awakens happens – and we know that Kaz doesn't die because the series will continue next week. However, that doesn't change the fact that this entire sojourn of Poe and Kaz seems like some of the worst strategic decision-making ever seen in Star Wars (I'm looking at you Krennic). Given Poe's mission, wouldn't it have made more sense for him to just transmit the intelligence he got from Kaz to the Resistance once Poe's X-Wing was beyond the First Order communications dampener? I've seen the movies, there are enough people in the Resistance for someone else to have checked it out!

In the end, Kaz and Poe escape the First Order fighter squadron. Lining their ships up cockpit-to-cockpit, the droids switch places: BB-8 flies to Poe's X-Wing while CB-23 flies to the Fireball. The scene is kind of cute, with a droid-to-droid version of a high-five right in the middle of the swap. With his new droid and new knowledge of the capabilities of the First Order, Kaz returns to the Colossus and has to act like nothing happened – and we still never learned how Poe and Kaz both managed to get aboard the Colossus unseen by First Order forces.

The episode was not bad. We can assume that the destruction we see in unknown space is from the First Order beta testing Starkiller Base. We also know that Poe is unlikely to head back to the Colossus for a very long time. The big question is, what happens next? How will the galactic scale events in the Star Wars film timeline play out on the smaller scale of the Colossus? What part will Kaz and his friends play in the Resistance efforts?

Luckily, we don't have long to wait before we start to get answers to these questions. The next episode of Disney Channel's Star Wars Resistance "The Disappeared" airs Sunday, February 24, at 10 p.m.

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