I confess, at only six episodes in, I’m running out of meaningful things to say about the Ewoks cartoon. They keep adding new characters – at least, I think they do. I can’t tell all these hooded teddy bears apart. (Have we met Paploo before? Are we supposed to know who he is? Was his rivalry with Weechee previously established? Thank the Force for Wookieepedia.)
They also keep adding to the lore. Ewoks have a lot more responsibilities than Return of the Jedi led us to believe. In this episode we learn about the Tree of Light, which keeps the weather nice but more importantly keeps the evil Night Spirit from ruling the daytime. Once a year the tree starts to die and a group of Ewok men have to make the dangerous journey to the tree to sprinkle it with Life Dust to renew it.
Wicket wants to go on the quest, but he can’t because he’s too young. Kneesaa wants to go too, but she can’t because she’s a girl. So of course they sneak out of the village and follow anyway, inevitably saving the day, and the tree, from the evil Duloks. The episode’s message seems to be that they should have been allowed to go all along, and in Kneesaa’s case, yes, absolutely, let’s bring gender equality to Endor. I feel like Wicket’s on shakier ground – I don’t know that “children shouldn’t be allowed to go on life-threatening adventures” is a particularly unreasonable law.
I don’t intend for these posts to be just reviews, but sometimes there’s not much else to say about an episode but “it was good” or “it was bad.” It’s an 80s kids cartoon, not every episode’s going to shed light on the insidious dangers of capitalistic indoctrination, you know? So “The Tree of Light” is a decent episode, about as good as Ewoks gets (so far). There’s a quest – that’s always fun. There’s some great animation and inspired ideas – a vast chasm that can only be crossed by piloting floating trees as if they’re ships. And there’s a nice moral lesson – girls can do whatever boys can! And kids can do important things too (to spin Wicket’s contribution a little more positively)! Can you ask for more than that?
Yes. You can ask for way more than that. But this is the Ewoks cartoon, and you’re not going to get it. Let’s get back to Droids!
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Next: Droids S1E6 – “The New King” (1985)
