Breaking Ranks

Ezra goes undercover inside the Empire to retrieve information vital to an operation.

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Historical Connections

Behind Enemy Lines & Covert Operations

In Breaking Ranks, Ezra is revealed to be undercover, posing as a cadet at the Imperial Academy. His abilities as a Force-sensitive enable him to earn rewards that help him accomplish his mission of obtaining an encoder that contains information about the location of a Kyber crystal, which the Rebellion hopes to destroy.

Throughout military history, leaders have often used covert and clandestine operations in an effort to gain the upper hand over their enemy. Covert operations emphasize concealment of the operation’s sponsor rather than concealment of the operation itself. By nature, clandestine ops typically involve intelligence gathering, rather than destruction of enemy assets.

In Breaking Ranks, both tactics are used. Ezra finds himself in a clandestine mission because he has gone undercover to obtain an enemy secret. However, the information he retrieves about the Kyber crystal enables a surprise or covert attack by Hera and Kanan on the Imperial transport ships carrying the crystal. The successful op leaves the Imperials trying to discern how the Rebels learned of the crystal’s whereabouts.

Imperial Academy, Kyber Crystal, The Ghost, Galactic Empire, Ezra Bridger

• NY Times Lesson- Espionage Everywhere: Spying in the News and Popular Culture
• EDSITEment!- Soviet Espionage in America
• International Spy Museum- Lesson Plans & Activities
• International Spy Museum- 9/11: The Intelligence Angle
• CIA- Teacher Resources

Reflection for Breaking Ranks