Suvudu Universe

Disney and Lucasfilm Animation released the latest Star Wars Rebels short, highlighting Garazeb “Zeb” Orrelios. Based on the Ralph McQuarrie concept art of Chewbacca, Zeb is part of a new species being introduced to the Star Wars universe known as the Lasat. His favorite hobbies include knocking Stormtrooper heads together and embarrassing the Imperials at every opportunity he gets.

Voiced by Steve Blum, Zeb’s accent is a mishmash of several different accents. Blum briefly talked about how he developed the voice for Zeb at San Diego Comic-Con with host Cherry Davis, “There was a list of five different possible accents that we could try. I just sort of squished them altogether into this amalgamation of different accents and partially because I can’t do a really great British accent.”

In “Entanglement,” a special Star Wars Rebels short, Zeb fails to meet with Kanan at a specified rendezvous point…and instead finds himself joyfully battling many, many stormtroopers.

Scheduled to premiere in October 2014 as a one-hour special telecast on Disney Channel, Star Wars Rebels will be followed by a series on Disney XD channels around the world.

Zeb’s power and agility over the Empire’s stormtroopers, combined with the back-and-forth conversation with rebel leader Kanan Jarrus (“Late-err, late-err!”), made for great laughs. In the end, Zeb revealed his true nature when the Ugnaught attempted to reward him with credits. Instead of taking the currency, he took the fruit as payment (and warmed my heart). Zeb also did this neat trick by crawling on the side of the TIE fighter. In the words of Darth Vader, I thought that was most impressive.

Elegance Liberty, who was a featured Star Wars fan artist on TWG, collected her thoughts about the character over at her appreciation blog for Zeb Orrelios. Make sure to check that out and stay tuned for the next short, entitled “Property of Ezra Bridger.”