STAR WARS REBELS - "Imperial Supercommandos" - Having lost contact with the Protectors of Concord Dawn, Sabine, Ezra and Fenn Rau investigate but find the base has been taken over by Imperial Mandalorians. This episode of Star Wars Rebels airs Saturday, November 05 (8:30 - 9:00 P.M. EDT) on Disney XD. (Lucasfilm via Getty Images) EZRA, SABINE

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Of all the Jedi in Star Wars canon, Ezra Bridger just might be the greatest. What are the major reasons for this bold claim?

Among all of the great stories we have in Star Wars canon, whether film, novel, comic, or animated series, there may not be a greater Jedi than Ezra Bridger.

Wait, what?

Ezra is certainly not the longest tenured Jedi. He wasn’t labeled the chosen one and he wasn’t the last hope in the galaxy. He may not have had the greatest teacher (although Kanan Jarrus, a survivor of Order 66, is not a bad mentor at all).

Ezra doesn’t even have big screen time.

One of the main characters of the animated series Star Wars: Rebels went from “street rat” on his home planet of Lothal to the key to unlocking the World Between Worlds in one of the most memorable moments in Star Wars storytelling.

What makes Ezra such a great Jedi? First and foremost, Ezra had the purest motives of any Jedi in canon. By pure, I don’t mean that Ezra was a saint, either. Ezra, with no reason to trust anyone as a self-proclaimed ‘survivor’, had to choose the Jedi and he had to choose good versus evil with no structure of Jedi in place following Order 66.

Every single Jedi in Star Wars has some kind of ulterior motive, good or bad.

For Anakin, it was fulfilling this prophecy that he was the ‘chosen one’. After that, it was saving his beloved Padmé from death.

For Luke, it was the restoration of the Jedi in general, and a distinct family dynamic that has provided motivation for him (and every trilogy thus far) throughout.

For Rey, it’s again about discovering her identity and who her family is, and possibly reuniting with them if she can become powerful enough.

For others, if you’re a fan of Star Wars, you can pretty well figure it out.

In the prequels, everyone in the Jedi temple is there because of their force sensitivity and to be trained in the Jedi ways of the force, but there’s a ‘cap’ or a ‘limit’ to what they are capable of because they are only given the choice of stepping into the light side of the force.

They are also limited by their alliances and politics.

Many or most Jedi who were given opportunities to taste the dark side of the force opted to turn from the light entirely. Or, in the case of Ahsoka Tano, she was still good but decided to walk from the Jedi order because of their lack of trust.

It could be argued that Ezra was ‘chosen’ by the force looking back in hindsight at all of the things that happened when his path crossed with the crew of the Ghost on Lothal, but everything that led Ezra to become a Jedi came with a choice to go to the dark, or at least to pursue a selfish motive, or even to simply claim no allegiance to the Jedi at all and just be a force for good (like Ahsoka).

Ezra’s curiosity, his slight ignorance of the past and the history of the Jedi, and his original desire strictly to survive ultimately led him to make conscious decisions to follow the light rather than succumb to the temptation of the darkness or even selfishness.

Even Luke, the one who restored the Jedi in the first place, gave up on the Jedi and himself for many years after failing Kylo Ren and his new age of Jedi apprentices.

Speaking of, what happened to all the rest of his students? That’s a different story for a different day.

Ezra had countless opportunities to fall to the darkness. Remember his near apprenticeship with Darth Maul? How about when Palpatine flat out offered him the chance to return to his family?

Ezra had a number of opportunities to walk with key members of the Sith, past and present, and change allegiances.

Ezra overcame those situations consistently along with his temptation to be selfish, even when no one would have blamed him for it. He even says to Maul that he can’t use his anger because a Jedi is ‘never supposed to act out of emotion’ but he inherently learns that his emotions are his greatest strength.

Over the course of Rebels, Ezra learns to use his emotions to become more powerful than just about anybody. Palpatine senses his power and wants to use him to gain access to the World Between Worlds.

Think about that. Not even Palpatine has access, but Ezra does.

And when Ezra gains access to the World Between Worlds, he becomes the first Jedi we know of to physically go to this place where he can hear all of these voices from the past, iconic lines throughout Star Wars from Jedi past, present, and future.

While he’s in the World Between Worlds, we see that Ezra has the ability to manipulate the past, which is why Palpatine wanted access. Earlier in Rebels, Ahsoka is nearly killed by Darth Vader in a duel but ends up surviving and in the World Between Worlds episode, we find out why.

Ezra pulls her from certain death. Had Ezra not reached in and saved her, she would have died. He literally alters reality by saving someone from dying in a supernatural way.

He had no idea what he was doing at that moment when he acted out of emotion, but then he quickly figures out that he has opportunities to alter the past, including moments that caused him grief and sadness in the face of tragic loss. And then he’s faced with the choice of saving his mentor Kanan from dying, a scene fresh on his mind.

Considering this is the power Palpatine so desperately coveted and is also the exact reason Anakin pledged his soul to the dark side, the moment Ezra decides he can’t (won’t) save Kanan — not because he doesn’t want to but because he knows he can’t — he makes a decision that virtually no other Jedi makes.

He comes face to face with total power and deliberately makes the decision to decline it.

Not only that, but Ezra — the ‘street rat’ — then proceeds to save his own people (what other Jedi does this?) on Lothal and sacrifices himself while taking Thrawn deep into the unknown regions of space.

Ezra might not have been the greatest in combat. He may have had tunnel vision at times, but he consistently made the decision to reject the darkness or even selfish motives within him in order to strengthen his ability to do good.

And he learned the ways of the force extremely quickly, even at an age the Jedi council from the prequels would have deemed far too old.

Anakin couldn’t stay the course. Yoda was the leader of the Jedi while the Sith rose up right underneath him. He’s not entirely to blame for that, but it happened.

Ezra isn’t a Skywalker but in my opinion, he proved over the course of Rebels that he’s the greatest Jedi there is.