In "Breaking Ranks" (Rebels 1.6), Ezra Bridger goes undercover as a cadet at the Imperial Academy on Lothal. As part of his training, Ezra is lowered into a facility called "The Well." Inside the Well, Ezra competes against other cadets in a series of tests.
In terms of design and function, the Well recalls two locations from The Clone Wars: the Clone Trooper training room on Kamino and the Box on Serenno. All three are monochrome mechanical grids with automated obstacles that move in and out of the floors and walls, and the purpose of all three facilities is to test the people placed inside them.
The facility on Kamino is the place where the Republic army was trained; naturally, it is a precursor to the facility on Lothal where the Imperial army is trained. The name of "The Well" evokes a descent into watery depths, furthering the parallel with the ocean planet Kamino.
The training room on Kamino is meant to foster teamwork and create bonds of friendship and brotherhood between soldiers. In "Clone Cadets" (The Clone Wars 3.1), Jedi Master Shaak Ti counsels the members of the dysfunctional Domino Squad to work together, saying, "I am a Jedi, where the individual and the group are one and the same, much like you Clones... Solve your problems as a whole, not as individuals."
The Box is designed to test bounty hunters' abilities before Count Dooku enlists them in his dangerous plot to kidnap Chancellor Palpatine. In direct contrast to the training room on Kamino, it is a cutthroat environment in which every individual looks out for himself as part of a "barbaric contest." The Box is not meant to form bonds of friendship between the bounty hunters, but to lethally cull the weakest ones from the pack.
Although its function more closely resembles that of the training room on Kamino, the philosophy behind the Well on Lothal is more like the philosophy of the Box. Instead of teaching them to work together as a team, the Empire sets the cadets against each other in a competition that weeds out the strong from the weak, based on the belief that "There is no room for weakness in the Empire." As Imperial Commandant Cumberlayne Aresko says to the new recruits, "There is no friendship in war. The only thing that matters is victory: victory at any cost." Ironically, the Well is self-defeating, like many of the Empire's projects; friendship makes soldiers stronger, not weaker, and better enables them to achieve victory.
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Characters: Ezra Bridger
Shows: The Clone Wars / Rebels
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Concepts: ascent and descent / clones / friendship / power and weakness / teachers and students / training / war and peace / water
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