Part Eight: The Jedi, the Witch, and the Warlord
Season 1 Finale. Thoughts?
Edit: Also I’m declaring spoilers for all Star Wars content below. Ahsoka, Rebels, Clone Wars, Mando, etc.
It had its moments, but I think they do a lot of setup with weak pay-off. This leads to emotional stuntedness.
Morgan becomes a witch? Gets a cool sword too? I bet she’s gonna do some wild magic! … Oh it’s just a normal swordfight.
Her being left behind seemed to have an emotional beat. Then when Ahsoka meets up with her, there wasn’t really any emotion to be had in their face-off. Just throw in a few quips from Ahsoka like “Thrawn sacrificed you like he does all his pawns” and then Morgan could be all like “Lies! He gave me magicks!” and she’d do a scary spell on Ahsoka that makes her disadvantaged.
And imagine when Ahsoka is surrounded by stormtroopers and we get the Sabine fakeout, Morgan quips something like “look who was left behind now” only to get blindsided by Sabine who is armed with a tacky one-liner like “behind you!”
Idk, just give me emotion, please. Ahsoka was better than Kenobi on average, but I have to say Kenobi had a strong ending scene between Vader and Obi. That alone made the show hit like a truck.
Emotion is what sets Andor miles ahead. This same applies to the first season of Mandalorian for most part. Strong characters and powerful moments. That’s Star Wars, not a generic zero stakes hallway fight with stormtroopers.
Yeah it seems so weird that they keep introducing cool new swords into this show that wind up being just identical to a lightsaber.
It was a cool callback to the Clone Wars, but that also really begged for it to be used meaningfully. It’s just member berries if there’s no pay-off.
Spoilers for this episode below. My client doesn’t have spoiler tags so, I’m just warning everyone now.
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I hate cliffhanger endings to seasons, especially when we have no clue if/when we are getting another season. Also, Sabine couldn’t use the force at all, and them she used it once, and now she could throw Ezra super far? That didn’t really make much sense to me. I also think Rosario Dawson could use some practice with the choreography. She seems very bit stiff.
All in all, I really liked the show. I just didn’t think the finale was one of the stronger episodes. I hope they recast Baylan, because I’m way too interested in where his character is going for them to just say, “he died offscreen”
Re: Force jump-throwing.
First we have the obvious call back to Kanan and Ezra doing to same thing, so it makes sense Ezra is involved.
Second, while I do think Sabine learned a little quickly, it’s not super uncommon in times of peril for Force users to suddenly learn to control their abilities. For example Grogu vs the mudhorn, Din was about to die and boom, Grogu jumped in.
I also think it’s interesting that Kanan had difficulty training Sabine, even if it was just lightsaber training. Then later Ahsoka ultimately struggles to train Sabine. Sabine however doesn’t struggle with Ezra. She immediately has the confidence to throw him. Sabine and Ezra have a strong bond. I expect this will be explored in future seasons.
They need to bring in the sword fight choreographer from the prequels. I’m not impressed with Dawsons lightsaber handling or really anyone besides Balans, but probably cause his was pretty simple. We are getting season 2 and a movie for thrawn. Season 2 was written before the strikes.
I wasn’t super happy about the ending. Balan got robbed of any story, weird episode lengths, and fucking cliffhanger for 2-5 years. (I don’t mind a cliffhanger if it’s gonna be a year).
Honestly just give us 10 episodes of hour each. Waited a long time for this show and feel pretty meh about it. Story overall was ok, but even the other galaxy was like eh ok here’s a planet with Father and Son missing the daughter and Moraai. I’m being cynicle cause I expected more.
And! I’ll add! Stop with this introducing a character, give us a big build up of them and then don’t do anything. This happened with Cary Fisher in the sequels bringing her back and now Ray Stevens, and others who get introduced and then nothing but tidbits. Just fucking finish a story arc of a character. No one’s story was resolved this season besides Ezra and Thrawn and even then it was hey we found him now he’s home. The entire Hera trial was a waste, Jacen hearing the force did nothing besides confirm what we all already knew, Shin having 0 backstory and then told to fuck off. Like just finish a fucking story if you know the next season or movie is 2-3 years out.
Again sorry for the rant, just passionate about Ashoka and Filoni story telling and feeling like Disney is just playing with it.
Funny, the fight choreography between Ashoka and Baylan was a highlight of the show for me.
I loved the deliberate feeling to the fight. It felt more like the classic lightsaber fights. Closer to the samurai duels of old which those original fights were inspired by.
A major complaint I’ve had against Star Wars since the 90s was how flashy and acrobatic they made saber fights. It made them lose much of their weight.
Maybe that’s why it feels odd with the two sabers. When she had one against Elsbeth it looked more natural and same with Ezra and Sabine and Shin.
Maybe the dual wielding in the style of samurai makes it a little clunky
I think I can agree with that - Ashoka’s two sabers don’t really fit well with the more traditional samurai style combat as they are a relic of the 90s/00s gymnastic style fighting Star Wars had.
I just realized in the Ashoka/Baylan fight I was thinking of she only used one saber.
Going into this knowing so much was going to be left to discuss honesty made this episode better. I really don’t feel like we got a complete story arc this season and it was all set up for later.
That aside, I really enjoyed this episode and season as a whole.
I love seeing Night Sister magic, it’s a side of the force we haven’t explored much, especially in live action, so great to see it here. I’m sure Morgan is dead but I wouldn’t be against a little magic to keep her going in some other form in the future.
Thrawn was excellent, he feels so in control. It’s like Tarkin in A New Hope. He isn’t on the ground fighting, but he has complete control of his troops, he hovers over everything, cleverly guiding the battle to his advantage.
Obviously Ray Stevenson will be missed. Baylan and Shin are honestly the characters I’m most interested in and that is 100% due to the excellent excellent work of Stevenson. I assume he’ll need to be recast given the ending and I don’t envy whomever has to fill those shoes. I do wish we learned a bit more about them. As a Clone Wars watcher we got some hints, but a little more would have been nice.
Ultimately when this whole story is told I’m not going to mind this season being mostly set up. However I do think this season is going to be a hard sell to any casual fans, obviously I’m ok with that, but it does make me worry about the shows long term.
I’m just constantly disappointed by how much these shows choose style over substance. It’s like the writers picked a bunch of cool looking concept art and then left it to the intern to tie all the scenes together.
How does everyone know the map will lead to Thrawn?
Why does Thrawn send Baylan and Shin, probably his most valuable assets for fighting Jedi, into the wilderness with no plan to coordinate or communicate with them?
Why do the protagonists spend so much time shepherding the turtle people and then just abandon them?
Why doesn’t Thrawn send another pass of tie fighters to make sure the protagonists ship is fully disabled?
Why is it a ship equipped for orbital bombardment can’t do shit to running right underneath it?
Why weren’t the fucking doors closed?
Why did they only have two stormtroopers guarding the main entrance to their ship?
It’s just the laziest writing I’ve seen so far in one of these shows. A show doesn’t need to explain everything to you, but it’s tough to be invested in a story where there are no consistent rules and the characters actions often don’t make sense.
Overall I think Ashoka teeters on the border between good and just okay.
A lot of the pieces are there for an excellent story. All of the core characters are interesting and the acting is solid, but some of the story beats just feel off.
Part of it is definitely the pacing. Not many threads were resolved this season, and many were left as cliffhangers. This might work out in the long term but on its own this season just ends up feeling incomplete.
There’s three areas where I think the show could have been a lot better:
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Thrawn - I liked the portrayal of Thrawn, but his scale felt too small. Thrawn is at his best in large scale conflicts. I want to see him conquering planets and cleverly breaking supply lines, not sending a squad of useless stormtroopers against main characters who have impenetrable plot armor. Hopefully he is better utilized in his next appearances.
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Sabine - I’m pretty ambivalent to the idea of Sabine being a Jedi. I just feel like it is totally unnecessary; I already liked her character, and I think there’s a lot of unique things they could have done with her character, but now it feels like she has been relegated to retreading the same “I can’t teach them they are too old/dangerous” story we have already seen with Luke/Anakin/Rey.
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Ashoka - Weirdly Ashoka felt a little underdeveloped in her own show. She had her mini arc of dealing with her feelings about Anakin/Vader, which was definitely a highlight of the season. But otherwise, like Sabine, it feels like she was relegated to retreading standard Star Wars Jedi training issues. With her and Sabine now being stranded in the other galaxy I wish the show had better established a purpose for them and their future storyline with Baylan/Shin
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Having now watched all episodes of Ahsoka, I can sum up the show in one word: ponderous. Or perhaps: glacial. It is perhaps one of the most excruciatingly paced shows in modern memory. I seriously considered fast forwarding at least 3x throughout the finale. Its largely in the dialogue scenes which require massive pauses both between lines and oftentimes…within…them…as characters…(pace around)…express themselves.
Not since LOST have I been so irritated with characters’ reticence to pass along critical information. Ahsoka, Sabine, and Ezra have this big fight and then proceed to crawl towards the only ship that can transport them home with their little snail friends. When they ended up getting left behind, I cheered: of course you should be stuck on that stupid planet, you literally could not have taken longer. Sure, we need the tension of will they-won’t they, but seriously, you could have had them fly there and still generated that tension.
One particular sore point for me was Sabine suddenly–after trying and failing to even move a tiny cup with the force–grabbing lightsabers and launching her friend across an incredible gap. I love, love, love TLJ, and the amount of backlash Rey got for being a “Mary Sue” hurts my heart. Now, we have someone with no skill, no demonstrable talent, whom other characters repeatedly and openly berated for being a poor excuse for Jedi, doing some of the most incredible acrobatic feats with the Force. Its a literal deus ex machine: Sabine suddenly inherits God-like powers to be able to solve an unsolvable problem. It is totally unearned, out of left field, and frankly a little embarrassing (with Williams’ iconic force theme swelling, just begging me to exclaim “WOW! Isn’t the Force something?”).
As for the brilliant tactician, Thrawn should have been “show, don’t tell” but his brilliance is either alluded to based on actions that happened offscreen, or praised when he does the absolute obvious (like, you know, firing lasers at the rebels after they have crossed the giant plain and are almost at his door).
The zombie stormtroopers were …cool? I like the idea, the execution was fun and a little creepy, but then they all just stand around and watch Ahsoka and Morgan fight. At least have her use the force to push a few off the tower, or trap them behind a door and they only emerge was Sabine returns.
I watch Star Wars because it was and remains a huge part of my life and sparks my imagination in ways that other media still can’t. But I need to ask for more: better stories, told better, with more interesting characters who have actual arcs that play out and are not resolved in a line or two of dialogue or completely ignored in favor of future “payoff” (RIP Baylon). Filoni has repeatedly shown that he is not capable of telling compelling stories, but prefers instead the nodding wink of callbacks and an enamor with “world building.” Witches and wizards and ancient swords are all cool things, if they are used to propel the story. When they’re not, they become boring.
I give this episode, and Season 1, a straight D. Meandering, pandering, and ultimately meaningless. Imagine someone given the same budget with an actual story to tell…
Ahsoka = C+. Zahn’s novel trilogy it is not. Not even close in terms of quality or narrative. Not a single ‘wow’ or ‘woah’ moment. Some ‘that’s kinda cool’ moments. It has some good lightsaber action and Ahsoka and Baylon are cool characters but the show suffers from questionable plotting and dialogue, slow pacing, underutilization of Thrawn as an antagonist and a requirement to be familiar with Rebels to understand most of it. It would have been better as a 2–3 hour movie. At least Andor S2 is yet to come. Oh and…Zombie stormtroopers? Really?!?
We’ve had zombies in Star wars for a while now, was only a matter of time
It’s a shame the legends ones are called Death Troopers, although those were from a sith virus instead of night sister magick.
I think this is the third or fourth time we’ve seen night sister magick zombies
Don’t forget the zombie virus in that research station on Naboo
I still think it’s cheap. There are so many possibilities to go with in multiple galaxies with countless aliens. The undead thing is just so “non-Star Wars”.
Spoilers for the entire series
I think the show’s best was when Ahsoka was unconscious in the water, it was extreme fan service, but really the only part of the series that I couldn’t get enough of, that and the battle with Skoll leading up to Ahsoka’s fall. Other than when the Chimera comes out of the clouds and lands over the fortress, this show didn’t really have any wow moments, and I thought the ending fell a little flat.
I enjoyed it, but it wasn’t as good as I had hoped. I was also keeping my fingers crossed to see one Defender in hopes of getting a new Lego set, but no luck.
I enjoyed it. Is it amazing top tier TV? No. Does it have to be to be enjoyable? No.
