Ahsoka finale: The season ends without accomplishing much of anything
This chapter of the Disney Plus series died as it lived: struggling to justify its existence
TV Reviews Ahsoka
Two of the very first scenes in this week’s Ahsoka—the last of the season, if not also the series—showcase exactly what I think was one of the crucial missteps of this show: With the mysterious cargo fully loaded into his Star Destroyer, Thrawn is ready to leave the new galaxy and go back to the old one. But first, he and the Great Mothers decide to bestow upon Morgan Elsbeth a gift as a reward for making all of this happen.
The Mothers do some magic, with a lot of green light and what the subtitles called “whooshing” (a word that doesn’t really lend itself to ominousness), and when they’re done, Elsbeth’s face is scary looking and she’s been given a flaming magical sword referred to as the “Blade Of Talzin”—with the music dramatically ramping up to indicate that, even if you don’t know what this thing is, it’s obviously supposed to be a big deal. Crucially, though, it is not explained.
In the very next scene, Ezra is onboard Ahsoka’s ship building a new lightsaber as they all lazily march toward Thrawn’s fortress with the herd of nomadic Noti. Huyang, an expert in lightsaber construction, is initially very critical of Ezra’s approach until he explains that he was taught how to build a lightsaber by his Jedi Master, Kanan Jarrus. That helps Huyang understand, because he taught all of the Jedi Padawan how to build lightsabers back at the Jedi Temple before the days of the Empire, and he briefly reminisces about Kanan being a shy and clever student before presenting Ezra with a lightsaber piece that matches part of Kanan’s lightsaber.
But Rebels fans who know Kanan Jarrus (the father of Hera’s son from earlier in this show) will recall that Kanan isn’t his real name. Until Order 66 came through and the surviving Jedi went into hiding, he was Caleb Dume—which is the name Huyang would’ve known him by when he was a kid. It’s not a big deal— in fact it doesn’t matter at all to the plot, but in the span of a few minutes, Ahsoka is expecting you to recognize what the Blade Of Talzin is and ignore the fact that Huyang knows Kanan by the wrong name. It’s not all that different from Sabine and Ahsoka having a big falling out that happens entirely offscreen and is only off-handedly explained in this episode.
Up until now, this has explicitly been a show just for the people who will catch those things, who know the relationships between these characters as they were established in Rebels and Clone Wars, and I think that’s fine. The Clone Wars fans are some of the most dedicated fans that Star Wars has, since they stuck with the franchise post-prequels and all the way up through Disney’s takeover. But shouldn’t those people deserve something better than this? If you were really excited to see Captain Rex in live-action for five seconds a few weeks ago, then hey, that’s cool. But I think that’s ultimately all Ahsoka ever really had to offer.
I’m not even sure it’s worth breaking down the plot from this episode, because there was so little of it, but that’s why I’m here: Thrawn sends some TIE fighters to delay Ahsoka and the good guys, and with her ship temporarily downed, she joins Sabine and Ezra on a full-frontal assault of Thrawn’s fortress. He sends a bunch of Night Troopers to stall them further, and after Ahsoka gently reminds Sabine that she’s better with her blasters than a lightsaber, the trio kills a couple dozen bad guys with minimal effort.
Until the Great Mothers start doing some magic and the Night Troopers are resurrected as zombies! Everybody saw this coming as soon as Thrawn’s army was introduced, but I will say it was at least pretty cool in practice. I liked that the revived Night Troopers seemed mindless at first and then progressively became more Stormtrooper-like, and the shots of the heroes getting swarmed by a ton of Troopers in that narrow staircase were pretty neat.
Ahsoka eventually runs into Elsbeth and sends Sabine and Ezra ahead to catch the Star Destroyer before it can leave, and Elsbeth just lets them go. (The whole plan was to delay them, but whatever.) Ahsoka and Elsbeth fight while Ezra and Sabine battle some zombie Death Troopers, during which Sabine manages to use the Force to call her lightsaber to her hand. After all that, the Star Destroyer is basically gone, and Sabine convinces Ezra to use the Force to launch himself as far as he can and then she’ll use the Force (since she’s an expert now) to push him the rest of the way. He makes it, but before Sabine can join him with the same trick, Ahsoka arrives and is getting swarmed by zombies. Sabine stays behind to help her and they kill Elsbeth, then Huyang arrives with Ahsoka’s ship but they’re not fast enough to catch Thrawn, who taunts Ahsoka by talking about how similar she is to Anakin and then hyperspace jumps back to the regular galaxy.
So, Good Guys lose. Ezra made it out, but Sabine and Ahsoka are now trapped in the other galaxy forever—though neither of them seem too upset about it. Ahsoka says they’re where they need to be and that it’s “time to move on,” and…okay? Not exactly a compelling “end” to their story, but that’s it. Sabine senses something, and we later see Anakin’s Force Ghost watching over them, so that’s nice.
The episode ends with a montage of what everybody is up to: Thrawn is looking over his mysterious cargo (probably a zombie army, but we still have no idea), Ezra is reunited with Hera, Shin has joined the raiders on Peridea (even though she was supposed to rejoin Thrawn), and Baylan (wearing more capes than he was before) stands atop a big stone carving of an old man and then…doesn’t do anything.
Absolutely nothing about Shin and Baylan, two compellingly mysterious characters introduced in this series (the only two new characters introduced in this series?) was resolved, and it might not ever be resolved since Ray Stevenson died. The statue was of “The Father,” an ancient Force thing from Clone Wars that isn’t worth explaining here because the show didn’t bother explaining it, which just takes me back to my earlier point. They showed a thing from deep in the Star Wars canon without any sense of what it means in the context of this story, and if that’s good enough for you, then I’m happy for you. But I think it’s silly, and after eight hours or so of this show, it’s hard to feel like it’s much more than a big waste of time.
Or maybe it just feels exactly like what it actually is: a setup for Dave Filoni’s big movie that will tie together all of the storylines from these Disney+ shows (except for Andor, the good one). Ahsoka was the first one of these shows to have some version of an opening crawl, so maybe it should’ve had an ending one as well? It’s like the series was telling us, “Very little was accomplished here, but don’t worry: It will all eventually be addressed someday in a movie.” If you’re not setting out to tell a satisfying and complete story, you might as well acknowledge it.
Stray observations
- Maybe I’m wrong about the Kanan/Caleb thing, or maybe Lucasfilm figured it would be less confusing if Huyang just called the guy by the name more people know, but I don’t think he was ever even mentioned on this show before this point. So that conversation was just for Rebels fans, and Rebels fans are the ones who would know he changed his name!
- Thrawn’s whole plan to deal with the Good Guys was to basically give them busywork and stall them until he was ready to leave and could just abandon them on this planet, but as soon as he’s done loading his still-unexplained cargo into the Star Destroyer, he says “nah, let’s send soldiers after them.” If he wanted to kill them, he could’ve tried earlier.
- There’s even a moment where he justifies his refusal to underestimate Ahsoka by saying that his plans were foiled by a single Jedi once before, but he’s literally talking about Ezra there, and he spent 10 years or so letting Ezra live on this planet. Why didn’t he do anything until the last possible moment? This is the Empire’s strategic mastermind?
- Remember when Ahsoka and Sabine killed a guy who had a lightsaber and then just turned to dust? And they all reacted like it was a new thing but nobody ever talked about it again? Was everything that happened on this show just a dream?
- Would I have been more or less forgiving of all of this if Disney hadn’t announced Dave Filoni’s crossover movie already? I’m thinking more, if only because then it would’ve been more of a surprise just how little is resolved here.
- Either way, what a total, across-the-board bummer of a series.
287 Comments
I sure am gonna miss all the weird contact lenses in this show’s thumbnails.
Yeah, after watching the entire series it is extremely obvious this wasn’t made for me (someone who has watched none of the animated Star Wars adventures). All the points made here apply as there were so many moments set up as EPIC moments that had no effect on me. I guess the question would be why did I watch this show? Well, Ahsoka seemed like a pretty interesting character from her brief appearances in the other live-action series and I generally am a fan of most things Star Wars. But between the lore that was never explained, the absolutely ridiculous strategic moves by both sides, and more than too many heart-to-heart conversations at the strangest times, the series just didn’t do it for me. I’ll be interested to see if Disney foots the bill for a movie at this point because after this series there may be a lot of casual Star Wars fans who stay home.
You sound like me in that I used to consider myself a “Star Wars fan” in that I watched the shit out of the original trilogy and dutifully sat through all the other theatrical releases, with varying degrees of diminished excitement. I’ve caught random episodes of the cartoons though not in order and I can’t even keep track of how many different cartoon series there are; as for the live action shows I’ve watched most of Mandalorian but haven’t bothered to finish it, and have caught a scattering of episodes from other shows. If you asked me about Star Wars, I’d tell you about Luke being a farm boy and Han being a scoundrel and Lea being a princess (but a badass princess!) and Chewie being a loyal sasquatch and Vader being evil and R2 and 3PO being the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern droids of the series. I’d shout out light sabers and X wings and The Force. I might even mention Boba Fett or the cantina or Lando or Old Ben. And that’s pretty much it. It would realistically be a 5-10 minute discussion. Now though, there’s a different tier of fan. They may not even consider you or are me as “real” fans. Or they more likely don’t think about us at all. In any case, this show sounds like fan service meant to be injected directly into their veins. References to epic expanded universe characters from cartoons, video games, books, etc. Even the primary Star Wars narrative is essentially all self-reverential anyway, but Ahsoka I guess is the deepest of deep cuts, like a live recording of The Pete Best Combo playing “I Don’t Want to Spoil the Party”.
Now though, there’s a different tier of fan. They may not even consider you or are me as “real” fans. This tier of fan always existed. And while it sounds I’m much less of a fan than you, I know I’m not a real die hard fan… What makes you think it’s unfair to call someone who admits to not having watched over half of the Star Wars content a lower tier of fan?
i liked rebels a lot and i just couldn’t bring myself to care about this one. thrawn looks so corny in live action. i’m so tired of prequels to prequels to prequels. push things forward. do something. the best part of star wars used to be seeing things you’d never seen before, now the appeal seems to be seeing stuff from star wars.
“the best part of star wars used to be seeing things you’d never seen
before, now the appeal seems to be seeing stuff from star wars.”This hasn’t been true since 1984.
Even the sequels didn’t offer us much that was new: same planet destroying weapons, same Dark/Light dichotomy, same Emperor. The newest thing we got was “They fly now.”
they didn’t do much, but they did give us new characters and new time period.after watching 3 movies they went ‘eh don’t worry about that, don’t you wanna know what happened after return of the jedi?’ and it’s like ‘didn’t i just watch 3 movies about what happened after return of the jedi?’
Counterpoint: There was a fair amount of new stuff going on in The Last Jedi. And everyone hated that.People keep watching expecting to feel exactly how they felt when they watched their first Star War. And you can’t do that and make something new. You either make something new and people hate it. Or you repeat things and people complain.
One of the most basic things they say about writing is you can only have a character be as smart as the writers writing it. Thrawn is supposed to be a military genius, but if the writers do not know how to convey that, this is what you get.
Ahsoka is the least-watched show of this era. We’re talking lower than Andor numbers according to Forbes.So it’s not that Star Wars, in general, isn’t for you. It’s that there is a specific Star Wars fan that has insisted they are the heart of Star Wars. Disney has not been able to leverage their love of the universe and its disparate parts into something that holds audience attention no matter how hard they try to pivot into nostalgia.And when they ACTUALLY manage to make something people want to watch (see: the actual Star Wars movies, Obi-Wan Kenobi), the fandom loses their minds and acts like this isn’t real Star Wars and that they’re ruining the franchise.So we have Andor (which is great), a pristine and amazing show that Star Wars fans complain isn’t really Star Wars and which got low viewership. Now we have Ahsoka, which is kind of mid, and which Star Wars fans insist is the real Star Wars and which has even lower viewership than Andor ever had.So the standard bearers of “real” Star Wars have member berried themselves into cultural oblivion while claiming the 6 billion dollar movie franchises are the REAL enemy and which no one is actually watching. (And that… is how you get a cult.)
Ray Stevenson’s death really does complicate matters for storytelling. I suppose they’ll try to use a CGI stand-in like with Tarkin and Carrie Fisher in Rogue One?
Not to come off as insensitive, but I don’t think it would be that difficult to recast the character. Stevenson isn’t particularly unique looking (get Liev Scheiber or someone) and his character’s story likely needs a lot more than just a few scenes to complete his arc.
“his character’s story likely needs a lot more than just a few scenes to complete his arc.”
With Filoni’s storytelling pace, it will take 5 seasons and 3 movies.
Not only that, they could just put a mask on him.
Liev Scheiber, Clive Owen, Russell Crowe, Dougray Scott and probably a dozen others could play that role.
Stevenson is great in this, but it’s not like it’s a cultural milestone like Boseman was.Recast
CliveOwen is a great choice
Liev Scheiber is another great choice. I’d also accept Dominic Purcell, he does a lot of genre TV shows so he’d probably sign on.
I don’t see how Boseman is a cultural milestone. He played the Black Panther in one full movie and a part of another, he was really good but there are other black actors that could’ve played the role just as well. It’s not like Black Panther was even the first movie with a black superhero, that would’ve been the movie Blade with Wesley Snipes.
I’m not going to argue that one. All I’ll argue is that Stevenson is nowhere near one and can be recast.
I suppose he could be, there is a lot of good talent that can carry the character the way he did. I still think that the looks will be an issue though. This isn’t Dumbledore where a massive set of facial hair can hide so much.
Lots of people can play any role just as well, just not the same way as well. And Boseman is in 4 movies as Black Panther, not two.
I think they could have even recast Black Panther, if they were willing to wait a while for people to grieve a little longer. Not that Bosewick wasn’t very charismatic, I just think we’d seen little enough of the character that someone else could have filled the role.
I suspect that if “Black Panther” wasn’t already established as a mantle passed down to other people, they would have recast him.
Why were they slowly flying Ahsoka’s ship along with the turtle people?!? The turtle people weren’t trying to leave, this is their home. There is no reason, other than to stall for the plot, that Ahsoka and crew didn’t just get on the ship and fly to the Star Destroyer.I didn’t hate watching this episode, because I kept thinking something big was going to happen, but now that it’s over I’ve got to say it was disappointing. And I like when the bad guys win. Everything that happened here was so inconsequential.
It ends on such a down note. I mean, that’s what life is, a series of down endings. All “Jedi” had was a bunch of Muppets.
Why were they slowly flying Ahsoka’s ship along with the turtle people?!? I thought they were repairing the ship—since they hit that minefield upon arrival and then Huyang spent the rest of last week’s episode being chased by Morgan’s fighter wing. Huyang says something like “the ship is ready” just as Thrawn’s TIEs ambush them.
I was OK with the ship limping along while it was being repaired until it’s attacked and Ahsoka and Co. then blaze away on the dog/horse things. Like, couldn’t you have left the droid and turtle people to fix the ship while you ran ahead to try to thwart Thrawn? That was my big problem. You had a much faster mode of transportation at your disposal and you didn’t use it for some unknown reason. That didn’t make any sense to me.
Because bad writing.
They absolutely have to recast Baylan now. Seems like there’s a trend in modern movies where if the actor dies or gets too old or whatever, then the character goes with it. That character is just written off and barely mentioned again (or if they do appear, its CGI). Buck that trend and find another actor. Baylan is interesting and they clearly had more planned for the future. Don’t scrap all of that just because Ray Stevenson sadly passed away.
Heck, you can recast him and never even show his face, since SW is full of dudes with helmets and masks and such on.
Seems like there’s a trend in modern movies where if the actor dies or gets too old or whatever, then the character goes with it.You contradicted yourself by specifically listing them not doing it (through CGI) as an example of them doing it.The trend isn’t real. Chadwick Boseman is the exception because people saw a story-relevant way to escort his character from the story and make room for more characters because he’d already been in five movies and he stops being Black Panther in the comics. People who are hyperfocused on this one man as standing in for every black superhero who has ever existed (despite being the fourth black superhero to arrive in his own film universe) made this an imaginary trend.
This show lost me when the galactic government didn’t think it was a good idea to chase after a bunch of treacherous thieves who tried to assassinate a general and stole the equivalent of 6 aircraft carrier power plants, and that general couldn’t put together a coherent argument to chase them that wasn’t about the Galactic Boogeyman. When it turned out the Galactic Boogeyman was just Some Blue Guy with a Project Management certification and a pocket full of zombies, there was no further down to go. I’m glad the Rebels fans got their sequel series, but what a waste of time and talent.
I would describe rosario dawson’s character in this series as “gently senile grandma”
“and it might not ever be resolved since Ray Stevenson died.”Yeah, I could see this one coming. So, just to be clear about this again, NO ONE knew that he was going to die. This season was created with the full expectation that he would be able to come back and they didn’t need to completely wrap up his story. This is the exact same bullshit we got about how What If should have given Chadwick Boseman a better final story.
It is fair to say that no one knew he was going to die, however, it doesn’t mean they were justified in the writing for the character so poorly. He stood around the whole season vaguley monologuing and randomly appearing in fight scenes. Whether Stevenson lived or died, good storytelling would have given us more explanation to him being there.
I think Stevenson did know he was going to die and took the job to prank fans.
You have to admire that kind of commitment to the bit.
Kaufman-esque.
And yet, despite all of those complaints being 100% fair, somehow Stevenson remains the most compelling aspect of the whole show.
Not really no, Ahsoka was sold as a mini series. Instead it was a sequel to a children’s TV show and also the intro of a new story.
It’s a dumb and disappointing show.
It was absolutely sold as a sequel to Rebels. I’m sorry you dislike it because it uses characters from a ‘children’s TV show’.Protip: Star Wars is a story about simplistic good vs. evil and magic space wizards, it’s all ‘children’s’ media.
“it was sold as a sequel to rebels”No it was not, I never saw any mention of that until reviewers started to talk about the problem of needing to know about rebels to understand the show. The marketing before the show came out never mentioned anything about rebels.Star wars is for every ages, so I understand that it needs to be accessible to children. But I was expecting for ahsoka to be a step up from a children’s tv show.While visually it was, the writing wasn’t.
Star wars is primarily, first and foremost, for children. Sorry to break that to you. Andor is one of the few direct exceptions to that. Everything week just has been trying (unsuccessfully) to bridge the gap between children and adults for the last 30 years.
A children’s show with zombies, ghosts, politics, and the threat of galactic war? Lots of violence and murder, and constant (attempts at) dramatic tension.No, it isn’t for children. It was always approachable for children.
Star Wars is very much not “First and foremost, for children”The OT was very much an examination if fascism and imperialism when it comes to Britain and America, with the colonisation expansion and the Vietnam war, respectfully. The prequels were a rumination on the rise of fascism through apathy and malaise. That kids could find something in it to be excited about; lasers and spaceships has never made it for children.
lol
Yes it was, I don’t know how you missed that but you obviously did.“Star wars is for every ages, so I understand that it needs to be
accessible to children. But I was expecting for ahsoka to be a step up
from a children’s tv show.”I honestly don’t think you even watched Rebels. Did you watch Rebels? Because it’s definitely ‘for every ages’, not just for children.
Show me one piece of marketing released before the show mentioning rebels.I think you’re the one mixing things up because you’re too caught up in your love for star wars. You probably read and saw so many stuff that you think everybody had and should have the same knowledge that you have about this show prior to watch it.I started rebels when it came out, but I did not care for it. I think Star Wars works better as a live action medium. That’s why I was interested in the d+ shows.
Gladly!There you go, a piece of marketing that makes it pretty obvious the show is a continuation of Rebels. Now, I know you’re going to say ‘They don’t explicitly say that it’s a continuation of Rebels!’ but if you need everything spelled out like that then you’re Sam.
“You probably read and saw so many stuff that you think everybody had and
should have the same knowledge that you have about this show prior to
watch it.”Nope, just watched the trailers, like the one above!I will admit the first season of Rebels is kind of kiddy, but you missed out by not sticking with it because the rest of it is not kiddy at all.
There isn’t one mention of the Star wars rebels TV show.Like I said, you knew because you watched rebels so you had the knowledge, and you assumed everybody understood it the same way.There was plenty of articles warning people that if you didn’t see rebels then you would be lost watching ahsoka, and that Disney haven’t been upfront about it.To be honest, I saw the articles but did not read it because I wanted to see the extent of the problem and judge for myself. They were right, what I did not expect is that the writing would be on the same level as a kid tv show.
extremely funny to post that video as some kind of ‘gotcha’
Yeah, when I see “Star Wars cartoon with Freddie Prinze Jr,” I definitely think “serious entertainment for adults.”
They even said you don’t need to have seen Rebels to watch it. It’s a standalone show.It was just Rebels Season 5. That’s all it was. It was written like that. Paced like that. It was just a live action cartoon.
To who, exactly, was it “sold as a sequel to rebels?” Point to be a SINGLE piece of official marketing materials that says this.
it was not “sold” as that. we all KNEW it would be that once we found out Rebels characters were going to show up. but it was “sold” as “it’s Star Wars you’re gonna watch it and like it”
Spot on.
It’s funny how people act as though the entire Star Wars franchise isn’t geared towards kids (and family audiences in general).
There is a lot of great movies geared towards kids, Pixar, a lot of Ghibli movies, ET, the goonies, home alone and plenty of others.My point is that Ahsoka’s writing is on par with a kid’s saturday morning cartoon wrapped up in a big budget and more mature aesthetic.Even worse the story of Ahsoka goes nowhere. It doesn’t have a beginning or an end. It’s just one act of a bigger story scattered between a kid show and maybe another season or a movie or both.
I watched the first few episodes of Ahsoka with my six-year-old. Two episodes ago he asked me if we could stop watching it. He just didn’t think it was very interesting. He’s never asked to stop watching a family show before. I wasn’t disappointed. It’s not a good show and even children know it.
Yeah, old-school Star Wars was clearly geared toward kids, with such kid-friendly elements as:Luke’s aunt and uncle having all their flesh burned off
Obi-wan dismembering a guy in a bara planet of five billion people being vaporizedLuke nearly being drowned by a monsterLuke, Han, Leia, and Chewie nearly being crushed to death
numerous Rebel pilots dying in fiery explosions
Luke dismembering a monsterHan disemboweling a tauntaunLuke’s hand getting cut offa guy getting eaten whole by a giant monstersaid giant monster being impaled by spikes
several guys getting swallowed whole by an even larger monsterLuke suffering prolonged malicious electrocutionLuke’s father dying in front of him, of electrocution-related injuries
This.
Just recast the part, doesn’t seem that hard.
Re: Huyang talking about Kanan/Caleb, he does use both names. I’d never watched any of the cartoons so I wasn’t sure if it was a callback or a subtitle error, but didn’t think it was especially important to the plot either way.The rest …woof. As absurd as the Ep 9 crawl was, was this really a better way to handle the unexpected returns of Thrawn and Ezra?
What a snoozefest. Engaging and fun, full-of-life characters like Ahsoka, Sabine, Ezra and Thrawn all reduced to boring, yawn-inducing nothing burgers. Loved Clone Wars, loved Rebels, even love Bad Batch. Plus I read the entertaining Ahsoka novel. I have a frickin’ Thrawn action figure – one of two I own (Kanan Jarrus). This show was tailor made for me. And I really, really was bored stiff by it over and over again. Bums me out.
“Engaging and fun, full-of-life characters like Ahsoka, Sabine, Ezra and Thrawn all reduced to boring, yawn-inducing nothing burgers.” That’s generally what happens when they take animated stuff and convert it into live action slop. This show was never gonna be great. Season 2 if it happens probably gonna be even worse. Also, Rosario Dawson as Ahsoka is a total miscast idc.
Agree. She’s also really bad in the countless light saber battles. It’s like they used rehearsal footage from her training. She’s very slow. Her stunt double isn’t much better.
The one with Morgan at the end was good. There were just way too many duels, and most were inconsequential or superfluous. Save them for key moments when there’s actual tension (and novel/interesting choreography) rather than every random encounter with a literally faceless goon. The classic arm-wrestling-esque moment with sparks flying and pained grimacing is so played at this point and I think we saw it like 4 times this season.
waiting for the topher grace edit.
Every D+ shows needs one, but Ahsoka is the worse culprit.
Really? Ahsoka is worse than Book of Boba Fett?
Overall quality? No. But we’re just talking about story pacing and length here, and on this Boba is actually better because at least the story is resolved at the end of the season.
Ahsoka, even reedited as a movie would still miss a second and third act.
Boba is actually better because at least the story is resolved at the end of the season
So, BoBF is better than Ahsoka because it was resolved at the end? Quality or actual story be damned.
And I would assume (correct me if I’m wrong) you are a Fan of Star Wars. And you post your thoughts about SW on message boards and/or social media. But somehow you didn’t know that this was a set up of a crossover movie?Okay.
I clearly said that boba isn’t better, I said that it is better in terms of story pacing.I don’t care that it was announced as a set up for a crossover movie, it doesn’t excuse that the show isn’t telling its own story.I don’t consider myself a star wars fan, I’m a movie and tv show fan that also like star wars.I don’t give sympathy points because something has fan service.
Sure.
Yeah.
i’m a fan of many star wars movies, but i can’t say i’ve liked any of the shows. in fact, the more stuff they put out shows and movies i don’t like the more i retroactively dislike the movies i used to.even rebels i ‘liked’ with the caveat that it was a step-up from clone wars (which i didn’t like at all) and a fun kids show that i didn’t have to pay too much attention to. it was a neat little inessential detour back before you had to worry about canon too much. and especially since i figured they’d be pushing that canon forward instead of living in the past.if you told me then it would be so ‘important’ i would have liked it a lot less, because i don’t think it was good enough to be important.
Star wars fans doesn’t seem to care much about the medium as long as it is “more star wars”.To me star wars is live action, that’s like 50% of its charm. The props, the costumes, the decors etc.If it’s drawn or CGI then it’s in another category for me. I get that Rebels is a top tier kid show, but it’s still a kid show with all its issues.
Not to me. Ahsoka ranks above Obi-Wan, The Book of Boba Fett and The Mandalorian Season 3.
Bingo
This is the correct ranking. (With Andor probably at the top… ironically, its the one I still haven’t finished).
I would put Andor on top, maybe tied with Mando Season 2 for me. Andor is just top tier television period. But in the same vein, Mando season 3 was peak popcorn fun. Both seasons are examples of what Star Wars television should strive for.
Mando season 3 lost its way for me. There’s good bits, but it really didn’t create much of an impression other than feeling a bit aimless. I can’t even tell you much about the season at this point, other than knowing that Bo-Katan is quickly becoming as important as Din.
I actually meant to say Mando season 2 is peak popcorn fun. Typo on my part there. I largely forgot about season 3. Found pretty plodding and dull for the most part.
Ah, that makes sense now.
andor being so good actually bums me out. it basically just reminds me how much i dislike every other star wars show, and don’t understand why it’s not the norm. the fact that it’s a prequel to a prequel also bums me out.
To be fair, a root canal ranks above those three shows.
BoBF is worse. Ahsoka is more disappointing.
God this show sucked. I liked how Thrawn said that it was virtually impossible for Ahsoka and co to get to his ship and then literally two minutes later they were in the fortress about to board the ship. Between this and the other Filoni shows do the writers just not care? There is basic plotting problems in ALL these shows and they just keep trucking through as if no one will notice. What’s the point?
I’m rewatching Andor right now and it’s just SO GOOD! I think it deserves some criticism for basically using the Star Wars world as nothing more than window dressing, but the writing and plotting and characterizations are outstanding. And then I go back to these crappy things and it makes me so frustrated to see the possibility.
At this point I think I’m done with all the Filoni stuff, including the upcoming movie.
Filoni should just produce and supervise story and stop writing and directing. He’s a true successor to Lucas in that regard.But don’t worry about that Filoni movie, after the reception of Mando season 3 and now ahsoka, it’s only a matter of time until it’s canned or retooled as a D+ show.
lol
“Justify it’s existence”
Die in a fire while snakes eat your balls.
Grow up.
A little secret: no fictional story ever created needed to exist. Demanding that any of them “justify their existence” is complete bullshit every time and deserves to be insulted.
Another way of putting it.
You know how a show justifies it existence?
Someone gave someone else money to make it.
I mean, doesn’t the fact that no show “needs to exist” mean they should all at least make a case for themselves? Every show made takes up time and resources that could have been used for something else (another show at the least), so shouldn’t there be a point to it being made? At the bare minimum, it should tell a complete story.
This.
Hell, “justifies its existence” could simply be taken to mean “live up to your own potential”. Virtually everything in this show, other than maybe the effects and the action (when they managed to switch out the actor’s decaf for regular), squanders at least some of it’s potential storytelling power.Thrawn hasn’t made any indication of being a good strategist, at least so far. Morgan Elsbeth mostly stood around and glowered until she got a weird green fire sword and one decent fight scene with Ahsoka and died. Why is there no conflict between any of these characters? Shouldn’t SOMEONE be mad at Sabine for risking the entire galaxy just to see Ezra again (not the least of which being Ezra)?
lmao at reacting like this to criticism of a TV show for children. Children!
Oh, I react like that when I see “justifies its existence” over R-rated movies too.
BUT… if it bothers you, we can lose the fire part.
Every time i see weekly “glowing reviews” of episodes and always in the end it tells me the whole thing was rather pointless. Glad I didn’t invest in another SW/Marvel timewaste
So Morgan Elsbeth becomes Mother Talzin(?)… complete with flaming sword (if you play the Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes video game, you know what I mean). As for Thrawn’s secret cargo, maybe it’s the body of Emperor Palpatine and/or some Sith/Dathomir artifact that will bring him back(?!)—and the First Order gets it’s marching papers. That’s for Filoni to divine… .Regardless, I agree… this series has plodded along—from the very beginning–for no apparent good reason. A movie would explain a lot as to why things aren’t flushed out better in the series. Good Luck, Mickey!
Unbelievable. It sounds even duller and less fun than I’d imagined, and I’d imagined a complete bore of a finale.And io9 still basically calls it a can’t miss-masterpiece, because that site is even more far gone and shriveled up than the AV Club is.
Well, everytime I bring up something about this show in the comment on io9 I get a LOT of “well, you’d known this if you watched the animated series” kind of responses. Which the original author here commented on quite a bit. This was essentially a kid’s show: look at the cool weekly light saber fights with the stakes being that you know no one is going to die ( well, except for that death at the end), but soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo steeped in obscure “other Star Wars programming” that it really only was planned out for the “my life is Star Wars” nerds.
My parents, who have never seen Rebels or Clone Wars, are enjoying it. Pretty much all background necessary is explained except for the statues at the end.
That’s kind of why I said it was a kids show… It moves stuff along for cool light saber battles … And I guess one can enjoy it for that. But if you try to think about the things that happened with just in information provided, it loses a lot of logic. Like, the very first thing in episode 1 implies that (when viewed without any other external information) Morgan hid the galaxy information in the Rubik’s ball and then hid it in the Indiana Jones room. Only when people online start yelling at you about “well, if you watched rebels you would know that she’s a witch, and that’s her ancient temple…and PURGILLS!!!! And…”
My 70 year old parents are not confused about any of this at all so I don’t know what to tell you here.
I guess it helped that they had the Purgil in Mando so I had already told them what that was?
You know what I love? A show that has to laboriously explain a backstory instead of telling a compelling show in the here and now.
Pretty much all background necessary is explained
And a lot was left for this last episode. Good for the episode, not so good for the series.
That’s only part of what’s necessary though. The other part is having characters that you care about. I’ve watched and read everything to do with Ahsoka while my partner hasn’t, and both of us found it hard to care about the characters in Ahsoka. The writing and acting for the most part only served to move the characters around, but not really make us care why. So it’s nice there are people out there that have enjoyed it overall. I just wish my household was one of them.
My parents love it too. Well, not my dad, he doesn’t know what it is. My mom is dead, but I’m sure that wherever she is, she’s a big fan.
Do they enjoy the sequels? I find Ahsoka to be very similar to something like Force Awakens– it’s flashy and fun while you watch it, but in the end it just doesn’t do much.
Now.. you may have a point here, about it being a kids show; my eight year old has watched the clone wars, or rather I have watched the later episode with him, and he was very taken aback when I started watching an episode without him: “daddddddddddd…………”This is a kids show!With a little something for adults.
“This was essentially a kid’s show:”And how would you describe Star Wars, in general?
I enjoyed it , although I guess IO9 is probably a bit more invested in Star Wars stuff than AVClub
I enjoyed it, as did my eight year old son!Wife shoulder surfed for a bit, too.
The season has seen its ups and downs, from a slow-paced, slightly unfocused first few episodes, to some immensely rewarding, mythology-heavy later entries. The finale saw almost every storyline from this season reach some sort of conclusion. Many of those were satisfying, several were not, but it’s where we’ll leave Ahsoka, Sabine, Ezra, Hera, Thrawn, Shin, Baylan, and others for the next however many years, until we hopefully see them again….for certain values of “can’t miss-masterpiece.”
I admit I was being hyperbolic there, and indeed outright misrepresentative; the review was indeed considerably less glowing than recent ones. (But, “from a certain point of view,” shouldn’t anything other than a scathing takedown of this finale be seen as high praise?) 😛
My biggest problem with the show in general was the acting. Especially of Dawson and Winstead. I expected both Ahsoka and Hera to be less flat and much more emotional. Ahsoka isn’t the care free kid she used to be anymore, but even in Rebels she was more expressive and less pensive. Even when she was down on her luck and trying to tamp her emotions down in the last season of Clone Wars she showed more. And Hera was always the mom of the crew and acted like it. She didn’t really do that here. I think that might be on Filoni and the other directors since Ahsoka did open up after the sequence in the World Between Worlds, but not much. Even Thrawn who is supposed to be flat, but was more of a menacing sort of flat in animation and it’s the same actor. Also, Dawson was kind of stiff in some of the fight scenes. Not always, but maybe she had a stunt double when she was more fluid? That was a big problem in Book of Boba Fett where it just seemed like Temeura Morrison might be to old for the action sequences, but Dawson is only 44 and seems to at least look athletics and in good shape.Otherwise, I liked most of what they were at least trying to do. I’ve been waiting to see the hunt for Ezra, I liked Shin Hati and Baylen Skoll and I am interested in where their story might go. I thought Ezra was pretty good and I liked Sabine a lot, although they should have let her blow some shit up and maybe do a little art.
All that is perfectly fair, but, going by recaps and reactions, my biggest problem with the show is pretty nothing happens, the villains just stand around and aren’t remotely threatening, and the heroes barely take any kind of proactive action apart from fighting those who happen to be immediately in front of them. There’s no cleverness, no strategy, no battle of wits… the characters just wander around, and when they wander into each other, they clash sometimes (though not always), until they wander away.In short, it’s an adventure show with almost no sense of adventure.
….says the guy that didn’t even watch the show being discussed and instead reads reviews of it from “far gone and shriveled” websites.
That’s because both Germain and James have zero ability to criticize their sweet sweet baby, Star Wars. Truly laughable.
The show’s fine, if kind of a nothingburger – you can enjoy it as mostly empty spectacle much of the time.
Interesting that you’d rather read one shitty writer’s review of this show than y’know….actually watch it yourself and form your own opinions.
Ah yes, the old “how can you be sure you wouldn’t like to pay $15 for the privilege of being kicked in the stomach while standing naked in a freezing rain, as a boombox blares a Chipmunk cover of Karma Chameleon, if you’ve never even tried it yourself?!” tack. LOL.
It was good – the kick hit me square in the stomach, excellently aimed – but it wasn’t worth $15.
Again: if you prefer to read poorly written reviews of shows you’ve never seen over actually watching a show that was labored over by a group of artists for years, that’s on you.
Not to mention that it’s very easy to watch this kind of stuff for absolutely free if you aren’t interested in spending money on it.
It’s not that interesting.
Jesus Christ this trash. This exact comment has been made, millions of times, never contributing anything to any discussion where it has appeared.
Ahh yes….how distasteful of me to mention the absurdity of reading about and commenting on something one hasn’t even watched.
Unbelievable is that you are letting Barsanti tell you how good or bad this show is.
He’s telling me how much adventure is in this adventure show, which isn’t anywhere near sufficient.
I’ve also ascertained to my satisfaction, with the aid of other sources, that this show is deathly dull, with barely any story movement and no meaningful resolution, that it’s sorely lacking in engaging characters, looks drab and gray overall, has no sense of danger or excitement, and its villains are limp jokes.Other than that, though, it’s fantastic!
you know what though? he’s absolutely right.
Sam Barsanti hates Disney Star Wars. He was predisposed to hate it before he even reviewed it. His opinions mean very little. He has a chip on his shoulder.
This show has been completely miss-able, unfortunately. I doubt I’ll ever watch this episode.
It’s just Sam Barsanti.He’s a dipshit not to be taken seriously. It literally, truly is THAT simple.
I enjoyed it and I only watched here and there in Clone Wars, and none of Rebels.
Episode Grade: C- Series Grade: C/C-There were just too many flaws; production, acting, the dialogue was painful, story lines, to pacing. There were some highlights, solely coming from Ray, Ivanna, and Genevieve. I would also add that Tennant voice acting would fit as well. If all you are interested in is flash without substance, and some sloppy lore building, then yeah i can see how this series might scratch your itch. If that is how low the standards are of things you want, then the state of live action production is in trouble, because it needs to be more. Problems that have been plaguing the other series as well. Instead of trying to elevate it seems they are trying to lower their standards, with the very noticeable exception of Andor. Filloni has shown with the animated work to be quite adept at all the issue that plagued this show. Is it the medium? or the man himself who has lost his touch? I dont know. With a studio throwing so much money at these projects, to see the final result is disappointing and worrying. Ahsoka was one of the best characters to be created for this universe, it is unfortunate to see that when time came for her own live action series, she was given so little, and made to be one of the most uninteresting characters on her own show.
Clone Wars had a lot of good bits but it was also a slog with a ton of filler. Rebels I recall also getting off to a slow start. At least they had a cheerful energy and *something* happening to fill the gaps though. I really don’t get why the first 2/3 of Ahsoka was so damn silent and boring, the worst kind of “epic.”
What’s with you weird people who cut and paste your comments everywhere?
I graded the finale and series out pretty much the same way. Sub-par. Needed another pass or two of script revisions to flesh out characters, fill in plot holes, fix pacing, and contextualize things for viewers who didn’t watch the animated series.Watching Ahsoka has been interesting to me because I’m watching it on the tails of catching up on several Disney+ Star Wars series. I was up to my eyeballs in finishing my doctoral program, so I missed a ton of these. I’m on my first extended break in years and my couch potato factor is high right now. In the past two months, I’ve watched The Mandalorian, Kenobi, and Andor. When it’s good, it’s really good (Andor and some part Mandalorian). But when it’s bad, it’s really bad (Kenobi and the bits of Boba Fett I watched to catch up with Mando/Grogu). I don’t know what the solution is here if I’m Filoni and Co. Because part of the problem to me seems to be that the Empire vs. Republic/Jedi dynamic has gotten a little stale. It just seems to be fighting the same conflict over and over again. The shows that I’ve liked better have stepped outside of that dynamic, with more interesting results. But Ahsoka just seemed too bogged down in off screen mythology/canon to do anything interesting.
Congrats on finishing up your doctoral program!!!!I agree with your assessment of the show and the other series. There feels like both the want to, and the lack of interest, in telling stories. An odd dynamic that comes off as giving half the effort. Like someone playing around with action figures; messing around with lore and the universe, just because they can, not because they want to tell a story. The non-Andor side is leading up to a movie, and I have yet to see anything that would warrant it.How i would describe the feeling of what has been done so far: Content. It is just content, something to put out for people to eat up. Little substance just empty calories. It is hard to say, because i think it is an interesting universe with complex characters and a lot of stories to tell. Outside of Andor it feels like everyone involved has forgotten that.
Thanks! The pandemic pushed back my completion by two years, so it’s a huge relief to be finished. Now to find a job…
That is what is exciting about the Baylan storyline, he literally says that. While we know Thrawn is overtly being set up to be the big thing, a guy that spent a ridiculous amount of screen time staring into space kind of upstaged him a bit. Hopefully they take that somewhere interesting.The “reveal” with him at the end is that the statues around him were The Father, the Son, and the Daughter from the planet Mortis as introduced in the Clone Wars. That was a very wacky series of episodes that definitely stepped outside of the Empire/Republic thing.
Because I lacked that prior knowledge of who was carved into the rock, I literally thought Baylan was standing on a carving of himself.
Congrats on getting the work out the door. Hope the defence went well.
I think your last paragraph hits the knee of the thing: Empire vs. Republic has been sucked dry; for further progress, either now grind the bones or get new blood.
It did, thanks! My committee (by design) was made up of very humane faculty members. My director liked to say that by the time you get to the defense, it should be a celebration and exploration of your work, not a gantlet. So I gave my presentation, we had about 90 minutes of Q&A, and then we went for drinks. I’m not going to say it was easy or stress-free. I definitely stressed. But all things considered it went well. And now it’s over and I never have to do it again 🙂
It wasn’t a perfect show by any means perfect, but my kids and I enjoyed it. Far better than TBoBF and OWK. These Barsanti reviews just sound bitter and “edgy”(for lack of better word).
“Better than Boba Fett and Obi-Wan” is a masterclass in damning with faint praise
Sam doesn’t like Star Wars and can’t even be assed to pay attention to what’s going on in the episodes is the main thing.
To be fair, I DO like Star Wars, and I found it hard to care about virtually anything happening here. There isn’t a whole lot of effort made to make any of this make sense, especially if you haven’t watched an extra 500 hours of animated shows.
That’s nice for you – but that doesn’t really make it a good show by any stretch. Disney has a habit of assuming everyone is watching everything they make – and this is the latest and worst example. It’s called “Ahsoka – season 1″ which kind of sells it as a stand-alone show. Except it’s just a continuation of a previous show, but now it doesn’t resolve the stories that set up with any closure but it doesn’t resolve its own stories either. It’s a middle chapter of a broader series that doesn’t technically exist.I watched Rebels and most of Clone Wars, and I understood what was going on and who everyone was, but I still felt like it was just sort of pointless. It’s Ep 7 mystery boxes all over again.
What makes it a good show are the overwhelming positive reviews from critics and audiences on every platform across the board. However, Star Wars isn’t for everyone.
Disney has a habit of assuming everyone is watching everything they make – and this is the latest and worst example.Amen. My favorite examples of this are the two standalone Mandalorian episodes that got shoehorned into The Book of Boba Fett. I skipped Boba Fett because it got such middling reviews and I really didn’t care. Then I picked up the third season of Mandalorian and was like, “How the fuck did Grogu get back with Mando?” I went back and watched the S2 Mandalorian finale to see what I missed. Nothing. I was so fucking confused. Then my sister told me that everything with the Mando/Grogu reunion happened in Boba Fett. She graciously told me to just watch those two episodes and the Mando parts of the Boba Fett finale rather than wasting my time on the entire Boba Fett series.
Actually, it does. The point of the show is ‘entertainment’. If his family (and mine) are entertained your critical opinion of how this fits into some over-arching quality spectrum is moot for us.
By that metric, you could compile 100 different TikTok videos and say they make for a better movie than Shawshank because it held your interest better. Or that an upside down Lowes bucket is a better chair than an Eames rocker because it’s good enough for you. Just because someone who’s already a fan of something is willing to spend their time with the 38th installment of the series doesn’t mean it uses good practices of storytelling or writing or direction.I am unfortunately a Star Wars fan and grew up watching it – I’m way deep in the story now. But I still thought this was “bad” even though I spent my time with it.
I was 11 for the OG SW in ‘77. I enjoyed Ashoka just fine. 🙂
I gave the Filoni animated shows a chance, but I find them to be frivolous fan fiction and I just don’t like many of Filoni’s additions to the canon. Clone Wars and Rebels form a rickety foundation to pile this much TV content on top.Ahsoka is the worst offender yet in terms of assuming that the viewer not only watched every episode of the animated series (and every episode of every post-ROTJ Disney+ show), but committed it to memory in the same way that OG Star Wars fans have an encyclopedic knowledge of the original trilogy. Filoni’s stuff just isn’t good enough to warrant that level of dedication.This series always seemed to be aiming for an audible gasp when some ancient statue from a 10-year-old episode of Clone Wars showed up. But you have to earn that gasp by making content as good as ANH.
Yeah, I wasn’t thrilled by the season finale but this show has been solid. Not as good of writing as Andor and not as fun as Mandalorian but just about as entertaining as both.
Better that BOBF by a nose, but both are complete crap. Obi Wan at least had good moments here and there alongside some seriously dumb shit.
I’d give Ahsoka the edge over OWK. Ahsoka’s storycraft is pretty poor, but there’s nothing as phenomenally stupid as the goons chasing Leia through the forest, and it doesn’t actively cause friction with the core storyline the way that Kenobi did.
I for one thoroughly enjoyed Boba and rank it above Ahsoka so far. If this goes on for more seasons it has potential to be really good despite a slow start.
Hard NO on the zombie stormtroopers!
I found that final sequence confusing as hell, since it looked to me like they killed the living stormtroopers, they came back as zombies, then they defeated them, and finally were pursued by more living stormtroopers. Did the zombie stormtroopers somehow shift from Walking Dead zombies to 28 Days Later zombies?
No idea, it was a sloppy mess.
meh, not as bad as Obi Wan but nowhere near Andor/Mando Season 1? Yeah, that sums it up for me.
Glad I paid attention during that one episode of clone wars S3:E16. sigh…..
Usually D+ shows are like a movie stretch out slowly and painfully into a season.
Ahsoka though, managed to be only the first act of a movie.
Slow pace, terrible dialogues delivered very slowly, Filoni wrote this like a children’s TV show, albeit a very expensive one.
Children’s television writing is not usually this bad. Filoni’s writing, on the other hand, has always been this bad. It’s why he stopped writing Clone Wars after the first two seasons, why he only wrote a few episodes of Rebels, why he only wrote the first episode of The Bad Batch.
Other than Siege of Mandalore, Filoni’s writing has always been mediocre. He is not the reason the people who love Clone Wars love Clone Wars other than being the guy who co-created Clone Wars. He is not the reason the people who love Rebels love Rebels despite being the guy who co-created Rebels. Hell, the guy who co-created those shows with him — Henry Gilroy — has written more episodes of those shows than anyone else has and the cult of personality around Filoni just pretends he doesn’t even exist despite having a far more impressive career.
Weird that the best post Lucas Star Wars content has been written by a Gilroy of one surname or another.
I so wanted to like this show more than I did. I really like the actor that played Sabine but the rest of the show was OK. Recently star wars is making me glad I spend all that lockdown time binging the cartoons. Disney: Please do not MCU Star Wars, Please. (it may be too late)
Remember when Ahsoka and Sabine killed a guy who had a lightsaber and
then just turned to dust? And they all reacted like it was a new thing
but nobody ever talked about it again? Was everything that happened on
this show just a dream?
It’s one thing when you cut someone down with a lightsaber and dust comes out the body. It’s another thing to see someone cut down just to get back up.It’s two different things.Now, I’m not one of the people that get on Barsanti’s reviews, but it seems if he actually paid attention to the show instead of looking for something to snark about, we wouldn’t see silly crap like the quote above.Not saying he would like the show, but at least, I would take his reviews seriously.
Just to add on to make my point about paying attention; Ahsoka killed the guy. Sabine was fighting Shin.
Yeah, that miss stood out to me as well.
If he doesn’t like the show, fine. But he really needs to pay attention if his job is to review it. A couple episodes ago he complained that Thrawn didn’t leave immediately when they specifically said it would take 3 “cycles” to deal with he cargo and they couldn’t leave until then. He clearly is watching with subtitles on so he can’t even complain about poor sound mixing or muddled line reads.
It’s been a loooooooong ass time since paying attention to the show you’re reviewing was a requirement for writers here. I still remember the reviews for The Leftovers trying to pose what were supposed to be deep, profound questions except the answers to those questions were often answered explicitly on screen but were missed because somebody was too busy typing or playing with their phone instead of watching. And that was far from the only show that was true for and also almost a decade ago.
This couldn’t be more accurate.No notes.
Nothing has shit on Handlen’s reviews of Fargo season 3, particularly the Mr. Wrench debacle.
Right. The episode before this one showed that the cargo was almost finished loading.And I guess if shit isn’t total spelled out to him, the show is bad. Fuck it, I guess we should have like 10 minutes of talking heads explaining shit. But I guess that also would be a problem.
IMO (I could be wrong) Thrawn wants no part of Jedi. Perhaps when he got to this planet, he sent some troops to kill Ezra, but Ezra killed the troops. And since Thrawn ended up in a place that Ezra could not get to without major help (Something Ezra actually said in this episode), Thrawn just left it alone as Ezra at that point no longer a threat to him.But instead, we get that bullet point after the review.
Perhaps …
Perhaps they could have said this, or better yet shown it, so it isn’t left to fans to fill in gaps and all get a different narrative.
Why did it take Thrawn so long to load his own cargo onto his own ship? It’s not like it was moved to Morgan’s space ring thing.
Thrawn literally had nothing to do for YEARS.
It’s not in the show, but what if the bodies were in something like cold storage. It would make no sense to load up an aging spaceship with the bodies if he can’t get back home.If that was the case, that shouldn’t be implied or left up to fan theories.
Then bloody well show the cold storage facility (because there’s no indication of where those boxes are coming from at all).
The problem is that the show goes to great lengths to TELL us that Thrawn is a tactical genius, but everything they SHOW us tells me he’s an idiot.
Well hasn’t that been the MO for just about all the Imperial generals and the like? Thinking they are really smart and know everything and end up fucking things and really not being as smart as they think they are.
It has, but that’s supposed to be what sets Thrawn apart. That’s why he’s made out to be this big threat. And he was that kind of brilliant tactician, at least when he was first introduced years ago in the Heir to the Empire series. As I said somewhere else, this version of Thrawn would have gotten Force choked by Vader while he was still commanding a Star Destroyer.
Also, send more than two guys to load it up? If instead of having those troopers stand around you had them each load a body, it wouldn’t take three days. I’m not a tactical genius though, so what do I know.
As an example, didnt Huyang actually call him Caleb in this episode? He recognized the name Kanan Jarrus, but still referred to training a padawan name Caleb who was a shy kid.
I am confused by your comment.“It’s one thing when you cut someone down with a lightsaber and dust comes out the body. It’s another thing to see someone cut down just to get back up.”Cut someone down … just to get back up? Are you referring to the zombie storm troopers? Because I don’t think the author is making that comparison *at all*Like… it is really fucking weird Marrok turns to dust when he dies. Is he an alien made of dust? It’s weird to include that detail without any additional context, it was so out of left field that it felt like the only reason to include that detail at all was to tell the audience “see, this guy in a mask wasn’t actually anyone important! You can tell because you know that none of the important characters are dust aliens!” And I think the author is just reflecting on that here at the end of the series and that’s why it’s in stray observations and not, say, a parenthetical in the paragraph about the zombies. Now, I’m not trying to be rude here, I’m genuinely confused because I legitimately did not read the authors comment in the same way you did and other people seem to agree with you, so if I misunderstood you please let me know.
The reason why the guy lets out green mist is because he is an enhanced nightbrother (the male side of the Dathomir race). In Clone Wars when Maul’s brother dies he also lets out the green mist, because he is originating to his form before the Great Mother enhanced him. this is different then being reanimated. To be fair if you haven’t watched clone Wars, I could see this being a confusing detail.
The thing is… I *have* watched Clone Wars and I still missed this detail. So yeah, I do think that this still required some explanation in Ahsoka.
I think I get what he meant. Forget what happens to anybody else when cut down with a lightsaber, that thing hanging out with Shin and Ray Stevenson exploded to dust when it was cut down which, AFAIK, is something totally new and weird. A “WTF was that??” from Ahsoka to David Tennant could have at least filled some of the time spent flying in the whale’s mouth.
They obviously finished everything before Ray Stevenson died and didn’t alter any of Baylan’s storyline to reflect the need for being written out or anything like that.So with that said, I’m totally and completed flummoxed what on earth happened with the character in the end. His presence made some sense in the beginning of the series, but once we were in alter-galaxy land, Baylan dwindled in importance.I have no idea what I’m supposed to make of him standing atop the statue, looking pensively toward the horizon. No idea whatsoever. It meant nothing.Kinda figure Thrawn would have to “win” in some capacity to set up future content, but I admit I’m intrigued how they’ll get our heroines back for more adventures.The Filoni team-up movie sounds so weird. You’re talking Mando, Boba, Ahsoka, and the Skeleton Crew folks? What sorta of faux Avengers mashup is that going to become?
This won’t get made, or will be changed as a mini series for D+Another star wars project announced too soon
There’s no way that movie comes out in theaters, if it gets made at all. Everyone at Disney would have to be categorically insane to think that there would be enough interest in a theatrical release based on a bunch of characters that barely get traction on TV.
Ha ha! That’s great. Where’d you find that?
on x, formerly twitter.
I’m kind of amazed at Disney’s thinking with this.So, Jon Favreau almost single-handedly creates and writes every episode of two entire series and eventually the shine wears off and the shows lose 1/3rd of their audience. He tries to mimic the storytelling prowess of the least-performing but best-received series and it’s slapped for being plodding and aimless.Filoni, a consulting producer, is on board to constantly provide new ideas they can create stories about, but his own episodes are among the worst episodes of the various series.Filoni is, however, credited with creating three series in the Star Wars universe — which are wholly written and directed by a bunch of people who aren’t Dave Filoni and which Dave Filoni has almost no role in making other than writing a pilot.So Dave Filoni pivots this into Ahsoka and is promised an entire movie following on from this that adheres to his singular vision and becomes the most Star Wars thing to have ever Star Warsed.And the very first live-action project he gets control over — proceeds to lose more than half the audience of Jon Favreau’s worst season of Disney+ shows….Yikes.
“as soon as he’s done loading his still-unexplained cargo into the Star Destroyer, he says “nah, let’s send soldiers after them.””You are just so bad at even paying attention to what’s going on, aren’t you? Like, do you even watch the show or do you just read summaries of it because you don’t like Star Wars at all?
lol@’still-unexplained cargo’
Honest question: what is the cargo? I assume it was all those boxes we saw in the final montage, but are we supposed to know what’s in them? I would guess it’s an army of some sort (more zombies?), but unless I missed something, we’re never told or shown what’s inside.
Yeah zombie troopers: From the first second they were on screen right after Thrawn talked about his losses it was easy to figure out that those boxes that are the exact size and shape of coffins contained zombie troopers.
It’s fair to think that they’re probably zombie troopers (i.e. the boxes contain a bunch of stormtrooper corpses), but the show certainly doesn’t confirm that.
It wasn’t said outright, but I figure It’s dead Nightsisters or dead Dathomirians
Most Nightsisters are part of this species and Darth Maul is a
Dathomirian. (No special knowledge here, looked it up on Wookieepedia)
You are weirdly aggressive about this.
They never say what the boxes are. “Easy to figure out” =/= revealed. Yes, you can infer that they’re more zombie troopers, but it’s never outright stated.Moreover, them being zombie troopers doesn’t actually make the writing any better— it raises far more questions than are answered. Off the top of my head:
If Thrawn’s been on the planet ten years, why are they just now loading all the zombie troopers onto the ship?If they’re all zombie troopers, why don’t they just WALK onto the ship? Unless we’re going to find a massive coven of Night Sisters somewhere to help the other three out, we can assume that the three of them are going to do all the reanimating. It’s not like zombie troopers are going to be some huge drain on resources.Why hasn’t Thrawn been sending out zombie troops to find and kill Ezra the last ten years? Why can he not decide to just strand the heroes or to actively try and kill them? The supposed tactical genius changes his scheme every time he’s on screen. Tactical genius anticipates the opponent’s moves and counters them ahead of time. Thrawn is like a ping pong ball on this show, just bouncing from one idea to the next. This Thrawn would never have made Grand Admiral, Vader would’ve force choked his blue ass decades ago.
They never say what the boxes are. “Easy to figure out” =/= revealed. Yes, you can infer that they’re more zombie troopers, but it’s never outright stated.So you want stories where things are outright stated with no room for inferences to be drawn from context clues given in the story?Sounds fun. Seems like a pretty simplistic way of approaching media. Why not just read Wikipedia pages?I actually disagree with the person you responded to, I don’t think it’s undead zombies, I think its Dathomiri (ie, more of the witches as well as people from Darth Maul’s race) that, as part of his deal with the Great Mothers, he agreed to transport to the main galaxy.This has been suggested the entire series. Morgan “outright stated” in this series that the Dathomiri come from Peridea and that during the Clone Wars the Dathomiri in the main SW galaxy were killed off. In the first episode on Peridea, right after Thrawn is introduced, he “outright stated” that he has an agreement with the Great Mothers to transport cargo back to the main SW galaxy (in exchange for their assistance getting back), Thrawn is told that it will take 3 days to transport the cargo from the catacombs and we see (and every episode after) that the cargo consists of person shaped boxes (which most assumed to be coffins). In finale, Thrawn “outright stated” that when he arrived at the planet, he found the fortress/tower, woke the Great Mothers and came to the agreement with them discussed above. We also see Morgan say “for Dathomir” as she’s sacrificing herself so the Great Mothers, Thrawn and the cargo can be transported back to the main SW galaxy. We then see Thrawn and co. travel to Dathomir.It’s pretty easy to infer from all of this context that was “outright stated” in the series that the cargo consist of Dathomiri and Morgan and the Great Mother’s goal was getting the Dathomiri to the main Star Wars galaxy to rebuild the Dathomiri civilization. Perhaps the Dathomiri cargo are corpses, but given what Thrawn said about waking the Great Mothers, and they being very much alive, it seems more likely that they’re just in hibernation.Why are they all hibernating (or dead)? Why were the Great Mothers hibernating before Thrawn arrived? Are they running from something (if so, it’s likely tied to Baylan’s story)?These are all unanswered questions which are clearly being setup for either a future season of Ahsoka (or a related show/movie). You understand that this isn’t the end of the story?Moreover, them being zombie troopers doesn’t actually make the writing any better— it raises far more questions than are answered. Off the top of my head:* If Thrawn’s been on the planet ten years, why are they just now loading all the zombie troopers onto the ship?You saw how damaged Thrawn’s ship is, right? How most of its engines are out and clearly doesn’t have a functional hyperdrive (which is why it’s stuck in this system)?You understand that Thrawn has been there for around a decade and that he and the Great Mothers had no idea if their plan was even working until Morgan arrived with the Eye of Sion?Why would you move clearly precious cargo into a damaged ship from a storage place underground where they’ve safely stored for what looks like centuries if not longer in hopes of a rescue you don’t know when is coming or even if a rescue ever is?* If they’re all zombie troopers, why don’t they just WALK onto the ship? Unless we’re going to find a massive coven of Night Sisters somewhere to help the other three out, we can assume that the three of them are going to do all the reanimating. It’s not like zombie troopers are going to be some huge drain on resources.* Why hasn’t Thrawn been sending out zombie troops to find and kill Ezra the last ten years? Because the cargo (whether undead troops/Dathomiri or hibernating Dathomiri) is clearly precious to the Great Mothers and returning them to the main Star Wars galaxy is a material term to Thrawn’s deal with them. Since that deal is his only hope of returning to the main Star Wars galaxy, he can’t exactly go wasting them unnecessarily.Also, who is to say he didn’t try sending zombies (whether the cargo or his own troops) out to kill Ezra? Ezra said watching them being reanimated was new to him, not that he hadn’t fought Thrawn’s thugs before.Moreover, it seems like Ezra has been hiding with the crab people for a long time and gave up trying to take Thrawn down. And why would he need to attack? As far as Ezra knows, they’re all stranded there and he’s being left in peace. After a while trying (and failing) to get Ezra, why would Thrawn need to keep actively trying to do so? He’s got a Star Destroyer that can be in a position where its only accessible by ship, which Ezra clearly didn’t have any access to. Also, Thrawn “outright stated” that they don’t know where Ezra is anymore (gave Ezra’s last known location). It could very much be the case that Thrawn is still be actively hunting Ezra, sending scouts out (hiring the bandits) to track down Ezra’s position but he’s successfully hiding and if Thrawn learned of Ezra’s position, he’d send a force after him.Why can he not decide to just strand the heroes or to actively try and kill them? The supposed tactical genius changes his scheme every time he’s on screen. Tactical genius anticipates the opponent’s moves and counters them ahead of time. Thrawn is like a ping pong ball on this show, just bouncing from one idea to the next. This Thrawn would never have made Grand Admiral, Vader would’ve force choked his blue ass decades ago.Thrawn did decide to strand the heroes, he “outright stated” that fact. It’s “outright stated” that Thrawn needs the Star Destroyer (the Chimera) to be in a position where people can just walk onto it for three days during the cargo transfer. From the condition of the Chimera and Thrawn’s troops, its clear that he has limited resources. Rather than commit a large force to try and kill the heroes (which who knows if he has enough to take down Jedi), every one of Thrawn’s actions is just commit the lease resources possible to simply slow the Jedi to give his side enough time to finish the transfer, get back to the main Star Wars galaxy and strand the heroes. He sends Sabine (who Ezra would come to the Chimera to try and save) out far from the Chimera and sends Baylan and Shin, who he sees as mercenary Jedi that he doesn’t trust and views as disposable, after her. His goal is just to keep Ezra distracted while he finishes the transfer and gets off the planet. If Baylan and Shin succeeded in killing Ezra and Sabine, great. But if not, as long as they keep Ezra/Sabine occupied far from the Chimera, that’s OK too. The troops Thrawn sends out to back up Shin and Baylan? Only enough to try and keep them occupied (and might have been enough had Baylan not quit and went his own way).Thrawn “outright stated” this goal (keeping the heroes occupied and then abandoning them) multiple times in multiple episodes.This wasn’t a complicated story.I’m sorry you feel like every detail needs to be explicitly spelled out for you.
You’ve put way more thought into any of this than Filoni did. I applaud you for taking the time to write all that, and I’m glad that you seem to have enjoyed the show a lot more than me.
I appreciate your respectful response.But I do disagree about putting more thought into this than Filoni, it was all pretty clearly laid out in the text of the show.I’ve found that genre fans (not just Star Wars, but most genre), seem to increasingly want most if not all plot expressly spelled/laid out and value advancing plot more than character and themes.I think the former is due to distracted viewership causing missed details (whether its an inability to put one’s phone down or just bored by the content and can’t focus), and being out of practice because entertainment is increasingly spoon feeding details (because creators know their viewers aren’t paying attention).The latter has been an issue with genre fans for a long time (I recall hearing/reading complaints about TV episodes in the 90’s that were exceptional character pieces, or had interesting themes/moral quandaries, that didn’t advance a show’s overall plot. But it’s gotten even worse as TV has become nearly entirely serialized.The impatience with plot advancement, and demanding all answers immediately, is definitely worse.It’s as if they’ve never heard of a cliff hanger.
Says: “I appreciate your respectful response” [goes on to continue to slam a perfect stranger’s experience of and opinion on a show for 500 more words]
Again, glad you get more from the show than I do. From this point on, you’ll be talking to yourself.
Mate, someone who says they disagree with you and then proceeding to provide examples of why they do in a polite and respectful way is not someone “slamming” your experience and opinion, it’s someone having a discussion about a differing experience and opinion.If you think the above is my “slamming” you, then you need to have more conversations with people who disagree with your views.
No, just calling Sam out on not liking anything he watches again.Oh no questions are raised!
“Oh no questions are raised!”Raising a few questions, leaving a few things open is one thing. But Ahsoka barely answers ANY of them, while actively undercutting the things it does tell us. Leaving aside the question of why Thrawn, the great planner, is always reacting to what everyone else does rather than having pieces in place ahead of time, look at all the ways that SIMPLE changes could have made the story so much richer and more powerful.Ask why isn’t anyone pissed at Sabine for essentially allowing Thrawn to return to the galaxy. She could have broken the map MacGuffin into a million pieces, but her desire to see Ezra again puts the entire galaxy in danger. But Ahsoka just shrugs at that, and Ezra doesn’t even seem interested enough to ask. That should be a MAJOR source of friction for everyone, not to mention some guilt for Sabine. But instead… “meh, it’ll be fine.”Or take Baylon’s new quest for whatever is hidden in the Misty Mountains. I’ve read some of the fan theories about it, and some of them sound cool, but wouldn’t it have been better for us to know at least something about what it was? One theory is that it’s some kind of SW version of Cthulhu. That sounds awesome and it would set a lot of story potential for the next season (do Thrawn and the New Republic have to team up, for instance?)… but it doesn’t work unless you tell people what those stakes are.
My biggest complaint with Filoni is that he does to0 much fantasy instead of science fantasy.
Still, the entire World Between Worlds sequence forgave many sins. Not all, but many.
Maybe I’m wrong about the Kanan/Caleb thingActually you are. If you go back and rewatch the saber-building scene Huyang does call him as Caleb during the conversation. He knows they’re same person but also recognizes everyone else mostly knows him as Kanan.
He even called him Kanan in a previous episode, explaining to Carson why Jacen knew weird things. He’s aware that Kanan lived under a different name for the rest of his life and among his friends, and Huyang only refers to him as Caleb when referring to him as a child. It’s very well set up.
Thrawn’s whole plan to deal with the Good Guys was to basically give them
busywork and stall them until he was ready to leave and could just
abandon them on this planet, but as soon as he’s done loading his
still-unexplained cargo into the Star Destroyer, he says “nah, let’s
send soldiers after them.” If he wanted to kill them, he could’ve tried
earlier.
This! He literally said that Baylan and Shin were just a distraction to buy time for them to finish preparations to leave, and then they’d just get out of there and strand them there.
And then he didn’t do it, because apparently Filoni couldn’t time his story arcs properly so that they got back to the ship before he finished the loading process.
As for the overall episode, the cliffhanger means they have to waste screen-time in the movie getting Ahsoka and Sabine back to the SW Galaxy, assuming this is the lead-in to a movie and not just a cliffhanger for Season 2 (which hasn’t been approved yet).
What I don’t get is that with these being limited series, they presumably have most of them written ahead of time— at the very least, they’ve broken the whole show out. There’s no reason for all this backtracking with Thrawn’s schemes, other than just lack of care in keeping the threads tight. That lands squarely with Filoni.
You are wrong about Huyang. Huyang has been with Ahsoka and Sabine for years, they surely recounted their adventures with Hera, Kanan and the others to him. So Huyang would have been well aware that Ezra knew Caleb Dume as Kanan Jarrus.
I haven’t watched any of the series yet as I’m re-watching Clone Wars and the rest of the saga, but I don’t like that this leans so heavily into the animated canon for folx who aren’t mega geeks like me. I get it’s Filoni’s baby, but asking an audience to watch 9 seasons of television to get a firm grasp of what’s happening isn’t OK at all.
I’ve gleaned from the reviews you can follow it well enough without all that canon, but the reality it seems is that while it may not be required, it’s *strongly recommended.*This is the kind of thing that put me off Marvel finally. I devote enough of my time to watching the 3 hour overstuffed films, I don’t want to sit and watch 18+ hours of mini-series just to be able to follow the next Doctor Strange.
Not nearly as much of a bummer as your horrid reviews
Probably the worst review I have ever read. It feels like you have never seen a Star Wars movie or show before. I’m certain you manufactured this facade review just to stand out from the overwhelming positive reviews from your peers.
100% agree. The show/series ended with absolutely no resolution to anything, and everybody just ended up swapping places.As a standalone tv show, that’s unacceptable. As part of whatever they end up doing with all this, it just feels like the whole show was a penultimate episode shuffle.
I enjoyed this episode. I enjoyed the action, the characters/dialogue (mostly), the mysticism, and the multiple cliffhangers. It wasn’t perfect, but I enjoyed it.
The series wasn’t great and I’ve seen A LOT of problems throughout, but then that’s been Star Wars since at least ROTJ.
So I’ll take this episode as a win. I don’t know where they’re going with it or if it’s going to be a movie or 2nd season, I don’t know how I feel about any of that, all I know about this episode is it had enough for me to enjoy.
I love Ahsoka the character so much and I feel like I watched so much TV and got nothing from her. Did she change or grow or make interesting choices? I didn’t feel like she did, which is super disappointing.This show was obsessed with giving Ahsoka opportunities to learn or grow or reflect and then not letter her do it. She has a dream vision with the man who taught her everything then tried to kill her, and they just… don’t talk about it? She doesn’t get to be mad or sad or even let her forgive him, they just pretend she learned a lesson and wake her up. Then her and Sabine, you’re telling me after all the back and forth we’re not going to see them address the issues with their mentor/mentee thing at all?
This show was a catastrophic piece of shit. A complete and total failure.
It really was. Utter failure from a plot/story standpoint (I think there is about 25 minutes of actual plot development in the entire series), way too self-referential to “lore,” constant light sabre battles as a distraction from *waves hands at everything*, and while there was some decent production value, the acting from everyone but 2 or 3 people was complete cardboard.
I don’t think you can go that far. There’s far worse shows just within the Disney+ SW universe. It’s not good, but it’s also not aggressively bad in the same way that Boba Fett or Kenobi were. It’s just kind of bland. Which is not supposed to be an excuse, I just don’t think this falls into the YouTube extremes of “IT’S AMAZING” or “A COMPLETE FAILURE.” It just didn’t work very well, and turned out mediocre at best, frustrating at worst- because it could have been better.
No. While this show avoided the extremes of stupidity that Kenobi frequently sank to, Kenobi also had high points that this show didn’t even approach. Kenobi, while very,very flawed, is the far better series than this boring crap. Someone elsewhere called it”gray sludge” and there couldn’t be a more apt term.
I’m mostly annoyed that this show was basically just, “Hey look, we brought Clone Wars, Rebels, and the ghost of Timothy Zahn into live action! Good luck figuring all this out if you haven’t totally invested in any of this!”Like, I’ve seen the Filoni cartoons but I still had to Google to remember what the Mortis Gods were and I still don’t fully remember their episode and I don’t really feel the need to just to get the full nuance of Baylan Skoll’s pensive stare into the distance in the finale. That’s just “pander-to-the-convention-geeks” level stuff.
I watched a fair chunk of Clone Wars over my kids’ shoulders back in the day, but none of Rebels, and I’m really getting the impression that Filoni loves introducing lots of complicated mystical lore and MacGuffins into Star Wars. Like, the galactic war involving a million planets wasn’t enough of a backdrop, there needs to be whatever the hell “Mortis Gods” are, plus fifty other things.
What a wild ride for the Disney marketing team this is going to be, LOL.This show was a carrot to the Star Wars EU/PT fandom the same way Rise of Skywalker was. And it had about the same level of conviction. It wasn’t terrible, but it was definitely Filoni doing his usual “stall for time, write long pauses, make it feel like it’s saying something serious” style of modern storytelling he drags as one-off episodes into other peoples’ shows (Mando, Boba Fett, Bad Batch) that just seems tedious and lead-footed.And then they did that for every single episode.Forbes says Ahsoka is now the worst-performing Star Wars show of this era according to the same 3rd party metrics they use for other Disney shows. The previous crown-holder was Andor.So, worse viewership than Andor, same critical reception as Mando Season 3.This is that come-to-Jesus vs. copium-huffery moment I think for this whole project. Filoni is the heir apparent of the lore, but he apparently doesn’t have an actual audience for that lore. Will Disney just give him an entire niche corner of the universe to play in forever that no one will watch except people obsessed with Filoni, or will they bet better-performing shows on dicerolling the ambitions of that guy who made the least-watched show out of everything they’ve made?What really intrigues me is… Jon Favreau is the main reason The Mandalorian works as the guy who wrote 90+% of the episodes. Is Jon Favreau losing interest in the Star Wars universe the sole reason Filoni is getting way too much influence and creative freedom way too fast with nothing to show for it?
lol… it’s the best SW show outside of Andor and was a pure joy to watch.
Making alt accounts won’t give this review any further merit, Sam.
I agree with the sentiment, though I would put Star Treks Picard and Discovery even lower haha
Few things are worse than Picard, especially the first two seasons.
I’m absolutely shocked that the serial whiner who hate watches current era Star Wars didn’t enjoy this show!
Thanks for commenting.
Vulture gave the finale 4 stars, which smacks of grade inflation to me. I probably would have given this episode a C- at best, and the whole series a C. It was at times quite dull with really poor pacing and flat acting. I’m not a hardcore Star Wars fan, but I’ve kept up with the movies and most of the live action shows. I think this show, more than others, required the viewer to bring some knowledge of the more niche parts of the Star Wars universe to the party before viewing. Basically, if you haven’t watched the Clone Wars series (and I hadn’t), you were missing a lot of context. Sometimes shows do a really good job of giving the uninitiated viewer the necessary backstory. Ahsoka did not. I found myself pausing to Google stuff more often than I would have liked.In the end, my main critique of the finale (and really the last few episodes) is that they gave Thrawn a pretty big Dr. Evil vibe—he placed his opponent in an easily escapable situation and assumed everything went to plan. Both Thrawn and Ahsoka/Ezra/Sabine displayed a distinct lack of urgency for people who want to either lead a resurgent Imperial Army or avoid being stranded forever on a far-flung planet. The lack of urgency threw off the pacing of the series in general and the finale in particular.
Finale was entertaining, but I laughed out loud at getting a cheesy force ghost ending rather than anything actually interesting. Overall pretty disappointed with the show, virtually nothing happened that we didn’t know was coming, except setting up the Baylan thing.By the time all the characters were introduced and we had gotten to the point that was understood as the basic premise of the show, it was basically over.Anakin and Corellia episodes were OK but did they really satisfy anyone? Why not have an episode about why tf Ahsoka made Sabine her apprentice? Or wtf Ezra and Thrawn were doing the whole time, esp. the immediate aftermath of their arrival? Seems like pretty obvious stuff to cover.I guess we get to speculate on what Baylan is up to. I really hope it has nothing to do with Palpatine or Snoke or anything that has to be wrapped up by that time, and is setting up for post-sequels-era. And he absolutely must be recast or it will all be for nought.
I’m always a bit amused by the complaining about the latest “Star Wars” project. I remember the Dark Times after “Return of the Jedi”. If you wanted more Star Wars, you had “The Ewok Adventure”, “Caravan of Courage”, or the Saturday morning cartoons “Ewoks” and “Droids”. Man, what kids would’ve done for even *1* lightsaber battle or even a couple of blaster shots while slogging through “Caravan of Courage”…
George “There was no more story to tell.” Lucas.
Easily the best of the live action Star Wars shows and pissed off the r/saltierthancrait folks more than anything else that’s aired so far. Win/win! Love it, I’ll take six more seasons and a movie!
If this show does come back for a second season, would love to have a different reviewer here. This show wasn’t perfect or accessible to the wider audience by any means, but treating it with such disdain when it’s clearly a show MEANT for the diehards who watched the animated shows was annoying to read through week after week. Every little nod to The Clone Wars or Rebels was written about so dismissively, and while there were definitely things this show could’ve done better, it would *probably* behoove AV to get someone who might actually appreciate those references? Just a thought.
Respectfully: These reviews have to be mostly trolling at this point. A whole paragraph about how Jarrus was called by the wrong name. But here is the line in response to Ezra from HuYang, which I absolutely caught when I watched this last night, but I just rewatched the scene to make sure:“A clever boy CALEB was, very curious a little shy perhaps.” So not only is this show marked down for a lot of frankly nitpicky stuff, but the nitpicky stuff wasn’t even right.Look it is fine not to like the show. I know a lot of people are disapponted in it, and that is fine. I think it is uneven but with some good Star Wars fun in it. But I think the criticism on this site has been way over the top. Yes, you need to have seen Rebels in order to understand it. It is a sequel to Rebels. People are going to be as lost here as they would any time they jump into a sequel without seeing the thing it is based on. And a D Plus, really? Are we really saying that this is almost a failing grade as a television show. Acting and production and effects at story are almost at F level? Because a blade came out that was not explained (after being explained in other SW cannon, but whatever), and no one called Jarrus Caleb (which they actually, you know, did?). Come on. I think I am going to stop coming here for reviews, which is a shame. I know no one cares but me (and why would they?), but this has been my go to place for TV reviews and discussion. Now almost nothing gets reviewed, the site is all lists, and when there are reviews I just don’t agree with them at all. As I said last week when I disagreed-no disrespect intended, either to the reviewer or any person who does not like the show. Different opinions are great, and no one wants to pay me one cent to write about SW or anything else. But these are getting dangerously close to clickbait to me. IGN gave this a 9. Den of Geek gave this a 3.5 out of 5. It doesn’t mean they are right, but I don’t see them docking points for AI intros or things that they completely missed in the episode either.
In fairness, I think the people who stay are here for the comment section.
sounds like you need to go elsewhere to find reviewers who will back up your confirmation bias. io9 has you covered! i, for one, think it’s totally ok that some people don’t love the thing you love, and i want to hear why they don’t love it, and maybe—just maybe—it’ll make me think critically about why i really do/don’t love the thing.crazy concept, i know, this whole “nuance” and “diversity of opinions” thing.
Did you even read my post? Do you even know what confirmation bias means? Is your reading comprehension really this bad?-I said multiple times that it is fine to have a different opinion.-I said exactly why I don’t like this review and others. Not because the opinion is different, but because they keep getting basic stuff wrong or giving grades for ridiculous reasons (like AI intros).-Seriously: Your reading comprehension needs a lot of work. Why do people like you even respond to something you don’t even try to read? Crazy concept I know: reading something, understanding what has been said, and then responding to the points they actually made instead of the narrative in your head.
i read every word. i really shouldn’t have, because it started with “these reviews have to be mostly trolling”. it’s not trolling to have a different opinion. you say you’re ok with that, but you also don’t want to keep reading reviews that don’t back up your position. you cite the glowing scores from other outlets, but say that doesn’t mean they’re right—so why cite them? could it be that you’re holding some…jeez i don’t know what’s the term…confirmation bias? that perhaps other outlets see it more like you do, and therefore you give them more credence? that perhaps seeing other people not glowingly adore the thing you glowingly adore takes a bit of the glow away for you, and you want to keep adoring it?it’s fine if you do! the internet is a huge place. there are zillions of reviews and tweets and reddit posts where everyone thinks this show could did, and indeed did, no wrong. but see, you’re trying to win on a technicality. his whole review is invalid because (you think) one or two specific points are bogus. your entire premise is “ACKSHUALLY”.did YOU read the whole review? because he didn’t give the episode a D+ over the name thing. he gave the episode a D+ because it stinks. if you don’t think it stinks, you got much more out of it than i did or than Sam did, evidently. and i’m genuinely glad that you enjoy it.
Let me try to lay this out for you so you understand. I will post from this piece itself. “Two of the very first scenes in this week’s Ahsoka—the last of the season, if not also the series—showcase exactly what I think was one of the crucial missteps of this show: With the mysterious cargo fully loaded into his Star Destroyer, Thrawn is ready to leave the new galaxy and go back to the old one. But first, he and the Great Mothers decide to bestow upon Morgan Elsbeth a gift as a reward for making all of this happen.”Oh, Ok, there are two scenes that illustrate why this author thinks this show sucks. Must be pretty important. Let’s take a look at those to see if this review is worth putting any stock in. “The Mothers do some magic, with a lot of green light and what the subtitles called “whooshing” (a word that doesn’t really lend itself to ominousness), and when they’re done, Elsbeth’s face is scary looking and she’s been given a flaming magical sword referred to as the “Blade Of Talzin”—with the music dramatically ramping up to indicate that, even if you don’t know what this thing is, it’s obviously supposed to be a big deal. Crucially, though, it is not explained.”Oh, ok, that is scene one. The problem is that the blade is explained. Repeatedly. In the shows and books that this show is a sequel to. The show presumes knowledge of those other things. It is fine to think that is not the way a story should be told. It is not fine to dismiss it without understanding that those of us who consumed the stuff this was a sequel to understood just fine. What about the next scene that illustrates why this show is oh so bad? “But Rebels fans who know Kanan Jarrus (the father of Hera’s son from earlier in this show) will recall that Kanan isn’t his real name. Until Order 66 came through and the surviving Jedi went into hiding, he was Caleb Dume—which is the name Huyang would’ve known him by when he was a kid. It’s not a big deal— in fact it doesn’t matter at all to the plot, but in the span of a few minutes, Ahsoka is expecting you to recognize what the Blade Of Talzin is and ignore the fact that Huyang knows Kanan by the wrong name. It’s not all that different from Sabine and Ahsoka having a big falling out that happens entirely offscreen and is only off-handedly explained in this episode.” Oh, wow, super compelling! Except that as I and others pointed out, this is factually completely wrong. It is not what happened in the episode. I wrote what actually happened: “A clever boy CALEB was, very curious a little shy perhaps.” So not only is this show marked down for a lot of frankly nitpicky stuff, but the nitpicky stuff wasn’t even right.”Are you getting this yet, or are you going to continue to be willfully obtuse? I don’t care if an outlet gives Ahsoka or any other show a minus billion rating, as long as they back up their reasoning with solid arguments and things that actually happened. What I don’t like, as I stated pretty clearly in what I wrote, is when reviewers completely miss things about an episode and then heavily base their scores on it-which seems like trolling to me. Differing opinions are fine; those backed by facts and logic are particularly engaging. Differing opinions based on obvious errors are not fine, no matter what the issue under debate is. This author highlighted two sequences that illustrate his problem with the show, and he is factually incorrect about both. Why, then, should I trust the review? It is not because he has a different opinion. It is because he has failed to adequately support his opinion.You call these technicalities, but they were so important to the author that he held them up as specific examples of his overall problems with the show (I even quoted it for you directly, you are welcome). It is the whole first part of the review. And he is wrong about what happened. Newsflash: I and every person get to decide what reviews to trust. As you say in your rude and unsolicited responses, it would have been perfectly fine if I wanted to just seek out someone who was going to parrot my opinion if that is what makes me feel warm and fuzzy. But that is not in fact what I am doing. I am watching the reviews of this show, both now and in the past, stray into what I believe are misinterpretations of the material. So I am not going to give this review much weight. I know you are going to blow past what I am actually saying to push your own narrative because that is what you are committed to (or your reading comprehension really is that bad). IDGAF. This author’s argument for why I should consider this episode a D Plus is flawed, and so is yours.
neat.
So, you’re basically mad that the reviewer, like most people, hasn’t watched a children’s cartoon.It was already explained to you that the reviewer didn’t give it a D because of a name mixup. I’m guessing you left off the main points of the review to make it more frivolous than it actually was.
God this is a dumb response. I’m not mad about anything. Do I think it would have been helpful to pay attention to the thing the show he is reviewing is a direct sequel to? Yeah probably.And it was already explained to YOU that I was using the name mix-up as an example of what this reviewer dislikes about the show-just like, you know, the reviewer himself did.
Can I ask some serious questions? I’m confused.
1. If time/stopping Thrawn is vital for the good guys, why were they plodding along at a snail’s pace with the Noti at the start of the episode?
2. How did Ezra get from Thrawn’s ship back to Hera? Did he just amazingly steal a shuttle off Thrawn and escape undetected, or did I miss something?
3. Why did Shin go join the red ninja camp? Just for fun?
If this were merely fan fiction – a brand-new unofficial corner of the Star Wars universe wholesale invented by some diehard fan with a big budget – it would be the best fan-fiction ever made. But the fact that we’re supposed to treat this as canon, that all these things and powerful people have supposedly been hovering around the edges of the Star Wars universe all this time without ever making themselves known, and that the most important things about them happened off-screen, in an older cartoon, is just… weird.
Best Star Wars fan-fiction ever made award goes to The Force Awakens. Frankly, all of this Disney stuff feels like fan fiction. My own head canon is quickly being reduced to the original trilogy and MAYBE the prequels. The rest is just so sloppy and inconsequential, it might as well be fan fiction.
TFA was less fan fiction for me than it was “non-Union Mexican equivalent” Star Wars. There’s serious “Señor Spielbergo” vibes to the whole idea of “Resistance” and “First Order.”But yeah, the more Star Wars expands at Disney, the narrower my appreciative focus gets. Andor is still the only property that has truly excited me lately.
I sit here trying to figure out why it’s not landing, and I just keep coming back to the writing. It just feels fucking lazy.There’s so much in all the Disney stuff that gets shrugged at. It’s like the complete opposite of the MCU, where the continuity of the stories is paramount. In Star Wars, nothing ever seems to have evolved organically from the previous stories.But moreover, the same thing happens with the characters internally. None of them seem to be doing anything because it’s what humans would do in a given situation whether via logic or emotion, it happens because some writer thought it would be cool. There’s never any effort to justify things on a character level, it’s just surface level flash.
For the Filoniverse specifically, but possibly also for the Abramsverse, I get the feeling that they get these grand narrative arcs in their heads, and they just move the pieces around until they reach the end. There seems to be no logical or emotional cohesion to what fills the void between endpoints, except that in the Filoni material there is a mound of callbacks, retcons, and Easter eggs, and in Abrams’ movies they’re all puzzleboxes that he hasn’t figured out yet.I think I like Andor because the Star Wars Universe is a backdrop for the story and an environment for the characters to move in, not a story that’s moving the characters. Dunno if that makes sense, but I think that’s what bugs me the most about the Disney content.
That sounds about right to me. I think both of them start with plot and big “reveals.” In Abrams case, he doesn’t know what they actually are, but he knows he wants them. Building a story from the plot down and then filling in with characters can work, but neither of them really spend any time working out the character motivations to get from point A to point B. And they definitely don’t adapt the storylines to accommodate the way the story actually develops.
I feel like Andor and The Last Jedi are the only two Disney Star Wars properties that really focus on the characters. In both instances, the plot is driven by the characters and what drives them.I like The Force Awakens a lot, and I do think the characters are pretty well defined, but it’s more plotty than Andor or TLJ. Rise of Skywalker is 100% plot and 0% character and suffers greatly for it.
I’ll give you TLJ being pretty focused on the characters. Personally, I don’t care for most of the character choices made in that film, but I’ll grant that they do have more internal consistency (ie, within that film, not the overall series) than most characters since Disney bought the IP.
TBF, JJ Abrams would BE Señor Spielbergo if he were Mexican and non-Union.
On the other hand, a canonical “Werner Herzog exists in the Star Wars U and is delightful” is a reason to at least preserve Mandalorian S1.
I think what really turned me against this show is that it introduced a juicy dramatic conflict with Sabine’s decision, and then…nothing! No discussion, no repercussions, just a shrug. But plenty of time for moving action figures around and making lightsaber noises.I also don’t care much about continuity; if this show was adapted into a comic book, every panel would be chock-full of editor’s footnotes (“See Rebels #104, true believer!”). Having tapped out of Clone Wars early and never watched Rebels, none of the cameos and references had any emotional heft. Perhaps a better version could have supplied that on-screen instead of leaning on whatever had been built up over the seasons of the other shows.
I think I’ve been out on Filoni since all the failures of Boba Fett, and nothing since then has given me a new hope.
Star Wars? More like Star Bores.
I feel like this show is for 8 or 9 year olds who are big Stars Wars fans and don’t know too much about anything. Maybe 11 year olds? I don’t know. My standards are pretty low, but even just the acting feels really slow to me. Like they’re talking and reacting slowly to make sure it doesn’t go over anyone’s head. And there’s too many, WAY too many times, when Ahsoka is standing there looking super smug, like “I’m 1000 steps ahead of everyone here”, at no point will I be in any danger, and I’m sorta puppeteering everyone’s destiny . Too much empty talk and kinda lame Jedi advice and “lessons”. I thought Anakin standing there at the end was sooooo corny. I mean. force ghost thing has been sooooo over played, last Jedi and ROS just killed it. I mean are they gonna make a show that’s just all the Force Ghosts hanging out together?? Because they could, couldn’t they ? Let’s see, we’ve got Ben, Luke, Anakin, Yoda, QUi-GOnn, plus there must be some more. It’s just getting so silly. it’s hard basically not to laugh during this show. Space Whales! Space Cats! Space Zombies! Space Wargs! Space Turtles! Space Turtles in Space Turtle Ships! Also, like when she shows up and sees Ezra. He’s like “Oh hello, you old friend, thought you’d show up at some point, hardy har har”. He’s been abandoned in different galaxy for TEN YEARS.. come on. He would be tripping his ass off and demand immediately to know how she got there.. he wouldn’t look off in the distance and say vague things. That’s really it. Everybody is so vague about everything, and Ahsoka is looking at a Star Destroyer and a whole army and she’s like “Oh we’ll just be fine, won’t we”. It’s all so silly. Honestly.. just plain silly. I laughed out loud like very 5 minutes. Space Whales! There were crazy space water whales in Avatar 2, so we needed them here. IN SPACE THOUGH!
struggling to justify its existenceA.K.A. Disney Star Wars movies and TV shows in a nutshell.
it’s dissapointing to read this show isn’t great. i’ve been waiting until the series finished so i could binge watch it. May just see which eps were well rated and watch them.
I lost interest at zombie troopers and magic witches in the star wars universe.Fonzie jumped the hypersonic space whale.
As someone who never watched any of the animated shows, I wanted to give this show the benefit of the doubt, and I did for eight episodes. But now that it’s over, I have to agree with Sam— so little happens in this show, and what does happens doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.I grant that it’s been about 30 years since I read the Zahn books, but I do remember Thrawn being really impressive and here, he just isn’t. Someone on YouTube pointed out that he’s been on the planet for 10 years… so why is he just now loading all these boxes of whatever on the Chimera? Why does everything he say just make him sound dumber?
The rest of the characters don’t fare much better. Ahsoka is so laconic, it seeps into the entire fabric of the show— it makes it all seem like NOTHING matters.I did a little bit of wookiepedia-ing some of the more obscure stuff (like what Baylon is probably sensing/digging int0), and all of that is cool, but would it have killed Filoni to even HINT at some of that?
I just don’t see what all the people raving about it see. I guess the lightsabering is cool, sometimes?
I liked the show well enough, but it leaned on too many people making inexplicable, stupid choices like Sabine in the first half, and the viewer being invested and knowledgeable about the Ezra Bridger story in the second half. He didn’t really seem that special in the end, or worth saving, tbh. Why is this guy a compelling reason to endanger the whole galaxy and everyone you know? It might be worth showing us those reasons in the current show. The few clips I watched of him taking Thrawn out of the picture in the first place with the purrgil (from Rebels?) were much more compelling and emotional as it highlighted his choice and sacrifice. Here Ashoka and Sabine seemed to get stranded more or less by accident, and any choices that lead to that don’t carry much emotional weight in the midst of all the *pew pew* going on. They were probably going for some kind of parallel here, but to me at least it didn’t work. Probably uncontroversial to say that Baylan was the best part of the series, but it would have been nice to see what he was up to.
Why is this guy a compelling reason to endanger the whole galaxy and everyone you know?That’s one of the things that keeps coming up in some other reviews I’ve seen. It gets lost amidst trying to figure out why in the hell Thrawn is so bad at strategy, or why everyone on the show seems like they took a sedative before getting to set, but I think it’s a majorly missed opportunity. If Sabine and Ezra were some kind of incredible romance, where her love for him made her willing to sacrifice absolutely anything to get him back, then it would work… maybe. You’d still have to address the idea that Ezra sacrificed his own future to keep Thrawn from the galaxy, which Sabine has now completely undone. You’d think that would cause a little bit of frustration on Ezra’s part, but apparently thats nbd either?
There’s just no STAKES to any of this, and no willingness to put the characters into conflict with one another.
Here’s Sam Barsanti the Debbie Downer of Star Wars to ruin it for you.
Disney’s inability to create *anything* interesting with their original series can only be considered a major failure and a persistent problem. They’re actively trying to make me not care about their properties anymore. It’s all so bland, and the finales lack any punch and don’t leave me craving the next season.Putting aside the first two seasons of The Mandolorian and WandaVision, their shows have been aggressively mediocre to bad with the obvious exception of Andor, which at this point is an aberration and should almost be carved off and attributed completely to Tony Gilroy’s involvement. Call it a Gilroy series that Disney was just lucky enough to distribute.They have now exhausted their goodwill from the first two seasons of The Mandolorian. If not for Andor, Star Wars would be all but dead if you also consider the state of the film side. The MCU beat them to the grave, it seems, since they don’t even have an Andor to cling to at this point. I’m probably just going to wait to stream The Marvels. I have no reason to spend good money on it.
This finale was the perfect encapsulation of all that’s wrong. It wasn’t bad, but it certainly wasn’t good, and the good parts weren’t enough to distract from the glaring issues. Like… taking the two most interesting characters from the season and just completely sidelining them is an atrocity. I’m sure Ray Stevenson’s death played a role in how the final version of the episode was cut, but that’s also a horrible tribute to a fine actor.The opportunities they’re squandering with these two colossal pieces of IP is truly awe inspiring.
Was it just me, or did anyone else see Thrawn and say “wait, I didn’t know Robert Patrick was in this,” only to be surprised that it wasn’t him?
“Two of the very first scenes in this week’s Ahsoka—the last of the season, if not also the series—showcase exactly what I think was one of the crucial missteps of this show … he briefly reminisces about Kanan being a shy and clever student.”The premise for your entire review is supported by the fact that you weren’t paying attention.
The show was hyped to deliver answers instead became yet more table-setting for future IP. But it was at least entertaining table-setting, at least from my perspective. It just feels like nothing much new came of this, except we know what happened t one character from Rebels.
I’m not one of those people who complains that you don’t pay enough attention. But I’m 99.9% certain Huyang says “Caleb.”
So much anger from both sides in the comments here, even though the most popular comment has only 33 “recommendations.”
Chill out, everyone. This series probably had a couple million viewers per episode, at least, and this comment section may have less than 100 people arguing about whether Star Wars can be saved.
I don’t think the review actually watched the show. It was clear from the first few episodes that this would be a multi-season story, on top of any upcoming movies. Though there was some slowness to the story, and some subdued acting choices, I still enjoyed these characters and watching them grow and connect (and I didn’t have any experience with Rebels).
I also enjoy the lightsaber duels and other fighting scenes. They were more meaningful than anything in Episode IX, and more interesting than the battle between Obi-Wan and Darth Vader in Obi-Wan’s series.
When Ezra says “Kanan”, Huyang says the name “Caleb”. And later “Kanan”. So he’s aware of the alias. Review made big point of this and got it wrong.
As much as it sucks, and Stevenson will never be topped, Baylan will need to be recast, and I’m sitting here thinking somebody should get Russell Crowe a hell of a personal trainer and a fat sack of cash. Problem solved.
Dan Harmon’s in pretty good shape these days.
I’ve seen some fan-casting of Liev Schreiber or however you spell it.
*folds arms and leans back*If I worked at the TVA…“This is the Ahsoka review. Not the Loki review!” I know that! Let me finish:*folds arms and leans back again (somehow)*If I worked at the TVA, I’d prune every universe within which the Ahsoka series exists because that…*folds arms (again!) and leans back even further*… was an absolute waste of time. And great characters. And great actors (seriously, who was Dawson playing in this show?).I mean… what was achieved? At the start of the series, Thrawn was in a different galaxy and Ezra was also in that galaxy. At the end of the series Thrawn was in a different galaxy and Ezra was also in that galaxy. What purpose did Baylan and the virtually mute Padawan serve? Did the writers just forget what they were meant to do? It was cool to see Dathomiri witches, and their resurrecting capabilities, but it wasn’t cool to see Claudia Black wasted (and the characters were named after the Sisters of Fate… which strikes me as lazy!).8 episodes of tiresome and exhausting set-up for a different show and/or movie, turning beloved characters that have been with many since childhood into bland, unemotive simulacrums that were boring to watch (not Ezra, he was fine, even if he forgot he had force powers when fighting the Zombie Death Troopers at the end). Why was the most interesting character a droid (David Tennant doing great work)?I feel I must temper the above by saying that this show was no where near the level of pure awfulness that was Obi-Wan, or the crushing disappointment that was the Crime Lord of No Crime. It was a partial bait’n’switch, like Mando’s dreary and meandering 3rd season, but there has certainly been worse Star Wars than this. But really, I just don’t know what Filoni was trying to achieve with… attempt!
At least Loki S2 is good so far, so there’s that.
Claudia Black was so wasted I didn’t even realize it was Claudia Black until I read your excellent comment and I’m a big fan of hers. Also, why get Wes Chatham do read 3 lines from behind a mask?
Yeah, it didn’t do anything. Like introduce audiences to live action versions of several Rebels characters, or present us with Grand Admiral Thrawn, etc.lol…
Ahsoka finale: The season ends without accomplishing much of anythingwelcome to Disney+ Star Wars everybody.
They should try to make all of the shows good like Andor instead of total trash like this.