Ahsoka recap: Why teach someone who doesn’t want to learn?
Ahsoka is a bad teacher, and Sabine is a bad student in an episode that centers around a mostly fun spaceship battle
TV Reviews Ahsoka
Last week, I said that I don’t really think it’s a flaw in Ahsoka that so much of the show hinges on the audience being familiar with characters and plot points from across the entirety of the Star Wars universe—or at least the Disney+ version of it, since I don’t think there’s really been anything from the actual movies so far. Why? Because it’s nice to reward fans who have stuck with this stuff for so long with a show that is so explicitly catered to them. That being said, this episode featured a scene where the New Republic leadership told Hera that they have no interest in helping her with her quest, which basically means that the larger Star Wars universe couldn’t care less about any of this, and that…is kind of deflating.
Because yeah, all of the big things happened in the movies without Ahsoka or Sabine or Thrawn (because as terrifying as he is to everyone, he did miss out on the whole war), and I feel like Ahsoka is falling into a common “expanded universe” trap where the events have to matter enough for the story to have stakes but they can’t matter so much that they impact the main-canon events.
The question of why any of this matters (beyond the fact that we all now know these Disney+ shows are building to an Avengers movie) hangs over Ahsoka, especially in this episode, where we spend a good chunk on Sabine’s Jedi training even as David Tennant’s Huyang (who remains perfect in every way) points out that she would make a terrible Jedi and that the old Jedi Order would’ve never accepted her. Plus, Sabine says she can’t feel the Force and can’t do Force things like Ahsoka can, which is obviously just to set up her eventually using the Force in some way, but why is she being trained as a Jedi in the first place if she hasn’t shown any aptitude for it and—evidently from the off-screen backstory stuff last week—doesn’t seem particularly interested in learning?
At least in this episode, Sabine’s crummy training session (where Ahsoka literally does the “make the person wear a helmet so they can’t see and are forced to tap into the Force” thing from A New Hope) is a setup for Ahsoka to come to a realization about listening to her student more and giving her what she needs rather than pushing things on to her (like, say, being a Jedi). After a very long trip through hyperspace, Ahsoka and Sabine end up at the big ring that the bad guys started building in the previous episode.
As Huyang does some scans to figure out what it is, enemy fighters start swarming Ahsoka’s ship. One is piloted by Shin, who seems to be wearing one of those Jedi headsets that people would wear in the prequel movies (a nice little aesthetic touch), and another is piloted by the mysterious Marrok (the masked henchman who carries an Inquisitor lightsaber). At first, Sabine has trouble hitting the enemy ships, because Ahsoka refuses to communicate with her, but after some prodding from Huyang, she decides to let her “I’m a Jedi master” ego slide and treat Sabine more like a partner than a dumb student who can’t even use ancient magic to move a cup.
They take out most of the ships, but by then they’re close enough to the ring (I believe they called it the Eye Of Sion last week) for Morgan Elsbeth to use its big cannons. She disables the ship but fails to fully destroy it, so while the fighters swoop in for the kill and Sabine tries to get it running again, Ahsoka puts on a spacesuit and climbs out onto the ship’s wing so she can battle the fighters with her lightsabers. I like how this sequence is sort of presented as a badass show of just how awesome Ahsoka is only for it to not really work at all, with her managing to destroy only one ship and getting knocked off into space in the process, but Sabine manages to save her and the sneak down to a nearby planet.
On the way down, the pass by a big herd of tentacled space whales, which are later identified—in cause you don’t know how Rebels ended—as Purrgil. As Huyang alludes to, Purrgil are creatures that can travel through hyperspace, and they were a key part of how the heroes defeated Thrawn (and lost Ezra Bridger) in Rebels. In other words, Ahsoka and Sabine are on the right track.
The episodes ends, oddly, with Baylan Skoll just kind of looking cranky—and that’s it. Did Ray Stevenson have something in his contract requiring the show to put him in every episode? If so, good for him.
Stray observations
- So, after initially dismissing him/them as a random goon in the first episodes, it’s pretty clear that Marrok is important in some way. They clearly have some plot armor after that fighter battle, and they speak with a heavily distorted voice. Plus, Baylan and Shin were created for this show, so it’s not like anyone’s hands were tied by canon with the other villains, so there’s no reason for this person to be in a mask unless it’s important that they’re in a mask. In other words, this is probably somebody. I’m not entirely sure it would make sense for it to be a brainwashed Ezra, which seems to be the common theory, but it might be worth noting that Eman Esfandi’s live-action Ezra wasn’t really in any of the trailers beyond the little hologram cameo we already saw.
- I loved the lightsaber training game that Huyang was putting Sabine through at the beginning of the episode. Felt very video game-y in a fun way. I’d spend a ton of money on that at a Dave & Buster’s.
- After a lot of scanning, Huyang eventually determines that the big ring is a hyperspace ring, which is a thing that smaller ships (like Jedi starfighters) used in the Clone Wars so they could go into hyperspace.
- Hera and Kanan’s son Jacen popped up briefly in this episode. I liked the little meta gag of Hera initially saying that he’s just hanging around somewhere on the ship and she doesn’t know where, which seemed like a nod to people who would’ve questioned why he wasn’t there in the first few episodes. But then he showed up for real!
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The force is aspirational again!!! No midichlorain counts!!!!
The kid who saw star wars in the theater back in the 77 is so so happy that the use of the force is something you can work and learn not just a blood test.
Twice in my life I have heard a collective gasp of “WTF?” from the entire theatre I was sitting in during a film. The first was during Highlander II when they revealed the whole ‘Immortals are from another planet’ plot and the second was during Phantom Menace when Qui Gon Jinn whipped out the ‘Midichlorian Counter’.
You saw Highlander II in the theater? And you survived?
It was a different time.
There could be only one, and we’ve found them.
Yes there are a few of us left and we have a support group. Some of us drove 90+ miles to see that steaming pile of cinema.
I was young and I needed to spend my disposable money.
What is this Highlander II you speak of?
Qui-Gon died before he could use that thing twice, and market testing showed that everyone hated midichlorians so they barely mention them after that, leaving him as the only Jedi who canonically ever gave a shit about them. Which means there’s still a path to fixing their existing by saying Qui-Gon was just a stuffy old grandpa about the force and midichlorians are widely regarded as bullshit space phrenology.
The only perfect use of Midichlorian is when Jedi Ronhar whom friends with Palpatine, plans to test all senate member including Palpatine with Midichlorian counter to find out if there’s a Sith in the senate. He obviously stupid enough to tell this to Palpatine instead of the Jedi Council and ended up killed on a suicide mission ordered by Palp himself.
Uh, oh. I’m not sure you know this or not, but…
I assume that’s Yoda talking about them too? Fine, he’s old as hell. He can be a space grandpa going on about the jedi equivalent of fast-twitch muscles. He’s already dead anyway, we can kill those darlings.
I don’t disagree with you, they were a terrible idea. Filoni may not be putting them in our faces but he definitely will keep them in canon.
That being said, this episode featured a scene where the New Republic leadership told Hera that they have no interest in helping her with her quest, which basically means that the larger Star Wars universe couldn’t care less about any of this, and that…is kind of deflating.
There’s a specific reason for this and its a recurring one across all the shows and books that take place post-RotJ;to show how the First Order came to be because of how ineffective the New Republic was. The sequels don’t really touch on it much at all so all the other media is filling in the blanks. And what you saw in this scene is a good example of the whole; some don’t think the Empire is an issue at all because the Rebels won, how could there possibly be other threats? Others think people are just looking for personal gain. The ones that do see the true threats are largely ignored until its too late. Basically, the New Republic had its head buried in the sand for a variety of reasons.
The star wars properties have spent more time trying to explain and retcon their crappy sequels than how long the movies actually were. It is actually a monument to how terrible the sequels are that they have to spend sooo much time explaining basic stuff in those movies now they are over instead of actually doing it in the movies.
did the same thing with the prequels. with the same character!
Real reason: Hera, Chopper, and their actors and FX are expensive, so we need to explain why they’re not in the rest of the show. Or “presumably” (hopefully) until the finale.**Or presumably, hopefully I’m wrong. Would love Hera all-in … but seems like … not so much.
Nah, there are more scenes with her from the trailers we haven’t seen yet. Now that she’s lost contact with Ahsoka and Sabine, and thinks this is her best chance of getting Ezra home, she’s going to fly in after them.
Since the show’s going hard at the ANH references, I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a “Yee-haw! You’re all clear ladies! Now let’s blow this thing so we can go home!”
Highly, highly likely Winstead has an “all episodes” contract and is being paid regardless of whether she shows up in a given week.
I would like to think that any civilisation that had just gone through an Evil Empire (TM) would be hyper-vigilant afterward.
But then I see what our civilisation is like just after a pandemic ended and, yeah, art imitating life and all that jazz.
“Did Ray Stevenson have something in his contract requiring the show to put him in every episode? If so, good for him.”yeah, good for the dead guy i guess
So now anyone can be a Jedi if they train hard enough ??
Seems like Jason being the son of a Jedi may have more of a connection to the Force than Sabine.
Marrok’s definitely Starkiller who will be the Thor of the Star Wars Avengers. TMando-CapBoba-Iron Man?Ahsoka-Hank PymLuthen-FuryAndor-NatashaOk, who else are we pigeonholing?
will andor not be dead based on the timeline here?
Andor died just before A New Hope, this is all taking place post Return of the Jedi. Sorry, he’s dead.
Marry me
He’s a vat grown clone of Ezra, that has been altered with Sith alchemy to be faster, stronger, more force-sensitive, and tougher than his unwilling genetic progenitor. In fact in all ways, he’s Better Than Ezra.
Aha, it was good, ah-ah-ah
Ah-ah-ah-ah
Don’t you mean “Ezraa”? :DOr would it be “Eezra” like “Luuke”?
Almost makes me glad Lucas put his foot down and made Zahn have Joruus C’Baoth instead of “Oobi-Wan” or “Obi-Waan”.
Or so the Germans would have us believe.
That asshole Senator is the father of Kaz, the main character of Resistance. Nice of them to throw a bone to the few people who care about that show.
Filoni created it, so he’s probably the only one that cares.
Kaz sucks. Must run in the family
Luke voice: I care.
This wasn’t a great episode, overall, but lots of fun to watch. Hati is a true menace, purrgil are the shit, i could watch Ray Stevenson do his taxes and be enthralled. Buuuuut, it’s becoming more obvious Thrawn will be a cameo at best in this show based on the pacing of these episodes. Ezra may get a Luke at the end of Force Awakens appearance. Both of which are bummer, especially because Ezra is my favorite jedi of all time.
Marrok is/was a Knight of Ren…
Phantom Menace: Sorry, heroes, we’d love to help with your urgent
problem, but we’re politicians and bureaucracy just gets in the way.
Oops.
Rogue One: Sorry, heroes, we’d love to help with your urgent problem,
but we’re politicians and bureaucracy just gets in the way. Oops.
The Force Awakens: Sorry, heroes, we’d love to help with your urgent
problem, but we’re politicians and bureaucracy just gets in the way.
Oops.
The Mandalorinan: Sorry, heroes, we’d love to help with your urgent
problem, but we’re politicians and bureaucracy just gets in the way.
Oops.
Ahsoka: Sorry, heroes, we’d love to help with your urgent problem, but we’re politicians and bureaucracy— STOP!
We fucking get it! Come up with a new idea, FFS. We’ve seen this
before. It’s boring. It’s redundant. It’s not remotely interesting.
It’s crappy storytelling the 100th time. The Republic(s) (old and new)
deserve to friggin’ die when they’re so bloody incompetent and willfully
blind. Ugh, please move on from this crap, already. You don’t have to
elevate your heroes by making the power structures so weak. It’s
unnecessary and unimaginative and lame.
It also adds insult to injury dragging poor Genevieve O’Reilly into the
mix, who was soo good and such a rich, compelling character in “Andor.”
And now she has to sit at the friggin’ Filoni kids table just being
another boring-ass, ineffectual politician yet again in a subpar show.
Ugh.
And don’t start with the “Well, that’s why the First Order came to power!” crap. It still sucks and it’s still bad storytelling. It’s the same thing as making your enemies too weak. The argument is if your enemies are too weak, it’s not impressive that your heroes overcome them. Well, if your allies are so weak, it’s also not scary or impressive that the bad guys overcome them.I’d love to have ONE moment in any piece of SW content that actually shows that, yeah, defeating the Empire was actually a good thing. But that’s literally never happened once.
well said and I would add stop with the weird maps that may not have been created in the time place or way they end up being in the shows.
Haha, yeah. The maps that they are convinced are deep and intriguing, but are just pointless and boring.
Also watching the end of Rebels, how did a map to thrawn get created when he and esra got blasted off into wherever by purgill, who made the map, with what information and why stick it in an old temple instead of broadcasting it out to all the remaining imperials and future first order people.
gotta be the same guys who made a weird knife (?) out of the silloutette of a death star from a certain angle that had crashed like 10-15 years earlier.
Exactly
The map was made long before Thrawn got blasted off….it does not show his location it was a map just showing the route to the a new galaxy made centuries ago. The show made it hard to follow that piece of information.
I missed that detail. thanks
Perhaps the map isn’t “The Map To Thrawn/Ezra” but “The Migratory Patterns of Hyperspace Whales that Thrawn/Ezra Was Last Seen Riding On”(Sidenote: what’s the hyperspace velocity of an unladen hyperspace whale?)
African or European?
Because it’s a map to where Thrawn is, not a map to Thrawn. There’s a key difference.
The map itself is probably thousands of years old.
That makes more sense, but the audience can be forgiven for being completely confused. We’re not told why Ahsoka was looking for an secret map other than she had learned it was “vital for the enemy’s plans” in the opening crawl, and she later says that it holds the key to finding Thrawn.Neither she nor any of the characters she talks to even questions how a secret map found in an ancient map could possibly show where Thrawn might be, it’s just taken as read, leaving viewers — even those who saw Star Wars Rebels five years ago (that’s a long time to remember details — I certainly didn’t) — completely in the dark.That’s just poor storytelling — a missed opportunity for bringing the audience along with the ride to solving the mystery. There’s no reason why they couldn’t have included a short conversation expressing their befuddlement over how an ancient map could be relevant to Thrawn’s disappearance and concluding that they’re missing an important connection somewhere, and then allowing the audience to put the puzzle pieces together along with them as they arrive at the planet and encounter the space whales that were involved with Thrawn’s disappearance.
But what makes no sense is all the talk about “There are rumors of Thrawn’s return!”Uh, by who? There’s one plot involving 3-4 people. Why the hell are they spreading rumors about it before it actually happens?
The map preexisted the current period by millenia and knowledge of it was vaguely preserved while fading to a legend.
yea I caught that on second viewing, the first viewing I was still eye rolling at another damn map.
I kinda hated this show, but it was EXTREMELY obvious that the map was created long before, unrelated to Thrawn and Ezra, presumably in relation to purgill migration and/or ancient mysteries in the other galaxy.Star wars fans get hung up on the dumbest shit, and totally overlook that Dave Filoni sucks.
I’m sorry, Laurence, but when I think “Star Wars” I think of ineffectual bureaucracies that are overtaken through gumption and grit! It’s a longstanding tradition.
I mean, to be fair, that’s the case of the Empire in the original trilogy as well, yeah?
Well, yeah, the Empire can be an ineffectual bureaucracy because they’re the bad guys.
But it sucks when, after the rousing victory of the good guys over the Evil Empire, all the new canon tells us that, well, sorry, don’t get too happy about it, because the new galaxy may not be a fascist dictatorship, but it’s still a shitty place to live. All institutions are fatally flawed, all governments are terrible in their own ways. Might as well not even bother trying to improve the galaxy, since life will always suck.
For the life of me I’ll never understand why Disney has spent the last 8 years trying to make the EVIL EMPIRE more likeable. Is it to sell more storm trooper toys?
It’s the Star Wars version of “welcome to the Libertarian Party”
Yeah, and a large amount of Andor is this same trope, where the Only Person Who Sees It tries to get the Empire to take the threat of rebellion seriously.
I agree. I particularly don’t understand the depiction of the New Republic in these post-RotJ series. It’s somehow more corrupt and ineffectual than the old Republic- sometimes even actively antagonistic- and we never really get a clear sense of why. I know we need to work toward the stupid return of rebel v. empire status quo in the sequels, but at this point, if I were a galactic citizen, I would be sick of everybody.
They keep mentioning how it’s staffed with ex-Imperials.
Trying not to let the arc of my own professional bias intrude too much here – but I’m willing to say that this is a reflection of the realworld. That republican (lowercase “r”) democracy is intrinsically inefficient, relative to autocracy.There’s a long, illustrious history of political drama (e.g., a West Wing, Lincoln, Madame Secretary, All the President’s Men) and for that matter – comedy (Veep, Wag the Dog, Primary Colors, Election) built on the tension, pathos, and sometime bewildering hilarity that democratic political systems spend an awful lot of time fighting and arguing about ostensibly being on the same side, in a broader context.If anything – having Mon Mothma be the common thread between depicting the politics in the Age of Empire in Andor – versus the New Republic here in Ahsoka just underscores the differences (and some of the small nuanced similarities) even more.
I’d be more willing to accept the reflection of this unarguable reality in modern Star Wars if it didn’t so often just manifest as clumsy idiot ball handoff in order to build to a pre-existing outcome (ie- the First Order).
Fair. I’m wholly willing to admit that Wars at large (at least the current canon) has a pretty checkered history of filling story into its own established history. On the clear minus column, the prequel trilogy and Solo certainly all speak to that. But then in the plus column, we have Rogue One and Andor – there’s a good argument for the Clone Wars series to mostly live in the plus column.As far as the intrinsic weakness of the Republics, Old and New – to my mind, a huge chunk of the very premise of the Empire and First Order are that they’re autocracies built and adapted to specifically exploit the weaknesses of the democratic regimes they aim to replace.For now, the gradual insidiousness of the Republic’s transition into the Empire seems to winning the storytelling accolades in no small part because they’ve been examining the scope of that period from multiple POVs that flesh out the politics of the period without necessarily being Space C-SPAN.Part of the bated breath which which we’re watching Ahsoka being that the time we’ve spent in the post-Endor period (i.e., Mandalorian, Book of Boba Fett) has seemed more focused on the periphery of galactic society, so it’s been far harder to get a sense of whatever challenges state-building in the New Republic looks like, comparatively. The other clear examples I can think of being Ranger Teva unsuccessfully lobbying Colonel Tuttle, and the clear holes in the Imperial Amnesty Program.
If you hate it in Star Wars, just wait until you turn on the news!
Hera maybe should have mentioned the lightsaber wielding baddies in addition to the Empire loyalists, maybe?
I’d love to have ONE moment in any piece of SW content that actually shows that, yeah, defeating the Empire was actually a good thing. But that’s literally never happened once.But the fact that it doesn’t happen hews close to reality, unfortunately.Victory in the Civil War brought hope to millions of black Americans that they would now be allowed to live free and as equals in a reconstructed America. Little more than a decade later, the same people who fought to preserve slavery were starting to pass laws in states all over the South that ensured black people would be forced to live as second-class citizens for another hundred years.In 1918, a devastated and exhausted Europe was picking up the pieces after “The War to End All Wars” swearing such a calamity could not happen again. It took barely two decades of poor political decisions and complacency to prove them wrong.Everyone cheered and hailed the fall of the Soviet Union as the start of a new era of hope and peace. Thirty years later, a former Soviet communist apparatchik is threatening to reestablish the former Soviet empire and has already destroyed hundreds of thousands of lives trying. “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose…”
Yeah there’s a lot of parallels that make complete sense to me and explain the weakness of the New Republic. The Empire is definitely paralleled to 1930s Germany and the Soviet Union’s global domination plans with complete control over the people, and the New Republic is less on the lines of a country’s government and more like the UN, League of Nations, or NATO.
I think the message is really: the skills needed to overthrow a corrupt regime are completely different from the skills needed to establish a new, better regime in its place. The challenges of governance aren’t really the sorts of things you can overcome with sick lightsaber skills, a hotrod starship, and a plucky attitude. Managing a galactic-scale government means balancing distribution of goods, services, and resources across thousands of whole planets with varying degrees of need, and sometimes competing immediate interests.
Wow, you got your last example COMPLETELY fucking backwards. Goebbels himself couldn’t have done better.
I mean maybe that’s just the way Star Wars is and if you don’t like it you kinda don’t like Star Wars? Because the old EU was like that too. If the ‘big boys’ come in right away and squash everything then it’s gonna be a shitty story, isn’t it?
It’s not the way Star Wars is. It’s the way bad star wars is. Star Wars is/has been about people coming together against a common foe.I mean, at least everyone in the rebellion was on the same side, right? Not actively or passively undermining each other.Unless they’re not being on the same page was a story point that got overcame through the course of that specific story (Rogue One.)
Nope, it’s absolutely been the way Star Wars is, at least for the past 30 years.
“I mean, at least everyone in the rebellion was on the same side, right? Not actively or passively undermining each other.”You didn’t watch Rebels, did you? The Rebellion wasn’t a single organization where everyone got along all the time.
And my point stands: If the New Republic just sent in a fleet to kill the Eye of Scion, it’d be a pretty shitty story.
You didn’t watch Rebels, did you?
I think that might be the “bad” Star Wars he’s talking about.
The old EU fucking sucked, and anybody who liked it is a f*ggot who should rope.That’s you.Rope, f*ggot
Um, this is often the government response when a crisis arises. Arrogant bigwigs don’t listen, helpless citizens pay the price. Rinse & repeat. This trope might be as true-to-life as Star Wars has ever been.
The difference between fiction and reality is that fiction has to make sense.
In your litany you forgot:Andor: Sorry, inmates, we’d love to crush your spirit while you build those components, but we’re politicians and bureaucracy just gets in the way. Oops.
Huh?
Just trying to say that the Empire is just as bureaucratic and inflexible/incompetent in the grand scheme of things.
99.9% of the time, *not* indulging someone’s personal quest is exactly what an effective bureaucracy should do, because that’s how you stop politicians like Xiono from running rampant. Just because the requestor is one of *our* guys doesn’t mean they don’t have to make the case for what they are requesting. Hera got totally played into bring up the search for Ezra, instead of leaning into the immanent threat of Imperial remnants not just conducting raids but using the New Republic’s security measures against them.
If Merrok HAS to be some preexisting character in disguise, I’m going to guess a young Ben Solo, freshly manipulated away from Luke.Or he’ll be a whole new character that’s a Knight of Ren, as a way to flesh out more information about that group.
According to the timelines, that is still about 20 or more years in the future.
I’m assuming he’s just Babu Frik pulling levers inside the helmet.
I’m pretty well set on the path of just watching Andor and reading the recaps of other SW stuff. I’ll also catch up on Visions at some point.
Very solid plan.
I’m enjoying the show so far and I don’t think they’d actually go there, but it would be a more interesting story if it was kind of the point that Sabine is not really meant to or capable of being a Jedi, and Ahsoka trying to push her into that mold is a mistake.
I suppose in fairness to Sabine, it’s not like Luke – very strong in the Force – had a whole bunch of talents with it before serious training. It was basically just supernaturally fast reflexes.
The episodes ends, oddly, with Baylan Skoll just kind of looking cranky—and that’s it. I like that he’s just sort of . . . hanging out on the platform when they bring him the news. Doesn’t seem like he’s meditating or anything.
Hera and Kanan’s son Jacen popped up briefly in this episode. I liked the little meta gag of Hera initially saying that he’s just hanging around somewhere on the ship and she doesn’t know where, which seemed like a nod to people who would’ve questioned why he wasn’t there in the first few episodes. I think it’s weirder that he’s on a military ship. Why does she have her kid on a warship?
I think it’s weirder that he’s on a military ship. Why does she have her kid on a warship?
One of the many problems with the New Republic is they don’t have a proper childcare plan.
Any system that thinks Chopper is an appropriate caregiver for a child is one that is doomed to failure.
That’s an almost Babylon 5 level of realism!
“Leave Your Child at Work” Day
The episode was literally 45 minutes of filler. It starts with them en route to planet X, and ends with them landing on planet X. Everything that comes between is a repeat of a character beat, exposition, or plot point from the first two episodes:1. Ahsoka is not a good teacher; yep, we’ve established that.2. Sabine has no natural force ability, but is useful in a fight because she’s Mandalorian; yep.3. Republic is ineffectual; as others have pointed out, this message is repeated so frequently that you’d Kathleen Kennedy is secretly a fascist and this is all an exercise in convincing people that “democracy just doesn’t work.”4. Bad guys have a big circle; saw that last episode.5. Purgills, hyperspace, extragalactic shenanigans; that was all dumped on us last episode too.I want to like this show because it does have interesting ideas and has the potential to actually do something NEW in Star Wars, but the performances are flat and there is five minutes of filler for every minute of interesting television.The only time I was even remotely interested this episode was when they mentioned the “Zatochi” method; a less than subtle nod to Zatoichi that I appreciated tremendously.
Honest question; has live action Star Wars ever had a good teacher/student setup?
Not since the original movies. Since then the directors have either been constrained by heavy-handed plotting or a director (Lucas) who has weird ideas about relationships.
Qui-gon and Obi-Wan
…but didn’t Qui-Gon try to bail on teaching Obi-Wan in order to train Anakin after knowing the kid for less than a week?
I mean, the reasoning was that Obi-Wan was ready for his promotion but the timing was like “Found a better pupil, byeeeee”
“The episode was literally 45 minutes of filler.”You don’t think it’s impressive that they fit 45 minutes of filler in 35 minute episode?
This show is falling into the classic trope trap of creating seemingly interesting villains who aren’t even characters, just costumes. Shin has said maybe 20 words over 3 episodes and Baylan even fewer. Morgan scowls and Marrok has a Kylo Ren vocoder, which we know because he/she has had exactly two lines of dialogue. So far, Senator Ziono is the most compelling bad guy.
Yup. The show has plopped legacy characters into the show and expects you to care about them without actually doing any of the work because, hey, there’s 40 episodes of rebels you should be experts on and you should already love them!And then it gives us a few new characters, mostly villains, and does exactly nothing whatsoever to make them interesting, compelling or even scary beyond just saying, “Hey, Ray Stevenson’s cool, right?” (which, fair point, but it’s not enough.)
Too old she is. Too old for the training.Also, shout out for “Turbo lasers!”
Worst take possible about the dynamic of the two characters, is the worst take possible. Great job, Sam.
This show is awful.
Yes, it is.
I don’t think that’s what’s happening here. Hera is coming to these people saying, “Hey, we need to spend a lot of resources on something that I have no definitive proof of, and that I may have mixed motives about,” while the rest of these people are trying to rebuild and feed the Republic. The strongest feeling I got about this is that this is post war Europe, and Hera is Churchill saying, “Come on, we need to fight the Soviet Union.” No, they’re done, seriously in debt, and on the brink of collapse.
No definitive proof? A starship factory, that was hugely Empire, we see them get arrested, was working against the Republic, and they tried to kill a sitting general. That the council ignored all that was just narratively stupid. It needs to be dumb because a few of them, and some main characters, have to be stupid to be Empire to fit the new trilogy. Basically, every character has to be stupid to fit it into the forced space this is trying to exist in.
The shipyard is proof that there were Imperial loyalists working there. It’s not proof that Grand Admiral is about to unite the remnants to come sweeping down on the New Republic. You’re using meta knowledge that the characters don’t have.
Yeah the factory was full of Empire loyalists but there are still remnants of the Empire at large in the galaxy. The Senate acknowledge this when talking to Hera. But there is still zero proof in any of this that it all leads back to Thrawn.
But Hera’s not a crackpot. She’s a highly respected general. She has at least some proof about on-going Imperial loyalists and plots. The Republic knows there is at least a moderately substantial Imperial remnant to deal with. And it’s not like Hera was asking for all that much. Would a handful of X-Wings really be a massive strain on the New Republic?She deserves the benefit of the doubt, even if the Ezra situation very, very slightly calls into question her motives.
As they said its not the first time she’s asked for Republic resources to go off on a wild goose chase. They mention her using Ezra and Thrawn as leverage before and its came to nothing. They would need concrete evidence of Thrawn to allocate what she needs.
And as you said yourself there is still the Imperial remnant to deal with so maybe they don’t feel they have enough pilots to spare. The Rebel Alliance was vastly outnumbered by the Imperial Navy and they’ve just came off the back of a war, their numbers still may be small as they’re still a fledgling Republic. They would also expect one of their Generals and her command to be ready for threats they can actually see coming, not off chasing ghosts at the edge of the galaxy.
Yeah, from their point of view Hera is standing there telling them she wants lots of resources at her disposal to fight the boogeyman who killed her babydaddy and probably killed her adopted kid. We know she’s right but until she brings them better evidence, they’re going to say it was a lone incident, clearly mentally ill, thoughts and prayers with the victims, etc., and go back to their jobs of getting shit done.
Damn, did you seriously just compare Hera to a fucking NAZI like Churchill?Fuck off.
So Ahsoka is going to knock Marrok’s mask off and it’s going to be Barriss Offee, right?
The problem is that wouldn’t be a huge reveal to most of the audience. I’d love it, but I just can’t see them doing it.
I think it’s more likely than it being Ezra. If it’s anyone other than some random goon, I’m thinking Barriss.
I just don’t see why you put her in a mask and hide her voice. With Ezra it’s to hide that huge twist. but “third force user minion” is Barris why not just establish that from the jump? I don’t see what drama or tension is mined from hiding it.I really think when the mask comes off, it has to be someone viewers will recognize. Barris isn’t that. I’d love to be wrong though.
At least they didn’t whip out the enemy being far away and slowly advancing/running up on the resistance thingy. Giving them time to evacuate. Or even have a side adventure. I’m kind of tired of that trope.
I’m wondering just how many more pimples are left on the ass of Star Wars to be squeezed.
I haven’t seen the most recent episode, but as a fan of Clone Wars, Rebels and Mandalorian, I found the first two episodes of Ahsoka were surprisingly dull.
I only really noticed this as I watched the most recent episode of Heels immediately after. I had never seen the show, it was midway through season 2, and in that one episode I cared about the characters, I easily picked up the story, I found it interesting and entertaining and I want to watch more. Why couldn’t this be achieved with Ahsoka? It’s not an episode length problem because Heels ran at over 50 minutes and I was engaged the whole time. First couple episodes of Ahsoka had similar runtime and it subjected us to slowly rotating stone pillars, slowly rotating metal ball segments, and slow conversations with slow pauses because.. drama? If you’re gonna have a dramatic Star Wars it has to be interesting, like Andor. At the moment there isn’t enough fun in Ahsoka to make up for the slog.
Sometimes almost 50 years of lore and precedent (in terms of the style of storytelling) either gets in the way or becomes a burden which is very difficult to overcome.The only Star Wars TV show that’s impressed me is Andor which dared to make major changes to the usual tone and nature of the Star Wars properties.Ahsoka has played it extremely safe and by-the-numbers so far.
Heels is better than any of the live action Star Wars shows, even the Mandalorian and Andor
The writing in Heels is a lot faster paced so a lot more dialogue. But it’s all in character and in keeping with the story they’re telling.
While there wasn’t as much dialogue in, say, Clone Wars or Andor (certainly not in Mandalorian), there was still quite a bit and it ranged from below average to excellent, and more often than not above average.
Ahsoka is just clunky, and not in a meme-able “written by George Lucas” way. I can only think it’s because Filoni has had to adapt a movie or mini-series he was making into a longer thing that Disney wants, because his writing on Clone Wars and Rebels wasn’t like this mostly.
george lucas unloading this turd of an IP on disney was one of the greatest ripoffs of all time!
So in terms of canon, this is basically Agents of SHIELD for the Star Wars universe?
So. From what I understand. Every spacecrafts in Star Wars can go hyperdrive, but only within their own galaxy? They essentially need a booster if they want to go hyperspace, i.e inter-galaxies travel, or event horizon? So, that’s where the ring machine came in?
I think the idea is that the distance between galaxies is so great that even standard hyperdrives would take a long time, so they’re making a giant sized super hyperdrive.
“I feel like Ahsoka is falling into a common “expanded universe”
trap where the events have to matter enough for the story to have
stakes but they can’t matter so much that they impact the main-canon events.”Sooo…you want them to have an effect on canon events so you can complain that the canon event didn’t show the effect that they had, don’t you?
Why review something you don’t like?
lmao
I did not watch Rebels, or any of the Clone Wars, but it didn’t take me very long to get at least the cliff’s notes version of a lot of this. But then also, at least ten years have passed for the characters, its not hard to catch up.But the whole failure of the New Republic was like the whole B plot of season 3 of the Mandalorian as the entire point of these shows, to me, at least, is to address a complaint about the new sequels, of how in a barely a twenty five year generation did the First Order set up a whole military that could wipe it out and seemingly have also had a whole universe spanning conspiracy to get Palpatine a new body. But like that was a whole story that was the reason Moff Gideon was able to escape, and we could care that the people on Navarro were abandoned and the one pilot turning to the Mandalorians for help, this story takes the failure more closely into impacting the lives of the characters who are central to the main story. And maybe giving to much ham fisted motivation to Hera and that she probably becomes Leia’s first recruit to the Rebellion. I imagine that Sabine doesn’t not want to learn, but as I understand the Mandalorians, they don’t really seem to be into much magic and only some folklore. Like the waters are really it. I bet if they run into someone who has more of a scientific explanation of what the Force is and how Sabine maybe already accesses it when she like is looking at the star map and putting pieces together that aren’t right in front of her. But the fight training is more related to Kung Fu movies, which Luke’s was too.
“Ahsoka is a bad teacher, and Sabine is a bad student”The problem with Ahsoka and Sabine’s relationship is Huyang. He’s got 25,000 years of “just telling the truth” bullshit yet has never figured out how to give actionable criticism. Once he’s turned off Ahsoka and Sabine are able to work together.In the next episode, Huyang will cry out “Why won’t you debate me?”
Why….are we still even reading this site anymore?