Ahsoka recap: Welcome to a whole new galaxy
Grand Admiral Thrawn has arrived—and he has some annoyingly familiar friends
TV Reviews Ahsoka
This week, for the first time ever in a mainline Star Wars thing (to the extent that these Disney+ shows count as mainline Star Wars things), we went to a whole new galaxy. Remember Tatooine and Hoth and the forest moon of Endor? That was the old galaxy. Those planets are boring. Passé. Welcome to the hot new galaxy, home of a planet called Peridea that’s encircled by rings of space-whale bones. What sort of fantastical new creatures must live there? Inconceivable beings with no concept of the Star Wars we know and love? And that’s all without considering the fact that Grand Admiral Thrawn has been stuck in this galaxy for about a decade, doing untold evil things and building up the army that is going to topple the New Republic!
So why, then, does Peridea seem like every other Star Wars planet? The initial moments of the Bad Guys flying down to the surface, zooming through the rain past gigantic spooky statues, were very cool. But then they casually land their shuttle on a tower and are greeted by the Great Mothers—a powerful trio of Dathimiri Night Sisters. Not only is Morgan Elsbeth acting like this is a totally normal place and that she’s been here before, but she’s meeting up with people who are just like people that exist in the regular universe. They even know about Jedi and can tell that Sabine “reeks” of them.
We might as well be on literally any other planet filmed with Lucasfilm’s Volume, which are all beginning to look increasingly identical anyway. Maybe it’s on me for expecting something more interesting on this new planet after the real-life years that have passed since Ezra and Thrawn were sucked away, but I thought this was all enormously deflating.
And while we’re talking about things I didn’t like, the opening scene of this episode gave me a feeling of deep Star Wars-related revulsion that I haven’t felt since every Leia scene in The Rise Of Skywalker. As Ahsoka and Huyang are traveling through hyperspace in the Purrgil’s mouth, the two briefly talk about Sabine before Ahsoka asks Huyang for one of his old stories about galactic history, and he opens with “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…” Cue episode title: “Far, Far Away.”
Reader, I wrote “I hate this” in my notes, which I don’t believe I have done since I was reviewing Netflix’s horrific live-action Cowboy Bebop adaptation. (I was far too generous with that letter grade, by the way.) The guts it takes to drop that line in a streaming spinoff of Star Wars that is more deeply indebted to other TV spinoffs than any of the actual movies—where that line appears!—is galling. Just completely unearned, way too winky, way too cute. I’ll concede that it doesn’t matter in any way, and there’s no point in getting so annoyed by it, but it speaks to the self-importance that I think some of Dave Filoni’s other Star Wars projects have that allows them to introduce huge concepts (like time travel) to the Star Wars mythology that aren’t reflected at all in the rest of the canon.
Buuuut, if you’re not already scrolling down to leave a furious comment, let me say that I think the rest of the episode was fun. Pretty much everything from the moment Thrawn arrived in his junky Star Destroyer (the Chimaera, I believe) was great. The ship lands on the tower where the Bad Guys are chilling, with the score playing some nervy droning techno thing that feels very different from regular Star Wars stuff, and even before we see the Grand Admiral we hear his legion of Stormtroopers—with cracked helmets, repainted bits of armor, and red stripes all around them—chanting his name. Then we see a trooper identified as Enoch, who has a big gold face molded onto his helmet in place of the usual Stormtrooper mask, and it becomes clear that Thrawn and his army have been through some weird shit.
Finally, Thrawn himself appears, still wearing his pristine white Imperial uniform despite the obvious decay surrounding him, which is a nice subtle nod to his ego and (perhaps?) some level of madness that is overtaking him. He cares about how he looks more than he cares about anything else, apparently, and I think that’s an interesting shade to his personality even if there’s no payoff.
He remembers Sabine from their battles during Rebels, of course, but when he hears of the deal she made with Baylan to give up the map in exchange for being allowed to find Ezra, he’s more than happy to follow through and give her everything she needs to complete her mission—including returning her weapons, lending her a big dog to ride (a Howler), and giving her some kind of…Ezra-detector to help point her in the right direction.
But as soon as she leaves, Thrawn tells Baylan and Shin (who he dismissively refers to as Elsbeth’s “mercenaries”) to go kill her. And as soon as they leave, he explains that he doesn’t really care what happens to them or Sabine. Once they’re ready to go back to the regular Star Wars galaxy, they’re just going to leave everyone behind anyway. The reason they can’t leave yet isn’t explained well, though, which is an annoying thing that this show keeps doing to maintain suspense. His soldiers are seen a few times loading big crates of something into the Star Destroyer from “the catacombs” for the Great Mothers, but we have no idea what any of that means. My assumption, based on the end of the episode, is that he is indebted to them in some way and that, perhaps, he is no longer the strategic genius he was back in Rebels.
As for Sabine, she fights off some bandits who are wearing cool armor. (This was a good fight scene, because Sabine uses all of her Mandalorian tricks before resorting to her lightsaber, suggesting that she doesn’t really like using it even though the fight ends pretty much as soon as she does.) Then her big space-dog leads her to a little guy called a Noti, who is like a hermit crab with a rock on his back that he hides in. She tries asking him about Ezra but they can’t understand each other, until he sees the Rebel Alliance symbol on her armor and pulls out a medallion with the same logo—which he only could’ve gotten from Ezra!
The Noti leads her back to its Noti village, where they’re doing regular village stuff (carrying boxes back and forth, rocking a baby Noti in a hammock) and then, almost anti-climactically, Ezra is there. “I knew I could count on you, though it sure took you long enough” he quips before he and Sabine share a big hug. It’s a sweet moment, and after the many mysteries about where Ezra would be and what kind of state he’d be in (remember Marrok?), I like that he’s just there and he’s okay. It’s nice.
In fact, everything seems to be coming up Good Guys, because while that’s all happening, the Great Mothers sense that Ahsoka is almost there. Thrawn says that he’s going to need more of the Mothers’ “dark magick,” and they agree because “the thread of destiny demands it.” I hope that leads in an interesting direction!
Stray observations
- I forgot to mention that I’m very curious about what Baylan and Shin are up to. He mentions that this planet is only supposed to exist in legends, saying it’s “a land of dreams and madness” and that the stories of this galaxy are “folktales” to him. There is an interesting parallel there with Star Wars itself, and I’m curious if his big secret plan will reveal more about this galaxy than what we saw in this episode.
- Something I haven’t mentioned before is that the creature and costume designs in this show have largely been pretty good. I like the Clone Wars-y armor that Baylan and Shin wear, I like the raiders who attacked Sabine, I really like Thrawn’s wacky Stormtroopers. At least there’s something to latch onto in a show that mostly takes place in big empty voids.
256 Comments
You got way too mad about the “Far Far Away” thing. The “Ezra Detector” is the same sort of tracker we’ve seen being used in Star Wars since all the way back in Empire when Han was looking for Luke on Hoth. It can be assumed it picks up life readings.The reason they can’t leave immediately is explicitly stated. They have to unload cargo as payment to the Great Mothers. Morgan says it will take three rotations to unload, because it’s apparently a lot of cargo. We’re not supposed to know what it is; it’s a mystery. But the show is quite clear in stating that’s the reason they aren’t able to leave yet.
Yeah this guy certifiably sucks at reviewing this series.
Its not just this series…
Or anything in general…
Any series.
But I wanna know what it is NOW! Why cant they explain EVERYTHING? I don’t like mysteries!
Sometimes I think people like Barsanti would be happier just reading a Wikipedia synopsis of the show.
His MCU related articles from a year or so ago were SO miserable. Dude needs to review stuff he likes. It’s such a turn off to me as a reader when the author has previously developed bias against what they’re reviewing.
Barsanti seems like he has a contract that allows him to say whatever the hell he wants.
I am iffy on the quality of some of these reviews, but let’s be honest: a lot of the biggest emotional impacts from watching the show can be got merely from their Wikipedia entries. The filmmaking is substandard, so all we’re left with are the canon references and plot reveals.
You have no idea how mysteries work, do you?
That was sarcasm.
I’m easily confused. Sorry.
I only recognized it because it’s something I would’ve said too. 😀
I’m not so sure now. Sounds like the guy is parodying people who are critical of the show’s opaque storytelling.
Oh no, it was sarcasm about Barsanti apparently wanting every single thing spelled out for him
But I agree with him. The show is objectively bad in its approach to “mysteries” and doling out information.
Another problem with this show.
It has me agreeing with Barsanti.
And the reason Thrawn dismisses Ray and Hati as “mercenaries” is that Morgan introduced them to Thrawn this way.
I have to admit the lampshade from Ahsoka saying “the first chapter is always the best” was funny.
Very true, except the Night Troopers are loading the cargo onto the ISD, not unloading it. The payment to the Night Sisters is to transport them and their cargo back to the SW galaxy.The implication is that there’s a big power in this new galaxy that Thrawn (his troops are beat up and depleted) and the Night Sisters for are eager to get a way from. Presumably its the same power Baylan is hunting (that he believes will end the Jedi/Sith cycle). Shin even questions Baylan about why he’s interested in this galaxy when the Night Sisters are so eager to leave it.But yeah, Morgan expressly states that it will take 3 days (rotations) to load the cargo. Given the shape and size of the cargo, I assume it’s either the rest of the night sisters in suspended animation or already dead and to be resurrected once in the SW galaxy.
“They have to unload cargo as payment to the Great Mothers.”They are loading it to transport for the Great Mothers.
“Reader, I wrote “I hate this” in my notes, which I don’t believe I have
done since I was reviewing Netflix’s horrific live-action Cowboy Bebop adaptation.”That was a great scene, you may be the exact wrong person to review Star Wars.
He is probably wrong for every series at this tbh
No, it was bad. Maybe not as bad as Barsanti thinks, but it sure wasn’t good.
No it was fine, actually.
No, it was awful. Meta jokes like that usually make me puke. This one didn’t (probably because I’m already disliking the show so much.) But I don’t fault Barsanti for his reaction.
No, it was fine. If you get that upset over jokes then I’m really not sure how you make it through day to day life.I believe I already said something like this to you but: If something physically distresses you this badly then you really don’t have to watch it. You obviously don’t like Star Wars, don’t bother watching it if you think it’s awful.
This is the guy who insists anyone with a different opinion than him is mentally ill.
It was a joke? Yikes.
I’m not mad about it but you started this thread by saying it was “great” and now it’s “fine,” and it seems a little bit like all you really think is that everyone else is wrong.
Only the people who think it was worthy of hate.
Sure.Except no to everything you just said.
i’d argue that people who don’t unironically share the filoni-as-jesus meme on twitter 590 times a day are EXACTLY who should be reviewing star wars.
Do people do that? I don’t do Twitter I wouldn’t know.
they do. with alarming frequency.
Oh that’s strange, but then again the people on Twitter are a different breed, especially the ones who haven’t left yet.
I rather liked the live-action Cowboy Be-Bop. Horrific?
It was honestly a lot better than I thought it would be, nowhere near ‘horrific’.
These people will never be happy about anything. I’m trying to stop myself from reading reviews and recaps especially sci-fi related.Just watch the show, enjoy what you like of it and roll your eyes at the parts you don’t. Then move on.
Cowboy Bebop was exactly as I expected it to be in live-action. It wasn’t great but I was hoping for another season.
Yeah I was hoping for a second season too…but then there were people who bitched about how Ed looked/acted/whatever. So yeah you’re right.
Just watch the show, enjoy what you like of it and roll your eyes at the parts you don’t. Then move on.That’s completely fine and valid advice except when you’re writing criticism. I think Barsanti in general is a pretty bad writer, so it’s little surprise that his recaps/reviews are usually badly written, but that’s because he needs to better articulate why he doesn’t like the things he doesn’t like, and why he likes the things he does. Otherwise, he’s just throwing out takes, and not very good ones.Your decision to avoid/skip reviews and recaps is completely valid too. There’s no point in spending time on something that doesn’t provide value to you.
It would be bad enough if he was just a bad writer. He often asks basic questions about things that were relatively clearly explained in the episode he’s reviewing, almost treating them as plot holes. He doesn’t seem to have the basic media literacy to understand that Ep _XYZ_ of a show hasn’t told viewers everything there is to know in the same way that one would not know everything there was about the END of a movie after the XYZth minute.
It was cheap, cheesy and unearned. It was there for neck beards to screenshot and put on Reddit and twitter.
Sabine finding Ezra was… “super easy barely an inconvenience.” I’m sure someone decided they wanted to spend as little time on this as possible.
Didn’t hate it, just felt it was weak.
I didn’t need her to spend months looking for Ezra; she was pointed in the right direction, after all, and given a sturdy-if-cowardly mount. And we don’t know how much time passed. That said, I what I strongly object to was the near-total lack of reaction to the reunification. I’ve seen more emotional airport hugs at Christmastime from people who just saw each other at Thanksgiving! (My hope is that they’re playing that as “these two are now both adults and they’ve spent a decade thinking about each other… and now don’t know how to be around each other when Ezra is a hairy thirst trap.”)
Wow wow wow wow … wow.
I admit, I make a “yuck” noise at that “galaxy far far away” line. This is all making Sabine look rather incompetent too. She is the reason that Thrawn is found and now she is unwillingly leading Baylan and Shin (plus 2? small battalions) to Ezra and wiping out the village of peaceful snail people.
Remember when people complained that the old Star Wars EU had gotten too crazy and didn’t make any logical sense anymore?LOL.
It’s not that it didn’t make logical sense, it’s just that the books were really bad. Nothing in the new stuff is even close to as lousy as Courtship of Princess Leia, Crystal Star or Darksaber.
Thank you! People need to stop retconning the EU as being bad from a logical standpoint. A lot of it was just bad from the standpoint of being bad. The books you mentioned in particular are just crappily written. And plenty of others were just plain boring.
Yep, there was some good stuff like the X-Wing books and the initial Zahn trilogy, but by and large the books were either horribly written or just boring as hell.
I liked the original Zahn trilogy, and even the later Zahn duology, but I gave up on most of the EU after reading one too many clunkers. Hated Courtship and Darksaber especially, and never even got through the Corellian trilogy, as I remember just thinking “PLEASE, SOMETHING HAPPEN”. Eventually I just retreated to the anthology books. I enjoyed learning about what Glup Shitto and all the randos in Jabba’s Palace or the Mos Eisley cantina were doing during the events of the films, and was able to laugh at the fact that they all had to be tied into the main characters or plot points from the films in some way. IG-88 is the second Death Star? SURE WHY NOT. Random background character is Force sensitive? Sure! Love it. Turn Greedo’s dead body into a delicious alcoholic beverage.
Yeah the anthology books were some of the better ones, the short stories didn’t have time to get too stupid.Oh god the Corellian trilogy is SO BAD but it also gave us this!
Han vs. the blinged out space ferret
Hey now that blinged out space ferret is a Queen!
There’s a reason they got Zahn to ante-con Thrawn back into continuity
I’m just glad they don’t have Patty Jenkins working on X-Wing anymore, after WW’84 I don’t think I’m ever gonna bother watching one of her flicks again.
The only thing worse than the Sequel Trilogy (minus TLJ) was the EU.
Courtship of Princess Leia invented Nightsisters, BTW!
That’s true, they rode Rancors!
Probably 20 years ago I read a Star Wars book and in it they built/grew half-organic ships customized to the pilot. Any idea what that book was called?
Truce at Bakura? Does it take place like right after Jedi?
Another commenter nailed it. Rogue Planet it was called. Looks like it took place after Episode 1.
Yep! The title is familiar but I had given up EU books after they dropped a moon on Chewie in Vector Prime. Looks like Rogue Planet is written by Greg Bear though so it may be decent, he’s actually a really good sci fi writer.
Rogue Planet. That one was set in the prequel era.
And they later tied that book into the third act/conclusion of the New Jedi Order event set a couple decades after ROTJ.
You might be right about that one, I stopped reading after Vector Prime.
Thank you! Just read through the synopsis, what a blast from the past.
I commented last week wondering if the planet they go to in this galaxy would just be another generic planet or if it would look, you know, weird. Having seen it now, it was totally fine. If we could travel to any other vaguely habitable planet in another galaxy, chances are it would look relatively similar to something we know. Regardless, what does the reviewer actually want from star wars planets? It’s been like six decades of planets that are defined by one geologic feature: endless desert, endless jungle, endless city, endless ocean, endless volcano, etc. Cmon man, check your expectations. Anyway. I fucking loved this episode. Thrawn’s guys definitely look like they’ve been through weird shit. Thrawn himself looks fantastic, if not a little worse for the wear. I was so excited to see Ezra, and that it wasn’t at a cliffhanger moment at the end of the episode. Can’t wait to see him in action. About the Night Mothers. Are they the only ones left on the planet? I would have loved a little more awe from Elsbeth upon arriving. I mean this is supposed to be weird for everyone right?And finally, is there a story with Skoll and Hati that is intended to go beyond this series? It seems a little late 6 out of 8 episodes in) to get to whatever is “calling” to Skoll. If this is the case, how is it going to be handled with Stevenson’s passing? Or does he not make it out of this season anyway? I think there’s a lot of meat there that needs more than just what the next two weeks will provide. What do you guys think?
I mean this is supposed to be weird for everyone right?I think you nailed part of what makes these new Star Wars shows (and a lot of modern writing, tbh) feel a little lackluster: they don’t put enough effort into grounding the character reactions to the way they’d actually work.Thrawn’s been kicking around this planet for ten years. That would affect how you act with people from your home. Elsbeth worships these Night Sisters, almost literally. There’s fucking intergalactic space whales! Yet everyone just walks around with these same muted shrugs at everything.
It seems like writers and directors confuse the fact that the audience has seen moments like this before in other shows and movies with the idea that the characters have too. They seem to feel that letting character show emotion might make things less “cool”? The shame is, letting characters have natural reactions would actually make the stories better and more engaging, not less.
The Noti are so cute. I might need a baby Noti now. (I have a porg, a Grogu, and a Babu Frik).Look, I’m a casual Star Wars fan, I don’t know the lore the way my husband does, I only half-watched Rebels with him, but I’m enjoying this. I liked the idea that Huyang is telling Star Wars stories the whole time. I didn’t find Thrawn super intimidating at first, but the weird Kintsugi look the stormtroopers had was cool. Enoch is played by Wes Chatham from The Expanse.
Thought that dude sounded familiar.
His voice was somewhat muffled/modified, but yeah.
Oh right that’s the character Chatham is playing, I hope he gets a good fight scene!
Looking at that still and thinking they got Brent Spiner for Thrawn.
Yeah that was my thought too, he played Data right?? Too lazy to look it up right now. Imagine your whole career in acting spent in face paint.
Yup, Thrawn looks exactly like a blue Data there. It’s not him, though. It’s Lars Mikkelsen, brother of Star Wars alumnus Mads.
Lars also voiced Thrawn in the animated Rebels.
Lars was terrific as the voice for Thrawn, but he looks a little goofy in the make-up and awful hairpiece. I mean, it’s arguably few people would look good in blue paint, but it just doesn’t quite work.
Also, it seems like the blue should be a bit darker for live action, no? Light blue just isn’t very imposing.
I can’t comment on the shade, I just think Lars doesn’t have the face or physicality to match what we think of as Thrawn and the hair in particular looks pretty fake and draws attention to itself.
He also played Not Putin in House of Cards.
I thought he could conceivably be Robert Patrick, but realized he wasn’t.
I didn’t see that but now I do.
He really let himself go compare to his Magnussen in Sherlock. Probably they film this during his Stregobor phase in The Witcher
^ And modern-day Spiner, not TNG-era Spiner, at that!A menacing guy with dark blue skin definitely needs razor-sharp cheekbones. They could have dubbed over the lines if they really wanted to, but that picture, at least, does not look good.
You didn’t think it was Elon Musk?
“There are things in the universe that are simply and purely evil. A warrior does not seek to understand them, or to compromise with them. He seeks only to obliterate them.”
“It’s us.”- The Wheelers
You know, Sabine was pretty rude for not accepting that piece of fruit (?) from one of those little Noti people. They just welcomed you to their village and helped you find your friend. You don’t have to eat it but at least show some common courtesy. Because of that, knocking the episode grade down from a B to a D.
“You’re insulting them and embarrassing me!”
Legitimately the first thing I thought of.
Well, Sabine has been pretty rude the whole show, so it tracks. I mean, they found Ezra only because she decided “Screw the galaxy, I just wanna see him again!” which renders all of the losses from Rebels, and Ezra’s own sacrifice meaningless. So what’s the rejection of a piece of fruit after that?
My word, the CGI around the interior or Thrawn’s StarDestroyer looked dreadful. Something one might see out of a bad fan film on youtube. Baylan and Shin continue to be the only two acting in this whole show, which results in their scenes being a delight, and interesting, with everything else being rather a slog. Two episodes left, is the show going to go anywhere or it is going to stay in “we are just trying to build out the lore” mode.
their scenes are boring
nope. it’s going to the place we’ve always known it was going: “to be continued in Dave Filoni’s Self-Fellating Big Screen Star Wars Jamboree”
It also looked like Baylan had a haircut on the trip between galaxies as it was far shorter and less lucious than it had been in the previous episode.
The phrase ‘in a galaxy far, far away’ makes you assume that the planet Earth is somewhere out there, right? Hyuang quoting that in the intro got me halfway expecting that they were going to pull some Battlestar Galactica BS and the big ring was going to emerge from hyperspace in our solar system. I was very relieved that they did not. And later on, I thought Baylan’s speech to Shin could have been boiled down to ‘this has all happened before, it will all happen again’.
It just feels more and more that Earth does exist — in this “present”, the planet is in its prehistoric era. I find this unsettling, because it could imply that the Force does not exist in our galaxy. And Earth was colonized by human supremacists, chosen because the Force is absent, and that they ditched hyperdrive, repulsorlift, and droid AI, because they felt these advanced technologies led to humans “mixing” with other species of people and therefore conflict and being exploited by other species (servitude and canon fodder for non-humans). Thus, they wanted Earth to be humans-only and remain isolated.
well it’s also a long time ago.
The only fun moment in the episode was Baylan pointing out the annoying cyclical nature of the Star Wars galaxy and its stories. And he hasn’t even seen “The Force Awakens” yet!
I had the exact same worry. I thought that they’d drop out of hyperspace and end up on prehistoric Earth where we discover that the Purrgil are the ancestors of our whale species (or maybe that Purrgil are to whales as we are to chimpanzees or something like that).
Earth exists in the Star Wars Canon. In Episode 1, during the debate scene in the Galactic Senate, there is a quick shot of a pair of ET’s in one of the senate pods. Like, ETs, the alien from E.T. Since those guys made it to Earth, and every thing on screen in Star Wars is taken at canonical face value, I figure that means that Earth exists in the Star Wars Universe.
I wonder what mid-20’s Elliott thought when he saw E.T. during that scene when he saw TPM in ‘99.
Earth exists in the Star Wars Canon. In Episode 1, during the debate scene in the Galactic Senate, there is a quick shot of a pair of ET’s in one of the senate pods. Like, ETs, the alien from E.T. Just. NO. We all know that was an easter egg that Lucas slapped in there for his buddy Spielberg. It was not meant to insert “our Earth” into the universe of Star Wards cannon. The fact that you think this means this is all lost on you, which is sad.
Oh I absolutely expected them to exit hyperspace in our galaxy.
When I heard the Huyang line I chuckled thinking every story we’ve seen is David Tennant regaling Ahsoka on this long hyperspace voyage. And maybe whenever they do the “last” Star Wars story there’ll be a stinger where Ahsoka arrives and she goes “Oh thank god, please shut up now.” I had my own theories of what finding Thrawn/Ezra would be like. And I’m fine that the show doesn’t have to match my personal wild theories, but simultaneously everything seems kind of…vanilla. Right now it seems Thrawn hasn’t been plotting or scheming for the last decade, he’s just been…waiting. Ezra’s also just been…waiting. Maybe we’ll get more next episode but the reveals felt a little mundane, even if it was heartwarming to finally see Ezra and Sabine reunited (and yeah, the story of what Thrawn’s troops got up to seems more interesting than what we’re seeing now).Other chuckle of the episode was imagining the poor Star Destroyer crew who have to carefully impale the ship on that massive spire every time they want to chat with the Nightsisters.
I thought that was Blue Elon Musk.
So why, then, does Peridea seem like every other Star Wars planet? Because they fucking all are.
Kind of a weird thing for him to call out considering this series has had more planet variety than most. We haven’t had one desert world. We’ve gotten a prairie world (Lothal), an urban world (Corelia), a mix of land and sea with some alien looking all red trees (Seatos), and then Peridea which looks like some dead realm from a fantasy novel.
Here’s the weird thing about that though (and this goes for virtually all sci-fi, not just Star Wars): why are all planets one homogeneous thing? Pandora might be the first planet that even seems to have different environments kicking around on it. To be fair, I gave up on Way of Water once they got to the beaches, but at least it acknowledged that something as big as a planet isn’t going to look completely the same throughout.
I think its because practically its easier to do and sell to the audience. In real life, if we could actually get to other planets, they likely would have different regions and look different. But if you filmed that then the planets would just kinda end up looking like Earth. The only way to make it look different would be to CGI some alien looking plants and such but that gets expensive. So its easier to just go “this world is all water” or “this world is all prairie fields”, etc
Yeah, Sci-Fi or not, there is only one planet we can shoot movies on.
True that. Also worth noting that if you want to have life on a planet, then the options are somewhat limited as to what the planet is going to be like. Especially given that just about every species we’ve come across in the Star Wars universe breathes the same atmosphere (even the species that are technically water-dwelling) — meaning, whatever planet needs to have an oxygen-based atmosphere which means oxygen-producing flora. Maybe different colours than Earth’s green chlorophyll could exist in those other planets, but I’d probably guess that the majority of oxygen-based livable planets will probably have mostly green flora. Oh, and the gravitational forces of the different planets would all be roughly equivalent.
Except that’s not really true, because they shoot this on the Volume. The limit is the imagination and budget. They’re not hauling cameras out to the middle of the Tunisian desert anymore, they’re reprogrammingLED screens.
Uh…https://thecinemaholic.com/where-was-star-wars-ahsoka-filmed/
Most of the pivotal sequences for ‘Star Wars: Ahsoka’ are lensed in Los
Angeles County, with the production team making the most of the county’s
vast and versatile landscapes. The MBS Media Campus at 1600 Rosecrans
Avenue in the city of Manhattan Beach, which is situated in the
southwestern part of the county, serves as the primary production
location for the Rosario Dawson starrer.
Yes, green screen is used, but so are real locations.
If they shot the Peridea stuff anywhere but the Volume, I’d be shocked. But I’ve been wrong before, so… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
That complaint baffles me, was the author expecting some sort of Rick & Morty-ish type planet where its actually a giant corn cob? A planet is a planet, you’re not going to get something radically different just cus you traveled to another galaxy.
I’m just not getting the point of the “different galaxy” conceit. We all know the deal with the Star Wars galaxy — out of the billions of star systems, humans have thoroughly conquered interstellar travel and identified thousands of worlds that have roughly the same mass and breathable atmosphere as Earth (er, Coruscant). The sky is usually blue. There’s usually a single familiar environment. Most planets are very sparsely populated for some reason. There are so many similar planets that writers can just invent a new world we’ve never heard about with a single throwaway line, and somehow all of the characters have memorized the full list of planets. That’s all part of the fun. But if they’re going to make *that* big a deal out of leaving the galaxy, I feel we should have seen something completely alien and bonkers to sell that we had left the familiar. Talking mushrooms and purple skies with hamburger clouds and acidic air and low gravity and so on.When we didn’t get that, and it was just another generic Star Wars planet complete with a huge temple that appears to house three people, I was super disappointed. If it’s just going to be another dull landscape rendered on the Volume, then they could have set this on some remote planet within the primary Star Wars galaxy.
If the science is correct, all galaxies have the same elements because they all share the same universe. Plus, as mentioned in another post, the planets must have the same type of atmosphere and gravity for people to survive.
In that case, rocky Earth-like planets are the ones we will mostly see. At least this new planet isn’t a one type of climate, like an all snow world or all desert world.
The space whales were making audible calls to each other… in hyperspace! Star Wars is not concerned with scientific accuracy.Space suits are also well documented in the Star Wars universe, so the characters could definitely visit a planet that’s hostile to humans at some point. They just hardly ever explore that.
“But if they’re going to make *that* big a deal out of leaving the galaxy, I feel we should have seen something completely alien and bonkers to sell that we had left the familiar. Talking mushrooms and purple skies with hamburger clouds and acidic air and low gravity and so on.”
Okay. That’s… a thing you wanted.“When we didn’t get that, and it was just another generic Star Wars planet complete with a huge temple that appears to house three people, I was super disappointed. If it’s just going to be another dull landscape rendered on the Volume, then they could have set this on some remote planet within the primary Star Wars galaxy.”
You do understand that, regardless of which galaxy the planet was located in, the planet they landed on was going to need to be hospitable to carbon-based life, right?
Good lord. You want everything spoon fed to you immediately don’t you? How dare they talk about or show something without telling you everything about it
I completely understand wanting to savor the moment between two friends reconnecting after 10 years apart. Especially for people who followed the novels and the cartoons (I did not get into that stuff but still really enjoy Ahsoka!). But Sabine got to Ezra by helping 2 probably-bad-but-kinda-gray-area Jedi types, and helping them is resulting in weird evil witches AND Thrawn potentially making a violent return to the old hood to start a new war. My opinion is that her “Lets not talk about that…right now” is a giant cop-out and is just dragging the series out to artificially build suspense.There’s only 2 episodes left and the show needs to pay-off on Ahsoka getting to the new galaxy to find Ezra and Sabine, Sabine and Ezra having a conversation about how she got there and the inevitable resulting conflict, all the stuff going on with the witches and Morgan and Thrawn, PLUS Baylan’s real reason for wanting to get to this galaxy in the first place. And I’m sure Ezra will need time to recount all the stuff he’s done in the years before being found again. That’s a lot for two eps of a 30-40 minute show.I’m also willing to bet a year of my salary that the Noti creatures are going to go full-on Ewok and fight a battle with sticks and cleverly placed traps against those zombie troopers.
More than likely they’re not going to resolve everything in this show and the big conflict will be in the Filoni movie that Disney has greenlit.
Exactly. This show is going to end on about 10 cliffhangers for future content. Gee, thanks, Disney!
Rumours had it that they were working on Season 2 before the strikes.
So Thrawn finally appears in live action, 22 years after his introduction in print, five years after his last cartoon appearance, and nearly three years after he was teased in The Mandalorian, and, in a 50-minute episode, the only thing this terrifying strategic genius (who never did anything particularly clever in the cartoons) does is… give someone resources before letting her go, and then order some mooks to kill her? That’s it? That’s how they’re introducing the Big Bad of the Mando timeline, who’ll presumably be the main antagonist of Filoni’s team-up movie? Are you kidding?And there wasn’t any time for Thrawn to do anything else cool, because that other person had to have a fight scene against random unknown bandits that *re-reads the above* … had zero impact on the story?But Filoni is a brilliant storytelling poet, because he brought space whales into the mythos? Am I getting this right?
He was absolutely a threat in the cartoon: Thrawn was winning, he would have crushed the nascent Rebellion, until Ezra pulled space whales out of his ass. He’s the only baddie in all 4 seasons that was really a threat to the Ghost crew.
But did he do anything clever in the cartoon, or did he just use the Empire’s overwhelming firepower as pretty much anyone else would have?
He was showing Imperial leadership how to use the Empire’s tools in less hamfisted ways, for one thing.
But he was also in grave circumstances with the Emperor, so whatever he did was going to be wiped out along with himself. The space whale thing saved him.Also, a couple of posts above, it was 32 years ago. And it probably was the thing that brought Star Wars back.
It’s pretty obvious that he didn’t use it the way ‘anyone else’ would, or ‘anyone else’ would have done it in one of the previous seasons.
The cartoon did a decent-ish job of making Thrawn smart, in the context of a kid’s cartoon. It’s not like it was going to take a deep dive into complex military strategy, but it was fine enough for what it was.Live action Thrawn, however, is a certified genius for…..waiting around for ten years in the extremely distant hope of rescue and doing literally nothing else in all that time and with all his resources.
No; unlike most Imperial commanders he used it COMPETENTLY. The only reason he didn’t completely crush the Rebellion in Season 3 was one of his more egotistical officers broke formation and allowed one of the Rebel commanders an opening to do a suicide run into the Interdictor Cruiser that was keeping the escape fleet bottled up. Even then though, Thrawn was clever enough to find the hidden Rebel base pretty quickly once he started looking.
He also was more interested in a strong fleet instead of superweapons; his pet project as Grand Admiral was the TIE Defender – a fighter with the TIE’s speed/manuverability but that actually had shields. If they’d gone into full production the Rebellion would have been crushed as the main advantage they had in space engagements was better starfighters.
“No; unlike most Imperial commanders he used it COMPETENTLY.”So the Thrawn of Rebels wasn’t a strategic genius; he was just “competent?” (Of course, it’s a lot easier to write a tactical genius villain who has to make the most of limited resources, so making Thrawn a major antagonist during the height of the Empire’s power maybe wasn’t a great move in the first place.)
Thrawn is the Sherlock Holmes of Imperial admirals. He’s excellent at reading his opponents and deducing from their history, culture, hobbies and major events what they’ll be likely to do and crush it before they even act. Sun Tzu’s most famous rules about warfare were Know Yourself and Know Your Enemy, and Thrawn is obsessive about being the best in knowing both.
In a Filoni world, a competent villain is basically a super genius strategic tactician.
He technically lost multiple times before Rebels in the old EU (if he won anything at all), so I can very much tell you didn’t watch Rebels.
Only in the Star Wars universe could the phrase “until Ezra pulled space whales out of his ass” make perfect sense.
Longer than 22 years. Heir to the Empire was published in 1991 and the rest of the Thrawn trilogy came out one book a year till ‘93.
Dang it, I meant 32.
You nailed it. Filoni is a genius because he borrows liberally from the canon and his shows are full of references to things you already know!
“But….. it was so artistically done.”
You’re building a lot of this comment from stuff in your head. Remember what happened to peeps that thought Mephisto would show up in WandaVision? I hate to see ppl do this to themselves.
I hate to be THAT guy but Heir to the Empire came out 32 years ago.
And there wasn’t any time for Thrawn to do anything else cool, because that other person had to have a fight scene against random unknown bandits that *re-reads the above* … had zero impact on the story?
Well, worse than that, it made time for Sabine to yell at her mount for bolting when she comes under fire, but not so far that it doesn’t return once the fighting is over. Like fair enough, she probably hasn’t ever met a horse, but what was possibly the point of that?
Cuteness and merch sales uber alles.
Yeah, I was shockingly underwhelmed, after all this build-up.
Given enough time (say, the 20-30 episode length of an animated show for kids), Filoni will string together some decent character arcs. Kanaan Jarus is a top-tier Star Wars character.But with Ahsoka, he’s got <8 hours to pull off a compelling story, but he’s still using this “bumble around like a DnD party until the dots connect” method that’s going to be hard to pull off.
Is it just me or were those “bandits” just the sand people from the original movie in cool armor? They sounded and acted basically the same.
Is it just me was that [NEW STAR WARS ELEMENT] just the [OLD STAR WARS ELEMENT] but slightly different?The answer is always “yes.”
Thanks, I thought I was the only one thinking that!
Sam, why are you even reviewing anything Star Wars-related? You clearly have major contempt for this IP, especially if you’re frazzled by in-world, meta usage of “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…”Get outta here.
I thought this episode DID feel like a different galaxy. It’s like last week was the ultimate fan service (in a good way) with Anakin and call-backs to the Clone Wars and battle of Mandalore. And now we’re leaving that behind for a whole new era and corner of the SW universe. Sure, there’s stormtroopers, but they’re some kind of kintsugi/zombie thing that makes them seem actually menacing. We’ve seen the nightsisters before, but first time in live action they’re kinda creepy in a atypical-for-Star Wars way. Enoch is mysterious and outright weird in all the right ways (kinda Boba Fett in the original trilogy-esque). Even Thrawn himself has the seeds of a totally different kind of villain. I feel like this show (and the Filoni-verse in general) is starting to really come into its own. This feels like a direction that is much more interesting than what the sequel trilogy was trying to do – rooted in the old, but it’s own new thing that isn’t too hamstrung by existing IP.
‘I hope that leads in an interesting direction’ is a great pull-quote for nearly everything Disney has vomited out for both Marvel and Star Wars, with few notable exceptions.
The Stormtroopers are weird but in a really good way, in my opinion. They’ve got a bit of a “warrior cult” vibe now, and it gels really nicely with the Nightsisters and the reverence of Thrawn.
Another utter whiff of an episode. So Thrawn gets flung to another galaxy with an entire Star Destroyer at his disposal and just….waits around, orbiting a janky-ass nowhere planet when he has no real hope of rescue just….because?He doesn’t actually, you know, do anything to pass the time? Maybe conquer a corner of this new galaxy? Set up his own mini Empire in exile? Just kind of….waits?
And, yeah, all points taken about how boring and familiar this planet seems to every other place in SW. We even get random Tusken-style raiders with armor that also looks overly familiar.
Dave Filoni keeps bumping his head on the very low ceiling of his imagination.This show just sucks. It’s not quite Book of Boba Fett bad, but it’s close.
I thought BoBF, Obi-Wan, and season 3 of The Mandalorian were all pretty terrible, but I’m surprisingly not hating Ahsoka. Yes, it’s slow where it doesn’t need to be slow. Yes, most of the acting isn’t very good. Yes, some of the CGI looks terrible (but also looks great in other shots; compare the hyperspace ring approaching the planet to the shot of the bad guys exiting the landing ship immediately after.) But overall I’m still interested. I think the show is largely avoiding a lot of the glaring logical inconsistencies and poor staging that plagued the other SW shows (Andor excluded obviously) which makes it immensely more watchable.
Well, if you’re enjoying it, have at it. For me, I find it painfully dull and utterly unengaging. Have fun!
And yet you insist on watching every single second of it instead of doing literally anything else with your life. It’s very much coming off as you just want to complain about things.
It’s true. I’m in an induced coma, only to emerge once a week on Tuesday nights for one hour to watch Ahsoka, then it’s back to sleep.It’s a fairly miserable existence.
You know as well as I do that many people are invested in Star Wars. Of course we’re gonna watch every single second of it. As far as entertainment goes in this world, Star Wars is a big deal. Obviously. It’s not immune to valid criticism. Also obviously.
I know that they shoot this in The Volume, but why each actors looks like they talk to a wall. Nobody cutting or quickly response to each other dialogue. It’s like they pause everytime it’s transition to other actor.
Yeah, the editing here is really slack.
i used to be very much on the side of “let Filoni cook”. now that i’ve tasted his cooking, i want to barf.
heh. I don’t even think you could call what he’s doing “cooking.” More like heating up a TV dinner, but serving it when it still has 5 more minutes left to go.
I’m starting to see that just because you’re a good director or showrunner of an animated series, doesn’t mean you’ll be as good at a live-action series.
I’m starting to come to the conclusion that Dave Filoni and J.J. Abrams are two sides of the same coin – guys with a very distinct style and an inflated sense of their inner stories’ self-importance. It’s just that J.J. probably believed he could do Star Wars better than Lucas did and just remade it with dumber sounding names (“The First Order” is so preeningly overwrought a name that I can barely say it without laughing), whereas Filoni seems to think that he is the only one who can tie all of the extremely loose threads of the Star Wars galaxy together in one narrative.
yeah the thing is though, Filoni doesn’t have a distinct style. his style is “George, but somehow more self-indulgent”.
It’s the whole “I alone know how all of this stuff that was never meant to link together weaves into an intricate and wholly explainable tapestry” thing that soured me on Filoni. At first it was kinda cool, but then – like many auteurs – he got caught up in his own narrative navel-gazing to the point where now we’re going to have a Star Wars version of The Avengers, centered around what is basically a D-list plot arc.
because Shmi and Sheev were such good names
For me, at least Lucas’ naming quirks were at least dumbly funny. Like, you’d see this awesome-looking background character and you’d discover that his name is something like “Horf Wangbortle” and you’d at least get a chuckle out of it.“Sheev”? Good lord, J.J. Palpatine didn’t need a first name, let alone one as dumb as that one.
I’m pretty sure Sheev is a Lucas Original Name, from the prequels.
You’re right – although I don’t think Lucas ever used the name in the prequels. A cursory Google search reveals that Lucas came up with the name but it wasn’t used until 2014 in an EU book.
All of the movies are pretty bad about names (is the name “Palpatine” actually spoken in Return of the Jedi?), but I could’ve sworn Palpatine’s first name was revealed on like an action figure packaging, or a collectible card or something well before 2014. So I guess I was wrong.
It could be. By that point I had basically stopped paying attention to the collectors’ market and the EU stuff, so I’m definitely not an authority on it.All I know is that it’s a pretty dumb name.
JJ didn’t create the name Sheev.
To be fair, “The First Order” smacks of a studio note: “Change the name and sigil so that we can market new names alongside the old ones. It’ll be double the money!”
I dunno. It certainly is possible – great way to sell more toys, after all – but with how idiosyncratic Abrams is (LENS FLAAAAAAAAARE! UPSIDE-DOWN CAMERAAAAAAS! etc.), it 100% tracks that he’d think that “The Resistance” and “The First Order” would sound more impressive than “The Rebel Alliance” and “The Empire,” instead of just more pretentious.
Idiosyncratic is not a word I would pick for JJ Abrams. That implies he’s got some innate style or taste, when he’s essentially the worlds biggest fan film creator. Even those lens flares are basically just homage to 70s Spielberg.
If you want a different descriptor, I guess we can call them his “storytelling tics” – and we can include his addiction to puzzle boxes in there too.
Nah, it smacks of “Call it something else so we don’t have to pay the previous writers”, which Disney does to all of its brands, from Mickey down to their daytime kids stuff from the 90s like Hannah Montana and Wizards of Waverly Place.
I’m not arguing that Disney does that, but I don’t think it’s the case here. They bought Lucasfilm outright. The only person they’d owe those royalties to (at least in terms of the Empire and the Rebel Alliance) would be Lucas, and they bought him out.
In comparison to the rest of the series, this episode wasn’t that bad.
But then for a series called Ahsoka, this episode showed the least of her, which.. is kinda bad, right? And the bit of her they did show has her being a downer about Sabine again, even though she’s supposed to be all filled with purpose and life now with a positive mental attitude?
Look, I know there are fans of this show that really like it and will defend every story and performance choice, and I’m glad they’re having a good time. I really am. Maybe I’m just annoyed and jealous I can’t do the same.
Don’t be jealous you have higher standards.
Yes, only people with extremely high standards watch every single second of a set of loosely connected television shows that they absolutely loathe, then come on to some random website and whine about how horrible said shows are week after week for years on end.
Hey, we all need our niche.
There seems to be a requirement among SW shows that the title character spend at least one episode off-screen.
I’ve noticed. Though that shouldn’t make it a better show.
I’m sure he does something to pass time. Maybe catches up on his reading or checks out some local art work or something. Also he isn’t going to conquer much with one Star Destroyer. It’s also hard to be critical of him not conquering anyone when we don’t know what the surrounding galaxy is like, what the local alien life is like or what the political situation is. For all we know the whole galaxy may not have any advanced life worth conquering (beyond those we have already met).
Yes, but the storytellers could have come up with ANYTHING more interesting than doing nothing. It was their choice to make the galaxy yet another generic SW planet and given Thrawn nothing to do.
There’s no objective reality here, they just chose shitty options.
And yet you watch every week. And spend a lot of your time writing and replying to comments. Seems like a waste of time to me.
You’re not wrong.
It’s actually ok to watch and criticize entries in a franchise you like, even if you don’t like those individual entries. Star Wars fans have been doing that since at least ‘83.
And yet, it’s somehow still up there with the best of the SW shows Disney has put out. (Note: I haven’t watched Andor yet).
Hmm. I mean, kinda? Book of Boba Fett is still the worst (though I think this show isn’t far off.) Ahsoka is better than some of The Mandalorian, as that show takes wild swings in quality.
Obi Wan was also wildly uneven. I think it was good in spots, while being alternatively super dumb.Andor is literally the best Star Wars content outside of the OT and I highly recommend you move it to the top of your watch list.
I’m with you on all of your rankings except for calling Obi-Wan uneven. It’s pretty even, just at a really low bar. The only reason it isn’t the worst SW show is because BoBF exists.
I’m going to get back around to Andor. I started it (like ten minutes) got distracted with something and never went back. But I’ve seen literally no one have anything bad to say about it.
Have fun!
“He doesn’t actually, you know, do anything to pass the time? Maybe conquer a corner of this new galaxy? Set up his own mini Empire in exile? Just kind of….waits?”Please relate the factual basis for your claim that Thrawn did nothing except wait around in orbit.
The factual basis is that this is all the episode suggests. If he was doing something more interesting than that, cool! It’s weird that his big reveal, after all that hype, did not suggest that he actually, you know, did anything interesting though.
“The factual basis is that this is all the episode suggests. If he was doing something more interesting than that, cool! It’s weird that his big reveal, after all that hype, did not suggest that he actually, you know, did anything interesting though.”
This is a violent attempted murder of the very concept of “factual basis.” We don’t know because we weren’t told. This episode was literally NOT about “What has Thrawn been up to all these years?” in the same way that we don’t actually get much in the way of answers about that as it relates to Ezra. The difference, if any, is that we saw Ezra interact with a FRIEND in this episode. Beyond that, if you’d been making an assumption that Ezra didn’t do anything interesting, you wouldn’t have much evidence for that either. We weren’t given any suggestion of what he did beyond “Collaborate with the Night Sisters.” We know that there has been “attrition” and we know that he had to figure out how to keep his troops loyal, provisioned, and… unusually armored. We know that he still has an operational Star Destroyer. We know that he has kept loose tabs on Ezra’s location. That’s all we know about how he spent his time far, far away. If that’s not interesting enough for you, perhaps we’ll learn more since the show isn’t over… And perhaps we won’t.
I didn’t bring up the term “factual basis;” radarskiy was essentially asking Laurence to prove a negative, and I did the best I could responding to that. I actually think it’s a problem that the episode featuring the return of Thrawn, in which he had a lot of screentime, wasn’t about what he’s been up to all of these years, and didn’t even give us much of interest to speculate regarding that question, given how much the show has hyped up his appearance. The show insists that Thrawn coming back will spell disaster for the galaxy, but it isn’t giving us much reason to actually believe that.
You’re missing my point:
The show is ongoing. Other than Sabine (and the mercs), everyone with whom he was interacting has been working to facilitate his larger plan. His soldiers don’t need an exposition dump. The Weird Sisters don’t need an exposition dump. And he doesn’t owe it to the three individuals whom he doesn’t trust and is clearly planning to abandon when he makes his escape. Laurence was being asked to prove a negative because he made an affirmative assertion for which he had no evidence. Us not knowing his plan is not the same thing as him not having one. Us not hearing a monologue about how he’s “spent the last ten years, dreaming of the moment when he could finally ______” is certainly a thing that happens in movies all the time. That’s not always an effective way of telling a story. In fact, I’m sure Kinja is littered with past complaints about clunky exposition now complaining that the crawl in the first episode didn’t explain the whole show.
Let me be clear… This is a perspective:
I actually think it’s a problem that the episode featuring the return of Thrawn, in which he had a lot of screentime, wasn’t about what he’s been up to all of these years, and didn’t even give us much of interest to speculate regarding that question, given how much the show has hyped up his appearance.
It doesn’t demonstrate a great deal of media literacy, but if it’s what you wanted from the episode… you have every right to have wanted that from the episode. Taking the position that the episode (or Thrawn’s portion of it) was flawed because it didn’t pull the foil lid off and hand you a spoon without acknowledging that the season isn’t over, the series isn’t over, and there are plenty of examples of shows and movies revealing character motivations over time is a choice. Suggesting that the absence of something is proof that the something doesn’t exist is… a bad choice. It’s a Barsanti choice. Don’t make Barsanti choices.
The show is ongoing. I know that, and you know I know that.
His soldiers don’t need an exposition dump. If only this show know how to give information to the audience in ways other than through exposition dumps.And he doesn’t owe it to the three individuals whom he doesn’t trust and is clearly planning to abandon when he makes his escape. We’re not saying he needed to detail everything he’s been doing to the characters. Just that this information could have been given, or at least implied, to the audience in an interesting way. Laurence was being asked to prove a negative because he made an affirmative assertion for which he had no evidence. No he didn’t. He literally phrased it as a question. And the lack of evidence for what Thrawn has been doing for ten years is precisely the problem he’s pointing to. Us not knowing his plan is not the same thing as him not having one. We’re not talking about his “plan.” Us not hearing a monologue about how he’s “spent the last ten years, dreaming of the moment when he could finally ______” is certainly a thing that happens in movies all the time. That’s not always an effective way of telling a story. Neither is the way they’re telling this story now.
In fact, I’m sure Kinja is littered with past complaints about clunky exposition now complaining that the crawl in the first episode didn’t explain the whole show.Again, lack of exposition is not this show’s problem.
It doesn’t demonstrate a great deal of media literacy, “You lack media literacy” has become the laziest way to counter any critique these days. I do not take it seriously.
Taking the position that the episode (or Thrawn’s portion of it) was flawed because it didn’t pull the foil lid off and hand you a spoon That is not our critique.
without acknowledging that the season isn’t over, the series isn’t over
Forgive me for wanting the show and the characters to be interesting before the season is over. If you have five episodes building up to the main villain, and then reveal him in the sixth, I actually think that villain should, you know, do something villainous.
On the plus side, the guy who played Ezra was terrific and exuded more charisma in his one brief scene than literally every other character in the show put together across all episodes so far (and even including Dawson’s other appearances as Ahsoka.) Everyone else is a complete bore. This guy gets it.
I respectfully disagree. Yes, the actor exudes charisma, but he played him at basic sitcom acting level. Even his hand gestures and voice inflection are remnant of high school theater acting. I promise if you watch it again after reading my comment, you’ll see it.
I feel the show is too rigid. The acting and movements are too long and drawn out to the point that it looks like a rehearsal.
It was clear from ep. 1 that Baylan is conflicted, and that his Jedi roots will likely turn him against Thrawn. Accelerating this theory is Thrawn’s statement that he plans to abandon Baylan and his apprentice, who I’m now calling “Space M3GAN”. I really, really, really want to love this series, but the muted acting from Rosario Dawson and the rest of the cast is making it difficult. I feel this is a writer/director choice rather than the fault of what is a very talented cast. Unless it is revealed that all the characters have Asperger’s. That would make more sense.
Without having watched Rebels and really knowing how Ahsoka is supposed to act, I don’t hate the job Dawson is doing. It’s Winstead’s Hera that is objectively terrible and I can’t get over how phony the character both looks and acts.
The muted acting is straight out of The Mandalorian. Could be they want all of the related shows to have a “house style” like the Marvel movies. Ahsoka is much more, um, animated in the animated shows, which stylistically makes sense, but she’s also a lot younger. She was a literally a kid in The Clone Wars, and Rebels takes place ten years before the current show.
I guess the idea is Ahsoka is older and went through some trauma with Vader in Rebels but it’s a bummer how her personality is now so flat.
It’s not so much that she’s less expressive than she was when she was a kid, it’s that she’s less expressive than any person who has ever been alive.
She’s also a veteran of two wars. And literally 90% of the people she has known for most of her life were murdered in a mass genocide/workplace active shooter scenario, largely aided by her closest mentor and the troops she fought alongside in the first of the two wars. Why isn’t she a rainbow, I ask?
Oh, she’s the worst one by far.
Well, it’s not really Winstead’s fault, though. This series doesn’t really give most of the characters any depth and the main thing Hera gets to do is tell us that she’s a general.
Yo, not cool to use Autism in a derogatory sense. Also you’re kinda perpetuating the incorrect view that Autistics are introverted. That’s not the case. It’s a spectrum.
It’s a harmless joke about the actor’s abilities….in a comment section….about a tv show. There will be no reverberating societal effects or perpetuated stereotypes caused by my comment.
Harmless to you, pal. Upsetting to others. Speaking as someone on the spectrum, your comment is full of shit and also inaccurate even as a joke.
I really liked this one. Across all of the Disney plus shows, this episode felt most like the original Star Wars to me.This is also the first episode of Ashoka that feels like it has real story momentum instead of just being a loose series of cool (and not as cool) story moments. I am looking forward to next week.Different opinions are what makes the world go round, and I am well aware that folks aren’t going to agree with me about a lot of stuff-the world would be boring if they did. But I am finding myself in stark disagreement with AV Club reviews more and more as time goes on. Maybe I am just getting old. I didn’t find the fact that this managed to feel like a Star Wars show “deflating”, even though they were in a different universe. I tuned in for Star Wars fun and that was what I got-it wasn’t really important to me that up be down because a line on a map said the characters were in a different place.The IGN review gave this a 9, which is much closer to how I felt after watching this than a B.
Yeah, more and more it seems like IGN gets it, and AV Club is too busy trying to recapture AA Dowd’s voice, when if a property got an A, it deserved that damn A and we all knew it. The current crop of AVC writers want the same critic credibility but it’s all whining about not understanding basic plot points that were spelled out on screen in front of them.
When Huyang started his retelling with ‘”In a galaxy, far far away”’I kind of figured he would and it was a nice callback to Episode 4 A New Hope’s scrolling text-crawl opening(As well as each sequel’s thereafter.).I wasn’t mad at it. Also Spoiler Alert (for anyone else who skipped past the review to the comment section.) Sabine found Ezra.
I found this pretty disappointing outside of Ezra’s live-action debut. Agree that the planet and its inhabitants were lackluster (and further agree with others here that the red bandits acted and sounded like tusken raiders) and Thrawn’s first appearance was also a bit lackluster. I hope they spend time in the next two episodes showing a bit of backstory on what Thrawn and Ezra have been up to in the years since they disappeared.
“(to the extent that these Disney+ shows count as mainline Star Wars things)“Not even hiding the gatekeeping anymore ahaha pathetic.
Everybody is on decaf in that thing.
What is the issue AV Club has with the Cowboy Bebop reboot, anyway?
This planet gives me weird paralel vibes to Tanalorr in Fallen Order, but less paradise-y. Maybe something discovered by the high republic order that fell into tales and stories masters would tell padawans and younglings around the campfire.
If I had no idea that Filoni was essentially Lucas’ hand-selected heir, the dialogue alone would give that fact away. Such poor writing. The dialogue in The Clone Wars and Rebels had energy and spark. Every line reading in this show so far has been flat and utterly unengaged. It’s like sci-fi rep theatre. It’s the writing, it’s the directing.
I’ve got suspicions as to what the Dothamir Witches are up to. (Uploading? Aren’t they Uploading cargo? Seemed like that’s what the Stormtroopers were doing.) And I’ve got a suspicion as to what Baylan is up to. And if I’m close on either, then that reminds me of this:You remember back in Clone Wars, like, third or fourth season, (I haven’t done a hard rewatch) … when certain episodes’ opening titles were in red – and it signaled that the episode you were about to see was entirely Sith & Empire related? I feel like if the bad guys’ plans here are close to what I’m thinking of, then they aren’t just bringing back Thrawn, and Skoll isn’t just here for tourism. And if that’s the case, then this whole Ahsoka show feels like the bad guys here have some very cool and very concrete plans. And this show would fit very comfortably in the “red” motif of the old show. In feel. It kind of scans, then, that the bad guys in Ahsoka are getting the best material so far.I’m probably setting my wish-casting wish-plotting self up for disappointment again, but at the risk of some really cool shit going down, I’m preparing myself for this series to end on a giant-ass cliffhanger. Maybe with three seasons, they can wrap all this up before the First Order starts to form. I too, kind of hate the First Order plot, but if we’re stuck with it, then either Ahsoka holds Thrawn and Co to this Galaxy (in two episodes…?) or team Red makes it back to Home Galaxy and shit’s going to blow up messy for several seasons. At least until Snoke shows up all young and cute.Not related to any of this: but if Ahsoka is 50, that would make Asajj Ventress, what? 60? Unless they cast a newbie, or the voice actress, 60-something actresses that would like to earn above average pay & a Bang! of SW related fame = every 80’s/90’s action movie woman with fight training. And that’s a list of maybe 7 who’d be up for this. I’m thinking the same names you are. And some outside of the box names too.
Ventress is dead
As dead as anyone else in SW.
Somehow, Pop Culture Reference returned.
Of course “these Disney + shows” are mainline Star Wars. They’re ultimately all connected and contain stuff that is head-and-shoulders above large chunks of the 11 theatrical films. It’s just the knee-jerk denigration that some like to dole out while they hiss the name “Disney” like it isn’t all Disney. Disney hasn’t committed any crime against Star Wars except making better stuff than the boring cringy bloat that was the prequel trilogy.
Can Sam be replaced with Germain please? Idk what kind of review this is, but until you stop huffing about I will point everyone in the direction of Germain’s review over on Giz: https://gizmodo.com/star-wars-ahsoka-6-recap-disney-plus-thrawn-ezra-sabine-1850855467
I liked this episode.I loved the “A long time ago…” needle drop. Pure fan service, yeah, but also a nice reminder that these stories we’ve been enjoying for the past 46 years are, well, stories. This fucking need to criticize these stories like they’re all supposed to be anything but fairytales is simply beyond me.Yes, it’s great when something next-level like ANDOR comes along. But can’t we also enjoy some classic STAR WARS storytelling?Never, ever forget; EWOKS.STAR WARS is grown-ups playing with action figures. A long time ago, I learnt to meet these stories halfway and just have fun with them.And the parts of this world I don’t enjoy, I can’t get angry at. I just don’t ever watch them again.AHSOKA is the continuation of what fundamentally is a kids cartoon. A kids cartoon set in a world based on fairytales and inspired by ‘30s/’40s sci-fi movie serials.
I’d agree with the parts of the review above where it says the writing is self-important and the ep has a very anticlimactic reveal, but worst of all, it was just…… Dull. Sabine still hasn’t done much to disabuse me of the notion that she’s a big, spoiled dummy who occasionally gets lucky. And Thrawn, after all this build-up, was mostly just boring and lacking in gravitas. I expected him to be a lot more imposing, clever, or powerful-seeming. All in all, 3 out of 5 yawns.
I was surprised by Thrawn’s pot-belly. What’s he been eating on that seemingly desolate planet?
Thrawn: Our numbers have dwindled. *burp*
Bad take. The episode was great. #OpinionsVary
So Barsanti, the by-consensus worst hack on this site, is reviewing a series he seems determined to hate. Look, if Star Wars (and especially this era of it) isn’t your thing, then maybe go review something else? I don’t think too many people are watching this show that hate SW, so if you hate the show when it gets too Star Wars-y, then why on earth would any readers care about your opinion?
(And while I thoroughly enjoyed this episode, I don’t object to people having negative opinions of it. I just think it’s a waste of time to have a show reviewed by someone who seems to want to hate it.)
It’s not a reviewer’s job to be “into” or in favor of the show they are reviewing. It’s their job to review something objectively.That said, Barsanti isn’t exactly giving great reviews, either.
Look, I’ve never been particularly impressed by this reviewer, but it’s not his fault the show is bad.
I’m not knocking anything here … just asking innocently. How does the writer know the beast is called a Howler” and the little crab guys/gals are called “Notis”? Is there a press kit on this stuff that’s official from Disney?
It’s in the subtitles.
And the stormtroopers are called Night Troopers, which is interesting.
with the score playing some nervy droning techno thing that feels very different from regular Star Wars stuff, and even before we see the Grand Admiral we hear his legion of Stormtroopers—with cracked helmets, repainted bits of armor, and red stripes all around them—chanting his nameEverything about this scene had the chilling weirdness of the appearance of Colonel Kurtz and his army in Apocalypse Now. Props to Filoni for the deep homage.
“They even know about Jedi”Why wouldn’t they know about the Jedi?
Why is every motherfucking planet in the streaming shit (except Andor) cloudy and grey and lifeless. It is so freaking boring. None of the planets have any personality or uniqueness.
Goddamn, this is such bad writing. Again. I know it’s classed as a ‘recap’ rather than ‘review’, but f**k me, get someone with a slight degree of effort and insight on this job. His grammar is fine, at least.
I really hope they don’t waste the awesome Wes Chatham with Enoch. He was so good as Amos in the Expanse.
I wrote “I hate this.”Good God, lighten the fuck up. The line was great.
Might want to note it was Elsbeth who first referred to Baylan and Shin as “mercenaries.” She’s the one who didn’t introduce them as equals.
I keep waiting for Morgan to offer to bundle somebody’s home and land speeder insurance.
I might be too late to this discussion but I had some serious questions after this ep I’d love your help on. Not sure if I missed something or it’s just the show?
1. If Thrawn is in ‘exile’ in this other galaxy but he has his ship, can’t he just return anytime to the usual galaxy? Is there something keeping him on this planet?
2. Also if Thrawn wants Ezra dead and has his location coordinates or close to, why hasn’t he killed him before in his ten years here? Sabine found him in a day and surely Ezra and his rock people are no match for Thrawn’s ship etc.
What’s wrong with cute? Some people like cute.