Way back last November I was talking about Andor and loose ends.
It’s pathological at this point. I keep going back. Like every true Star Wars fan, all I want to talk about is this Star Wars that I don’t like (Obi-wan, you may recall). The signs were not promising here, as the next in a series of underwhelming Disney+ live action TV shows across all of their fetid intellectual properties, the trailer for Ahsoka made a baffling show of underwhelming face paint and robots fighting in a grey scrapyard. Regardless though, with the mood of a wayward child spitefully trekking upstairs to bed, I sat myself down and watched the first two episodes.
It’s a continuation — I understand — of the cartoons, which are an element of Star Wars I deemed far too ‘expanded universe’ for my tastes circa 2003, and I’ve still only seen half of the Tartakovsky series, as well as a handful of Clone Wars episodes when it was briefly available on UK Netflix. I am aware though basic cultural osmosis that there is a character named ‘Ahsoka’, a female Jedi with two laser swords who was Anakin Skywalker’s apprentice before he had to go back to be in the regular movies*. Ahsoka is an interesting protagonist, being introduced in a Raiders-of-the-Lost-Ark-esque sequence where she breaks into a tomb, solves a puzzle, then emerges with the prize to find her enemies waiting. You’d be forgiven at first for thinking her a bit of a generic badass, but once she has to interact with the show’s secondary characters the character gains some fun dimensions: she’s awkward, a touch cold, very direct, and easy irritating. She’s not making any quips, is what’s important — an invaluable trait that keeps the whole thing from feeling utterly trivial.
Secondary protagonist Sabine, Ahsoka’s own disappointing protege, is exactly the quip-primed badass who plays by no-one’s rules you might expect of a modern Star War. The first episode smartly undercuts this by immediately making Ahsoka completely correct in her narrow estimations of the character — once Ahsoka’s Padawan as she was Anakin’s — as Sabine loses the priceless magic map-apple that Ahsoka grave-robbed in the opening. Green Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who seems oddly underserved by the smirk-heavy acting direction in these first two episodes, is the Zordon-like figure nudging these plucky kids around and David Tennant plays a camp robot in the finest Star Wars tradition.
It’s pleasant, it should be noted, to be enjoying a Star Wars property fronted by a series of women. Leia and Padme were great characters but often perhaps a tad outnumbered. The only other prominent male characters in these first two episodes are gravel voiced non-Jedi Ray Stevenson, and the guy who played Taub in House M.D., seen here playing a Taub-like character who apparently gets arrested at the end just for being a useless tit. Ahsoka, Sabine, Green Mary Elizabeth Winstead, tertiary antagonist Shin, looming primary antagonist ‘Morgan Elsbeth’ (might want to check if there’s an even more witch-like name in the back), it’s a bold move for a series that famously had executives twisting themselves into knots over whether The Last Jedi’s Rose Tico was permitted to appear in another movie.
It’s not Andor, of course, but it’d be weird if it was. This is Star Wars in the form of Star Wars, and there’s a pleasing charm to seeing the aesthetic elements that Andor turned to new ends played straight. Showrunner Filoni was deemed something of a designated heir to the setting by Lucas and by contrast to Obi-wan (and Solo, Force Awakens, Last Jedi) which seemed to fear the association of the prequels Filoni appears to have a grasp of what it all means, what it’s all supposed to convey. The New Republic here appears in the negative space left by the Empire it deposed, nerdy types in cosplay helmets standing in the formations previously held by Imperial Stormtroopers, or going back further Trade Federation Battle Droids. Antagonist Ray Stevenson and his apprentice are introduced in a delightful mash-up of the start of A Phantom Menace and A New Hope, announcing themselves as two Jedi and performing a daring jailbreak (full marks to the Captain in this sequence, who does a note-perfect impression of Picard at his most cavalier).
Where Ahsoka fails to live up to Lucas’s sextet is only in the melodrama of it all — hopefully this will ramp up as the series goes on. Anakin’s troubles are all-encompassing, with the score swelling in the beautiful setting as he curses that he cannot love Padme. Luke’s longing to leave Tatoonine is inflamed as he stares at the double sunset. And so on. Ahsoka is ‘just’ TV, for its sins. Hopefully it can transcend. There’s more than enough in these first two episodes for me to keep watching, I think — the only other possibility is that this sickness for watching Star Wars is a sickness unto death.
Oh god I’m back on a Star War. Previously:
- Obi-wan: Episode 1
- Obi-wan: Episode 2
- Obi-wan: Episode 3
- Obi-wan: Episode 4
- Obi-wan: Episode 5
- Obi-wan: Episode 6
- The Phantom Menace (video essay)
- Andor: Episodes 1, 2, 3
- “Can Andor save Star Wars from itself?” Andor: Episodes 4, 5, 6 (plus supplemental)
- Andor: Episode 7
- Andor: Episodes 8, 9, 10
- Andor: Episodes 11, 12
- Ahsoka: Episodes 1, 2
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(*) Is it congruent with Revenge of the Sith to suggest that Anakin trained an apprentice? It’s certainly a decision in the characterisation — solely watching the films, you might be tempted to imagine Anakin a sheltered youth, too long kept tucked under the wing of his teacher and master. The thought that he had his own run at being the teacher, while obviously doomed in any portrayal of the character (“Join me, and together we can rule the galaxy as father and son!”), makes him a decidedly more social animal.
