Last time we picked up the tale of Ahsoka Tano, former cartoon.
Look I’m sorry — I really am — but I’m struggling to care about Ahsoka. Despite my initial optimism, born of a desire to come to any work of art without preconception, in a state of pure innocence, my interest just hasn’t sustained. Part of this blame can rightly be portioned out to the show itself, which in a call-back to the dire days of Obi-wan spent a good three and a half episodes spinning its wheels (the plus points of those first two episodes quickly passing out of memory), followed by a passable but slight subsequent two and a half following. Part of it must sit with me.
The good then, in brief: Thrawn is a passable villain. He has been introduced far too late in the game, and yet we were never allowed to be unaware of him, muting the possibility of the other villains (and this show is stacked with them) taking the fore. The Lord of the Rings planet is novel and spooky, though the proto-Hobbits were laying it on a bit thick and the action scene where Sabine fought the space-Orcs was dry. The threat of additional space-Orcs is dryer still. And the laser sword fight between Ahsoka and Ray Stevenson was delightful — bizarre that it was in the same episode as the placid duel between Sabine (motivation: have her opponent hang around a bit) and Shin (motivation: have her opponent hang around a bit).
The bad, well: Let’s consider.
I’ve failed to mention of course the triumphant return of Hayden Christensen, who is apparently allowed to be in these things so long as he doesn’t hang around too much. His episode-long ‘A’-story in Ahsoka’s mind palace hits all the nostalgia notes for Episode II, and were I structuring these essays in a sensible and planned manner this would be a prime time to tackle that film and Christensen’s performance therein.
Hint I have however, with my use of the television-land language of ‘‘A’-story’, at what is ultimately bothering me about Ahsoka more than anything. It’s television. This is the most crushingly unfair of complaints, but at the root it’s what is turning me off. Obi-wan was never sure whether it was a diced-up movie or a cinematic miniseries, but Ahsoka is teevee, capital-T Television, with the ‘A’-story and the ‘B’-story and the self-contained episode plot always in an uneasy truce with the grand plot arc, in a way TV writers think was finally solved by Buffy the Vampire Slayer but it really wasn’t. Thrawn gets mentioned all the time because it’s foreshadowing, not because I should be expecting him to appear onscreen. There’s filler episodes because TV needs filler episodes. Ahsoka is what it aims to be and what it aims to be just isn’t for me. The same was true (but more recognisable) in Mandolorian. I’d be better off picking off standalone exceptional episodes than trying to take my medicine weekly like I have been.
To me, Star Wars is cinema — the grand image, the swelling score, the single most important story that has ever been told playing out on screen in front of you. There’s no room in my Star Wars for day-to-day trials and tribulations. There’s no room for forty minutes of Ahsoka training Sabine. When Sabine is finally reunited with her lost paramour Ezra (no relation), she seems… pleased. Andor fooled me into thinking that I could watch a Star Wars TV show by being not Star Wars and not being really a TV show. More fool me.
I have fairer complaints. Green Mary Elizabeth Winstead has graduated from pebble-in-your-shoe to millstone-around-your-neck in terms of frustrating characterisation. You fought a war, Green Mary Elizabeth Winstead! You should be able to compellingly navigate a bureaucracy! You should be able to put your own contact lenses in!
The decision to cast a different actor for young Ahsoka in the scenes opposite Christensen is really baffling. Dawson as Ahsoka hasn’t exactly been stretched by the demands of the role, among other tasks spending the entire Episode 6 reclined in a chair, so giving the scene with all the emotions to an (admittedly talented) newbie puts in a weird distance between the main actor and the scenes.
The space whales are a particularly baffling piece of errata brought over from the cartoon. Structurally in the episode, interacting with them is the reward of the wisdom Ahsoka gains from confronting her personal demons and facing Anakin/Vader. Why facing down Vader permits you to talk to a whale is left by the show as an exercise for the viewer. It’s a nice visual though.
I’m typing this out shortly before a new episode (7 of a total 8) is released. Perhaps it will sew this all together into one suitably grandiose narrative. Or perhaps it will cement my concern that this is all just marketing pre-roll for an upcoming return to movie theaters, with nothing of consequence being concluded: a final shot of a freed Thrawn vowing revenge on the galaxy, eight episodes to build what Rise of Skywalker achieved with a single Fortnite tie-in. Or perhaps it will be more jigsaw pieces settling themselves into the big patchwork board of Dave Filoni Star Wars TV shows, of interest to some (and very validly so, I should add) but maybe not, in the end, to me.
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
- Ahsoka: Episodes 3, 4, 5, 6
If you like my writing, watch my new video essay The Fanatic, available now with a short companion essay kindly published by Blood Knife. If you’re after more text, please follow me on Medium or subscribe to my Letterboxd reviews.
