Let me start this off that Ahsoka is the Star Wars live-action show I’ve been waiting for since they started doing these. The Mandalorian never piqued my interest in him or the “Child,” who is a little Yoda-like being. I know the whole Lone Wolf and Cub inspiration, but it’s an eh for me, dawg. Now Andor got me a bit, with Rogue One being my favorite current-era Star Wars film. Yet there is one part of the whole Star Wars franchise that is the most dear to my heart. The one part that stopped me from being a full-on forever Star Wars hater and into the middle and that is CG animated series show run by Dave Filoni. Now I know he’s part of the other shows, but man, that Clone Wars and then Rebels…sheesh, y’all, the way he world builds and added to everything. It rounded out the world, so it felt more like a world and less like some Skywalker thing. Those shows really changed what Star Wars could be, and now with this show, we’re back with that first addition he gave us, Ahsoka Tano, the former padawan of Anakin Skywalker and former Jedi.
Taking place in the New Republic era, like in Mando’s show, we have Ahsoka on the hunt to solve a mystery, to find a map that Empire loyalists are searching for to find a lost admiral – Thrawne. Now Thrawne has a complicated history, but the simple thing is he’s the most dangerous mind and force of the empire outside of the Emperor, Vader, or Tarkin. He was defeated by the main character of the show Star Wars Rebels – Ezra Bridger, a young Jedi who was part of a group of rebel alliance fighters. He was lost along with Thrawne. Ahsoka needs help and goes to Hera Syndulla, a General in the New Republic (and also from the show Rebels), who pushes Ahsoka to find Sabine Wren, her former Apprentice and also a former member of the Rebels group. Ahsoka says the map can help find Ezra, which gets Sabine to help, but their relationship isn’t in a good place. Meanwhile, two force-using mercenaries are also looking for this map working for a woman named Morgan, who is dedicated to finding Thrawne. Baylan Skoll and his Apprentice Shin bear orange-tinged lightsabers and formidable fighting skills based in the Jedi ways. Ahsoka, along with Sabine and their Rebel colleagues, must stop and find out what and how they are doing what they are doing to stop them.
Now this is my first experience watching Rosario Dawson playing Ahsoka, and I feel she does a fantastic job. She’s able to make the character feel consistent with what we’ve seen over the years while showing even greater maturity in the character and how set in her ways she is. Ahsoka is a loaner; after having to leave the order and her master Anakin, many things have gone wrong, but she’s had to make her own way with the force and in the galaxy. Dawson brings some of that classic ronin style energy that feels familiar from watching old samurai films from Japan. Natasha Liu Bordizzo, who plays Sabine, also does well by bringing this character into live action and showing us a new side to the character with the time passage since the last episode of Rebels. She’s just as crucial as Ahsoka and does a large amount of the emotional heavy lifting with her sadness of missing Ezra and lingering resentment of Ahsoka. Her character has a lot going on, which really helps bring a humanizing presence to the story.
I liked Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Hera; again, she has some large shoes to fill with bringing this character into live-action, and as a supporting character, she does well even if I hope she gets to do a bit more. David Tennant voices Huyang, a Jedi Order droid who is essentially Ahsoka’s butler type of character. The character is also from a previous show, Clone Wars, which adds the right amount of great droid humor to make great Star Wars. I did wonder how this droid survived everything, but hey, Ahsoka is resourceful. The late Ray Stevenson plays Baylan Skoll as this mysterious surviving former Jedi that doesn’t feel evil but is at odds with Ahsoka and her beliefs. Ivanna Sakhno, who plays Shin, the Apprentice, has a great Darth Maul-like presence on screen. She constantly feels like a threat and someone that will explode at any moment.
So I should’ve said this earlier, but I only saw the first two episodes out of the eight. These first two episodes were very good—Dave Filoni wrote both episodes and directed the first. You can feel his comfort at doing this and these characters. To me and probably others, this will essentially feel like Rebels season 5 and that’s not bad. While this feels like it’s wrapping up some dangling plot threads from before, it also feels like it’s setting up something good for the near future. This show is going to be my must-see Star Wars show each week it’s on.
Score: B+ (both episodes)
RIOTUS 