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You might actually accuse creators throughout the Star Wars franchise of needlessly injecting their media with heavy doses of fan service, and Ahsoka sequence creator Dave Filoni is likely to be the guiltiest of all of them. There’s a purpose a tweet from April 2023 sharing a pretend web page from a Filoni script that follows the well-known “and my ax” format from The Lord of the Rings however with Star Wars characters is so humorous—as a result of it feels, partially, like one thing the person blessed with George Lucas’ belief would attempt to pull off.
Learn Extra: Your Important Ahsoka Refresher Earlier than The New Star Wars Sequence
There are moments all through the primary episode of the brand new Disney Plus Ahsoka sequence that really feel a bit like that tweet, and a bit like Filoni, who helmed the animated Star Wars: Rebels sequence, simply wished to complete telling that present’s story. However though the frequent nods to content material and characters from that beloved sequence could generally make Ahsoka really feel prefer it’s just for the initiated, it nonetheless manages to be a compelling standalone story in its personal proper—possibly not in addition to Andor does, however much better than, say, The Ebook of Boba Fett.
Stream it now: Disney+
The beginning of the Ahsoka sequence
Ahsoka begins with one thing that makes me genuinely squeal with delight: a standard Star Wars opening crawl (although in a placing pink font), filling you in on the important thing story beats you’ll must know getting into. This can be a good transfer by Filoni—not solely does it assist Ahsoka really feel extra like a full-blown movie (which it does all through the primary two episodes that aired on August 23 due to implausible VFX and glorious pacing), however it provides a little bit little bit of context for followers who could not have sat via some 200 episodes throughout two totally different children’ exhibits.
The crawl tells us that Morgan Elsbeth, an ally to Imperial Grand Admiral Thrawn, has been captured by Ahsoka Tano (Rosario Dawson) and is being transported by the Insurgent Alliance. Cue a large Insurgent ship sweeping into view, and a pleasant take a look at how the brand new authorities is working—a ship sending out an previous Jedi sign is asking to board, however the Insurgent captain thinks its passengers are bluffing. A lot of the Jedi have been worn out throughout The Clone Wars, bear in mind?
The captain was proper to suspect them, as a result of it seems they’re two red-lightsaber-wielding dangerous guys named Baylan Skoll (RIP Ray Stevenson) and Shin Hati (Ivanna Sakhno). Each Stevenson and Sakhno shine of their respective roles—Stevenson enjoying Baylan like a classically skilled Shakespearean villain, Sakhno imbuing Shin with a feral, twitchy vitality like a nook feral cat. They kill everybody on the ship and launch Elsbeth (Diana Lee Inosanto, who first performed the position on The Mandalorian), who tells Baylan that there’s somebody after the “map”: Ahsoka Tano.
That is an early reminder that Filoni likes the toys in his sandbox a bit an excessive amount of, as Inosanto’s considerably weird line-read (she simply says the title “Ahsoka Tano” earlier than it cuts to the present’s title card) would have been a lot extra highly effective if she by no means mentioned all of it. As a substitute, we simply get snapped proper to the title of the present. Hear, Ahsoka is Filoni’s greatest woman (and mine, too), so I’ll let him have this one.
Then we see Ahsoka herself, strolling via the ruins of what seems to be an previous Jedi temple. It’s nice to see Dawson bodily embody the position—she is reserved, virtually stoic as she strikes via this house, however nonetheless sometimes provides flashes of playfulness that remind us of a youthful Ahsoka. And, fortunately, her fucking lekku are lastly the fitting size. In a scene that feels straight out of Indiana Jones, Ahsoka makes use of her twin lightsabers to slice via the bottom and drop straight right into a secret room that calls for she full a puzzle to get the item she’s searching for. She does so with ease, however when she tries to speak with Huyang (a Jedi engineer droid voiced by David Tennant), she realizes one thing’s not proper.
She’s attacked, and we get our second lightsaber combat of the present earlier than we even hit the 15-minute mark (hell yeah). The combat is choreographed effectively, and it’s clear that the crew made certain Dawson’s actions (and that of her stunt double, Michelle Lee) echo Ahsoka’s competency with many preventing types—she will transfer swiftly and lithely when wanted, however stand tall and highly effective to deflect laborious hits or blaster photographs as effectively.
It’s a terrific combat, however it’s the scene afterwards that offers me pause—Dawson, clearly making an attempt to embody an older, extra stoic Ahsoka than the one we all know from the animated exhibits, can sometimes really feel stiff, a stark distinction to the full of life take that voice actor Ashley Eckstein dropped at the character. This might, maybe, be as a result of this can be a a lot older Ahsoka Tano than the teenage woman in Clone Wars (she’s actually extra reserved in Rebels, and he or she’s in her forties now), however it feels jarring, particularly since she is such a beloved character. As my associate mentioned in the course of the first episode, “These contacts don’t assist, do they?” Dawson feels essentially the most like Ahsoka when she invokes a kind of bemused disdain, which we fortunately get extra of within the second episode.
Ahsoka and her rebels
Ahsoka believes the map will assist lead her to the situation of Grand Admiral Thrawn (Lars Mikkelsen), the final chief of the Empire and its inheritor obvious. On the finish of Rebels’ closing episode (which aired again in 2018), Jedi Ezra Bridger used hyperspace-traveling house whales known as purrgil to banish himself and Thrawn to the remotest nook of the universe. Ahsoka hopes that the map will discover them each, in order that she will save Ezra and likewise forestall Thrawn from retaking his mantle as imperial chief and plunging the galaxy again into warfare.
She’ll need assistance, nonetheless, so she turns to 2 of her oldest and closest allies: Normal Hera Syndulla (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and Sabine Wren (Natasha Liu Bordizzo). Right here is the place Ahsoka slows down a bit an excessive amount of for some, because it tries to offer the viewers a greater understanding of the dynamics between these three girls, which have been correctly fleshed out throughout 75 Rebels episodes. Ahsoka used to coach Sabine, a Mandalorian warrior and shut pal to Ezra, as her Padawan, earlier than it turned clear that the 2 weren’t an excellent match, and so they each fought alongside Hera (who misplaced her associate, a Jedi named Kanan Jarrus) within the riot for years.
Sadly for Dawson, her reserved strategy to Ahsoka solely makes it more durable to totally dig into her relationship with Hera (who Winstead performs like a involved however feisty aunt via a number of kilos of among the worst FX make-up I’ve ever seen) and Sabine (who Bordizzo portrays superbly as a brash, angsty riot grrrl who makes use of her cool speeder bike to do an Akira-esque slide once you first meet her). At any time when they’re interacting, she feels extra like an exasperated mother than a former ache within the ass herself (which Ahsoka was, simply ask her older grasp, Anakin Skywalker). It’s unlucky, however I’m hoping that the three girls stretch and flex into their roles in future episodes.
Apart from the trio’s dynamic, nonetheless, Ahsoka seems and feels nice. The lovingly recreated places from the animated sequence (Ahsoka’s ship, the planet Lothal, Ezra’s crow’s-nest house that Sabine now lives in), all look wonderful, like one thing out of a full-fledged Star Wars blockbuster. The animatronic Lothal cat has dethroned Grogu because the cutest Star Wars puppet for my part, and except for Ashoka’s contacts and Hera’s far-too-cartoony outfit, the costuming and set-dressing are all top-notch. The lightsaber battles crackle and snap—there’s vitality in each swing of the sword or blaster deflection that feels purposeful and well-directed, and the ASMR-heavy moments (Ahsoka twisting and turning stone columns to finish a puzzle, Sabine shifting a steel sphere to disclose a map) are tactile and virtually sensual.
The episode ends with a implausible lightsaber combat—Sabine, ever the cussed one, takes the map off of Ahsoka’s ship regardless of her protestations, and discovers precisely the place it leads earlier than she’s attacked by Shin and her droids. Sabine will get a saber straight via her stomach, one thing that Star Wars doesn’t do all that always (I gasped so loud I awakened one in all my cats), and it fades to black. We all know Sabine survives, however will her already fractured relationship together with her former grasp, Ahsoka?
There’s love in each Ahsoka element, like a jade coronary heart sewn into the pocket of your denims. You simply have to permit for the hope that, like all issues, it’ll get higher with age.
Stream it now: Disney+
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