Yesterday night (thankfully not early this morning), we got the two-episode premiere of Ahsoka, the long-time dream of Dave Filoni to bring his beloved Clone Wars/Rebels character to life. The result is a series that appears like it’s going to effectively be a fifth season of Rebels, with at last half the old cast on board.
This is a good for many fans. This may be a problem for others.
The part of the fandom that has indeed watched all of Clone Wars and Rebels appear to be quite happy with the premiere here, believing the actors suit their respective roles from the animated series quite well. It’s been their dream, not just Dave Filoni’s, to see a big, budget, live-action version of these characters as a significant portion of the Star Wars universe. And yes, currently, this is the biggest thing happening in the Star Wars universe with more movies on pause seemingly indefinitely.
But if you have not watched the 11 seasons of content that led up to this moment, the show may land differently for you, and is really going to have to prove itself by standing on its own two feet. And I’m not sure these first two episodes quite do that.
There’s a lot of “remember when this happened?” and the answer is “no” for many viewers. We have never seen the long, long history of the relationships between these characters, so that makes onboarding a bit tougher.
I think the show’s biggest strengths are its sense of mystery. Some of the mysteries the Rebels crew already knows, like who this Ezra guy is and why he’s so important. Same with Thrawn. Others are more of a mystery to everyone. What on earth is going on with this Nightsister-found portal to an entirely new galaxy where Ezra and Thrawn are supposed to be? After all this is a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. Galaxy, singular. And now we’re hearing about an ancient race from another galaxy that built these portals from their home to this one. If there’s a Star Wars lore explanation for this, I don’t know it. (One final mystery is I’m wondering if the person behind that Inquisitor mask is supposed to be a big reveal, or if it’s just some guy. It had better not secretly be brainwashed Ezra or something).
Where the show struggles the most in these early episodes for me was Ahsoka herself, played by Rosario Dawson. I just don’t especially…like her? This is another animated series/new show divide. I did indeed watch the first few seasons of Clone Wars in the brash, trash-talking Ahsoka era. But this is decades and decades later. Ahsoka is jaded, and that often comes across as haughty or condescending. While I’m told this is how Ahsoka was by the end of Rebels, I don’t think it works terribly well here.
I was more engaged with Hera and Sabine, though I thought both were still less interesting than the new Sith-ish duo of master and apprentice, effectively mercenaries for the witch in her quest to bring Thrawn back. These are really interesting characters I want to know more about, whereas the core cast, Ahsoka, Hera and Sabine all already have 4-11 seasons of backstory, or a very long catch-up video you can watch on YouTube.
Overall I would probably consider this a successful launch. The people that should have been the most engaged with the series, the animated show fans, do indeed seem to be pleased. And outsiders should have enough here to latch onto, even if I don’t think there are quite the same immediate hooks in place the way The Mandalorian and Andor had (Andor increasingly seems like an entirely different universe from all these other shows between filming, acting, writing, etc).
I will certainly be watching the entire series, though I’m curious how it performs in the larger new-era Star Wars canon.
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