Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well. So, today, I am here to talk about the first two episodes of the new Disney+ series, Star Wars: Ahsoka, which dropped at 9 pm last night. This review will get into spoilers, because there are a bunch of things that I really want to talk about, so if you haven't seen the first two episodes of Star Wars: Ahsoka, please do so before reading this review, unless you're the kind of person who doesn't care about spoilers. Let's get into it.
If you're a fan of Star Wars Rebels, you will like this show. If you're a fan of Ahsoka Tano, you will like this show. If you're a fan of this era in the Star Wars timeline, be it through Legends or Canon, you will like this show. If you've never seen Rebels, and only know Ahsoka Tano from The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett, then you will still like the show, but you won't have as much of an understanding or appreciation for what's going on in this show. Ahsoka is for fans of Rebels because it continues the story from where the series finale of Rebels left off, with Ezra missing, and rumours of Thrawn resurfacing starting to pop up. However, it also continues Ahsoka's journey that began in Star Wars: The Clone Wars, both the movie and the TV show. In our time that's only fifteen years. In the Star Wars Galaxy it's almost thirty years. Definitely check it out.
That was my spoiler free section. Now, I'll be diving into my favourite parts of these two episodes, a couple of things that I thought was weird, but still good, and, of course, the characters, places, and ships, both old and new. Let's get into it.
The biggest worry I had going into this show was how the characters were going to be portrayed in live action. I wasn't super worried about Ahsoka, Morgan Elsbeth, or the new characters, Baylan Skoll and Shin Hati, because we'd seen Ahsoka in The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett, plus Rosario Dawson is a great actress, so I knew Ahsoka would be fine, and the others were either created for The Mandalorian (Morgan) or for this show (Baylan and Shin).
The characters I was worried about were Hera Syndulla (played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and Sabine Wren (played by Natasha Liu Bordizzo) because they were originally introduced in animation, and alot of times, animated characters don't translate well to live action. Especially because this isn't just Vanessa Marshall (Hera in Rebels) and Tiya Sircar (Sabine in Rebels) recording their dialogue while the animators figured out their movement and other actions. Both actresses did an incredible job though, and of course, Chopper is Chopper, and I'm pretty sure he's CGI since, even in the Prequel Trilogy days, they couldn't get Astromech Droids to do anything beyond roll around or rock side to side when excited. I think Chopper has lost his touch a little bit though, because he didn't kill anybody in these episodes. I'm kidding. Mostly. As I said in my reviews for Rebels, Chopper had the highest body count in the entire series, so for him to not even try to kill anyone is a step down for him in my opinion. Or maybe it means he's growing as a character? Who knows. What I do know is that it threw me off a little bit.
I love where Sabine is when we meet back up with her in the first episode. She's been on Lothal for the last several years, since she and Ahsoka went separate ways, for reasons unknown, waiting for any signs of Ezra returning, and she's kinda lost her way a little bit. Not quite in the same way that Obi-Wan Kenobi was in Obi-Wan Kenobi, but she's even packed away her Mandalorian armor, and everything she used to cherish in Rebels, including Ezra's lightsaber. It takes Ahsoka coming to her for help in her quest to find Thrawn for Sabine to find her purpose again. Which is something we all go through at different stages in our lives.
Hera is fantastic. Mary Elizabeth Winstead has come a long way since she played Gwen Grayson in Sky High (2005), and she fits the role of Hera perfectly. Out of all of the main characters from Rebels, I think Hera has been in the most Star Wars stories as she's been in novels, comics, video games, TV shows and movies (she had a cameo in Rogue One back in 2016). Within the Star Wars Canon timeline, the last time I saw Hera was in Alphabet Squadron by Alexander Freed, and while she was a general in that novel, she seems to have gained a bit more power, as she appears to be reporting directly to Mon Mothma and the New Republic High Command rather than a fleet admiral or a sector commander. Which is cool, because we got hints of that in Rebels, but that was during the early days of the Rebel Alliance, where the chain of command was alot looser, and Mon Mothma was alot more hands on with the military, as we not only saw in Rebels, but in Rogue One and in Return of the Jedi as well. Less so in Return of the Jedi though.
Ahsoka is fantastic in these two episodes. She feels more like the character we saw in Rebels than her previous live action appearances in The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett did. And I think that's because Filoni is the only one who wrote this show. Favreau's not involved, none of the other live action Star Wars TV show writers are involved, it's just Filoni. And because Filoni is the sole writer, he knows them the best and knows what they would say, what they wouldn't say, and how they would carry themselves.
The best part about these characters is that they feel like they have history together, and you can feel it, even if you've never seen Rebels, because the history they talk about here is more recent history rather than the old stuff we've already seen. It also feels refreshing because in alot of modern shows, characters meet each other for the first time in the first episode, or if they do have history together, they feel like they're meeting for the first time even though they're not. So that's great.
Baylan and Shin are interesting characters because they aren't Sith or Inquisitors, they're just two fallen Jedi, well, one fallen Jedi since it was confirmed in these episodes that Baylan is a former Jedi, and his apprentice. Shin also isn't like other Sith apprentices we've seen before. Unlike several Inquisitors in both Rebels and Obi-Wan, Shin is very calm and patient. More like a Jedi apprentice than a Sith one. I'm excited to see where they take these two characters. Oh and having Clancy Brown showing up as Governor Ryder Azadi, who he voiced on Rebels, on Lothal was great.
My favourite scene in the first episode is when Sabine is leaving the city on her speeder bike and two members of her squadron try to detain her, because she missed the dedication ceremony for the monument built for Ezra, the hero of Lothal, and she lowers the speeder bike and slides underneath the E-Wing fighter used by her squadron. I love that scene because it's such a Sabine thing to do, and the fact that she's playing the Star Wars equivalent of '80s punk rock is so much fun.
So that New Republic cruiser that Baylan and Shin attacked at the beginning of the first episode has an interesting design for its Bridge. It looks like the Bridge of a Federation starship from Star Trek. Right down to the captain's chair located in the middle of the Bridge, with the consoles surrounding it. We kinda got it with the Rebel ships in Rebels, but those ships were much smaller, so it was very interesting to see.
Lothal was my favourite planet in these first two episodes, because it felt the most alive, even compared to when we last saw it at the end of Rebels. The planet looks gorgeous in live action. One of the things that I mentioned in my reviews for Rebels is that there were moments in the later seasons where I completely forgot I was watching an animated show. Here I knew I was watching a live action show, but seeing the planet in live action for the first time was thrilling.
The one thing that scared the crap out of me was when Shin stabbed Sabine with her lightsaber at the end of the first episode. Intellectually I knew Filoni wouldn't kill Sabine off in the very first episode of the show, but still it was like, "What?!? Why???" Of course, they used to do that to Oliver on Arrow all the time, where it would seem like they had killed him after being stabbed or shot, but as a shocking cliffhanger, but then in the next episode they'd show that, no, he was still alive. Luckily we got episode two right away, because that would've been an insane cliffhanger to make us wait a whole week on.
Being that these were just the first two episodes of an eight episode series, there's still so much more to explore and discover in this series. Like, will they find Ezra, or did Thrawn kill him and that's why Thrawn survived? What's going on with Baylan and Shin? Will Chopper actually kill somebody in this show? I'm excited to find the answers as the show goes along. It's so good to have Ahsoka, Sabine, Hera, and Chopper back and this is going to be a fun ride. It's good to be back in the Star Wars Universe again, and have it actually moving the story forward after we've done so much gap filling with the last few shows. Including season 3 of The Mandalorian. In a way Ahsoka is gap filling a bit too, since this is between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens, but at the same time, it progresses things for characters who we haven't seen much of since Rebels ended. And I'm really enjoying it so far.
Overall, these were fun episodes and a great way to bring back old characters that we haven't seen in a while. Like I said in my spoiler free paragraph, you will love and appreciate this show more if you've seen Rebels and have a basic understanding of who Ahsoka is. But, I think you can still watch it having only seen Ahsoka's appearances in The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett. I haven't seen all of The Clone Wars so there's so much of Ahsoka's history that I'm not aware of, having not seen that show since halfway through the second season, back in 2008/2009, but I'm loving it because I watched Rebels for the first time recently, and I've seen all of The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett. So I'm here for the ride.
That's it for me for today my friends. I'll be back soon with more reviews and posts. I've got a few in mind for the near future. So until then have a great evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care.
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