By José María Gámez-Lamadrid, Staff Writer
Ever since Disney+ emerged in 2019, audiences have received a steady drip-feed of Star Wars television, ranging from seasons of uncharted territory to limited series focusing on the familiar. The most recent entry in the Star Wars library, simply titled Ahsoka, dabbles in a bit of both.
The show centers on former Jedi Ahsoka Tano (Rosario Dawson) as she attempts to recruit her former padawan Sabine Wren (Natasha Liu Bordizzo) and fellow rebel Hera Syndulla (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) in a quest to prevent the return of the Empire’s master tactician Grand Admiral Thrawn (Lars Mikkelsen), a return that would spell certain doom for the burgeoning New Republic.
Did you get lost reading that? I wouldn’t blame you. Even though the show advertises itself as a stand-alone series, viewers who only follow the live action productions might be familiar with Ahsoka. However, those who stick to the movies would be lost entirely.
Spanning eight episodes, the show picks up on a loose thread mentioned in the second season of The Mandalorian, which occurs immediately after the epilogue of the Star Wars: Rebels series finale (with its cast of characters as deuteragonists). It follows the padawan of Anakin Skywalker, a character whose existence is unfamiliar to those that haven’t watched seven seasons of Star Wars: The Clone Wars and its animated movie. Even though the pilot episode flashes a short opening crawl to get viewers up to speed, the show is so deeply entrenched in decades-worth of continuity that is almost impossible to follow for those that aren’t up to speed with everything Star Wars-related.
However, for those that do enjoy everything Star Wars, Ahsoka is a rewarding adventure featuring familiar characters in unfamiliar situations. While the first half of the show is mostly concerned with tying up loose ends regarding Ahsoka’s character arc from The Clone Wars and Rebels, the second ventures more into the fantastical side of “space fantasy”, a rare treat for Star Wars productions.
Ahsoka challenges the franchise’s view on the Force that it has maintained for over 40 years, transitioning it from a powerset monopolized by the Jedi Order back into a state of being that, given enough training, anyone can tap into — a philosophy reflective of George Lucas’s beliefs from A New Hope.
Sabine Wren, a character that has been portrayed as unresponsive to the Force, is trained by Ahsoka and wields it skillfully by the show’s finale, portrayed similarly to how a person can pick up martial arts or study religion. It’s a beautifully mythical approach to the Force and leans more into the fairy tale aspect of the saga.
Ahsoka crackles with ambition, but the live action format hinders its potential. Writer and director Dave Filoni has traditionally worked in animation and should’ve stuck with that. The acting is wooden, and it’s rare to see the characters express any sort of emotion besides their constant stoicism, which makes for dull dialogue.
The action is lacking. Unimaginative shots and camera angles suck the energy out of duels that were present in Filoni’s prior work. Our heroes search for Thrawn in a brand new galaxy, but the planet he resides on has more in common with a Scottish countryside instead of anything alien, a consequence of Lucasfilm’s overreliance on StageCraft technology, which eats up most of the show’s budget. It becomes painfully obvious when actors are working on a stage of LED panels instead of a traditional set, breaking immersion that could’ve been maintained had this been an animated feature.
Despite its faults, Ahsoka is a respectable debut into live action for Filoni, a crescendo that he’s been carefully developing since Ahsoka’s debut into the Star Wars mythos almost two decades ago in The Clone Wars.
It stands as one of the more enjoyable entries in the Disney+ library. With a refreshing twist on old ideas, it’s exciting to imagine where the saga can go next.