‘Ahsoka’ Part One and Two Spoiler Discussion: The Search for Grand Admiral Thrawn Begins in Solid Two-Episode Premiere
Warning: Spoilers ahead for Ahsoka episodes 1 and 2. If you want our non-spoiler thoughts on the episodes, you may check them out here.
The first two episodes of Ahsoka work very well as the first act of a story that feels like it’s about to get wackier and so weird, and I’m all here for it. As indicated above, if you want to know some of my answers to the questions most of us had going into the show like “How was the translation to live-action of the animated characters?” “Do I need to watch Star Wars: Rebels before heading into Ahsoka?” “Is the Loth-cat as adorable in the show as it is on the promos?”, you may find all of the info on that in the non-spoiler review — well, except for the last one. The answer is no; he’s even more adorable in the show. But now that we’re all caught up with the events of the first two episodes, let’s actually break them down.
First, I want to acknowledge the fact that Dave Filoni actually brought to life something I had been clamoring for years — even the Disney Plus series need an opening crawl. This is something that I saw some people post to social media after the first screenings last week, but I wanted to keep the surprise for our readers because I had a visceral reaction to that. It’s true that I would rather have the original yellow crawl in the iconic angle, but in every negotiation, both sides must compromise, and I felt greatly satisfied after seeing the words “EVIL GALACTIC EMPIRE”. That immediately told us that we are back in the original trilogy’s corny tone, and the costume and production design of that New Republic ship added more fuel to that fire. I was delighted.
We kick off the episode, like I had speculated on my trailer breakdown article (actually hat tip to Star Wars Explained who first filled in some of the details), with Baylan Skoll (the late Ray Stevenson) and Shin Hati (Ivanna Sakhno) boarding a New Republic starcruiser to rescue Morgan Elsbeth (Diana Lee Inosanto). After she name-drops Ahsoka Tano, we cut to the show’s logo and Kevin Kiner’s iconic theme. Also, like I speculated in that piece, the first Ahsoka scene would be the one in the old ruins (which I thought would be a Jedi Temple, but it turned out to be quite the opposite), where she would be seeking something. And this is exactly where I started to roll my eyes.
Lines like “Allow me to show you our credentials” already were pushing the boundaries of the cheesiness I like in my Star Wars, and had me a bit on the edge because of how far Filoni can actually go (the moment where Sabine is mumbling in her sleep and yells “Ezra!” was pretty animated too, let’s be honest). But it wasn’t enough that the opening scene felt like this show’s version of A New Hope‘s opening, we also have to have a map as the main McGuffin of the show, again? I guess doing that in The Force Awakens wasn’t enough… I’m eager to see the Internet’s reaction to this, especially those who criticized JJ Abrams’ movie for copy-pasting threads from the original movie. Will they criticize Dave Filoni for doing the same, criticize Disney for forcing him to (?), or forgive him because he can do no wrong? This is also one of the sequel trilogy connections I hinted at in the tweet we posted on Thursday night.
It is also especially noticeable that Ahsoka’s scene, which slows down the overall pace of the episode (except for her Tom Cruise-like sprint towards the ship), is set in between the action-packed assault on the New Republic ship and Sabine’s race against herself to the sound of Star Wars metal. If I may add here, her not showing up at the Clancy Brown-hosted event was the most Sabine moment ever, but the context is key to understanding her state of mind at the beginning of the show. She is pretty conflicted; she wants to find Ezra but feels alone in that quest, as even her old master failed her. It’s a pretty interesting beginning of her journey — in fact, Sabine is pretty much the only one who sees some character progression in the first couple of episodes, going from Rebel Without a Cause to actually embracing her destiny. Ahsoka, meanwhile, just reacted to her padawan’s change of attitude — I guess she also made up her mind after talking to Hera and Huyang, but I wouldn’t call that an arc yet, even if I foresee a big one coming up for her in future episodes.
One of my favorite things about what the show brings to the table is the addition of new lore, namely the existence of another galaxy in this fantasy universe. It’s something I’ve been wondering for a long time if they’d ever explore, and who better to do so than Dave Filoni? The existence of this map also opens so many questions — were Ezra and Thrawn taken there by the purrgils or did Thrawn just manage to find a way out? Why is there an encrypted map pointing to the supposedly-hidden location? And why do we have to keep asking these questions when we just had the same argument with the map to Luke Skywalker in The Force Awakens? I do think Filoni will answer them, though. At least I hope things will one day make sense, and that’s also one of the wonderful things about these two episodes, that not everything has to make sense right away. As long as it’s all tied up by the end, I’m fine with waiting for answers; after all, that’s what drives me to watch from week to week.
The introduction of new Star Wars lore comes hand-in-hand with Dave Filoni revisiting a highly-discussed moment from The Rise of Skywalker. It’s now fair game to be stabbed by a lightsaber and immediately saved by it — joke’s on you, Qui-Gon. Joke’s also on sequel trilogy haters who swore Dave Filoni would never do such a thing. However, in The Rise of Skywalker, Kylo being stabbed was a pivotal point for Leia and his own arc, later completed with Rey saving him — which almost culminated his return to the light side of the Force (right before that tearjerker of a scene with his father’s memory), but also served as a pivotal point for Rey herself. Sabine getting stabbed at the end of Part One was just a quick way to end the fight and have her where Dave Filoni needed her in the second episode — outside of the action, so she could actually make the definitive character choice to return as Ahsoka’s padawan.
Speaking of The Rise of Skywalker and convenient plot points Dave Filoni wrote into Ahsoka, there’s a moment in the desert of Pasana where Rey and Kylo both Force-pull a ship from the sky. So, if these two have the ability to do so, why didn’t Ahsoka do the same on Corellia, both when the ship sets off and also when Shin comes to the rescue of Marrok? It’s all good in the end, though, as they were able to track the ship’s location, but it was a bit jarring to me. And speaking of little annoying things about Ahsoka in the show, it was so distracting that she didn’t see coming Sabine running away with the map in Part One. Seriously, she has been in that same situation so many times during The Clone Wars. I get that she’s a more mature character now, but she’s not dumb. I must say, though, that it felt refreshing that for once in Star Wars the dark side out-smarted the good guys (for instance, the assassin droids destroying Sabine’s records at the communications tower).
Part Two ends with Morgan Elsbeth having collected all the necessary pieces she needed to build the ship that will take her to the distant galaxy. Meanwhile, Ahsoka is on her way to the planet below, so I have no doubt in the next episode we will have our big confrontation between her and Baylan Skoll. The forest setting on the planet where the star map is displayed is also highly reminiscent of the place where we see Sabine and Shin fight for a second time in the trailers — however, I suspect this second encounter will not happen yet, as Sabine is not fully recovered nor trained. I suspect either the third or the fourth episode (likely the former) will end with the shot of Grand Admiral Thrawn walking from behind we saw in the first teaser trailer:
Part Three of Ahsoka will debut next week, on Tuesday at 6pm PT/9pm ET/Wednesday 2am BST. Stay tuned for our spoiler discussion after!
Miguel Fernández is a Spanish student that has movies as his second passion in life. His favorite movie of all time is The Lord of the Rings, but he is also a huge Star Wars fan. However, fantasy movies are not his only cup of tea, as movies from Scorsese, Fincher, Kubrick or Hitchcock have been an obsession for him since he started to understand the language of filmmaking. He is that guy who will watch a black and white movie, just because it is in black and white.
