Four live-action series into Disney+'s Star Wars offerings, and we're already seeing the cracks in the franchise.
Between suffocating fan service and baffling choices like Grogu's return in The Book of Boba Fett, these shows feel less like TV events and more like interlocking lore bombs. Only Andor — by far the best of the bunch — escapes these criticisms, thanks to its minimal use of pre-existing canon and its focus on building out (mostly) new characters and worlds. But are Andor's storytelling successes an anomaly in the live-action Star Wars world? Or a sign of better things to come? (Given that The Mandalorian Season 3 followed Andor, jury's still out.)
That brings us to Disney's fifth live-action Star Wars show, Ahsoka. Created by Dave Filoni, the series centers on Star Wars: The Clone Wars fan favorite Ahsoka Tano (Rosario Dawson). She's a Jedi with a complicated relationship to the Jedi Order, and now she's on a mission to prevent a great threat from returning to the galaxy.
Ahsoka wastes no time jumping into this adventure, with the first two episodes made available to critics hinting at promising character beats and expansions on Star Wars' mythology. However, the cracks we've seen in other shows remain — especially when it comes to fan service and an over-reliance on prior Star Wars properties.
Ahsoka is a treat for Star Wars Rebels fans — with a high barrier of entry for everyone else.
When we first meet Ahsoka in her own series, she's on the hunt for an important star map: one that leads to Grand Admiral Thrawn (Lars Mikkelsen), heir to the Empire. If any Imperial loyalists or Sith find the map first, they could bring Thrawn back and tear down the New Republic the Resistance fought so hard for.
To aid her in her quest, Ahsoka will turn to former allies like General Hera Syndulla (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and Mandalorian warrior Sabine Wren (Natasha Liu Bordizzo). If you've watched Star Wars Rebels (co-created by Filoni), hearing these names will no doubt thrill you, as the Disney+ Star Wars series continue their trend of bringing characters from animated shows into live action.
If you, like me, are not as familiar with Rebels or The Clone Wars, these characters will mean less to you when you first meet them. Luckily, the show is able to bring you up to speed on how everyone relates to one another, fleshing out their Rebel backgrounds and the sacrifices they made in their efforts against the Empire. The exposition can be less than deft at times, including a clunky hologram from missing Jedi Padawan Ezra Bridger (Eman Esfandi), but for the most part, Ahsoka gets the job done.
That the show has to get the job done is another matter entirely. Like we've seen with Star Wars series such as The Book of Boba Fett and Obi-Wan Kenobi, there's a sense of frantically tying plot threads from other shows and films together, instead of trying to forge something new. Star Wars stories are now forged in the gap between other pre-existing tales; they are rarely trusted to stand on their own. As a result, watching the first episodes of Ahsoka can sometimes feel akin to the worst parts of watching Star Wars or MCU shows: If you haven't done your homework before watching, you're in for a less rewarding experience.
It's no surprise, then, that the most interesting aspect of Ahsoka's two-episode premiere is a revelation that is entirely absent from Rebels. Early on, we learn that Ahsoka once mentored Sabine as her Padawan, only to walk away from her. We don't know why either incident occurred, only that it created a division between the two. The rift makes for a fascinating mirror to Ahsoka's own Jedi apprenticeship, back when she was Anakin Skywalker's (Hayden Christensen) Padawan before leaving the Order. (Yes, a baseline knowledge of The Clone Wars is handy here.)
With Sabine, Ahsoka has the chance to re-visit the mistakes of her past, as well as be a part of a master-apprentice relationship that may not end in tragedy — a rarity for Star Wars. Watching these two strive for reconciliation forms a strong emotional core for Ahsoka, while the promise of learning how they came to be at odds proves the most compelling reason to keep watching. Here's hoping the show delves deeper into Sabine's first attempts at a Jedi apprenticeship, otherwise their dynamic in the first two episodes will feel like a huge waste of potential.
Why make a live-action Ahsoka in the first place?
I may be less familiar with The Clone Wars and Rebels, but I can still appreciate the differences between animation and live action — and question why people are so often eager to make the jump from the former to the latter. Star Wars has a decent track record here, with characters like Mandalorian ruler and warrior Bo-Katan Kryze, played in live action and animation by Katee Sackhoff. However, Ahsoka is the first animated-turned-live action character to lead her own show, and it's here that we see some of the limitations of that translation between mediums.
The limitations are most obvious in action sequences, which lack the acrobatics and high-speed dynamism of animated Ahsoka's combat. This iteration of Ahsoka is older and certainly less likely to use flashy Jedi tricks, but even so, her lightsaber battles are missing much of the character of other Ahsoka fights we've seen. Ahsoka also lowers its lead's emotional expression to the point where Dawson needs to maintain a near-constant state of stoicism. This attitude may be explained in further explorations of Ahsoka's past, but for now, it registers as disappointingly one-note.
Similarly one-note are the show's visuals, with exteriors washed out in bland shades of grey or beige. It rarely feels like a character can genuinely interact with their greater surroundings, creating a disconnect that will have you pining for the vibrance of animated Star Wars. Even visually impressive sequences strain to recapture the magic of other, better Star Wars scenes; a fight between Republic officers and Dark Jedi Baylon (Ray Stevenson) and Shin (Ivanna Sakhno) feels like a lesser take on Darth Vader's hallway massacre in Rogue One.
Ultimately, it's that same feeling of trying to recapture the past, be it Rebels or The Clone Wars, that drags Ahsoka down. The rest of the season beyond the first two episodes could very well prove me wrong, and I would gladly welcome that development. But for now, the show feels more like Rebels Season 5 than it does Ahsoka Season 1, and that distinction does a major disservice to its beloved lead instead of doing her justice.
