The Cutprice Guignol

Ahsoka Tano is one of the Star Wars extended universe’ best characters.

Not an opinion, just a fact. Starting out in The Clone Wars, she should really have been nothing more than an irritating kid character, the likes of which have plagued so many shows of it’s ilk, but she’s probably one of the most well-developed, layered, and consistently interesting people across all of the Star Wars media she’s starred in, from Rebels to The Mandalorian. Regardless of the context she turns up in, her long backstory on the proverbial Star Wars screen (much of it driven by Dave Filoni’s excellent writing for her) always gives her a sense of weight and purpose for the stories she graces with her presence.

Which is why I was surprised that the opener of her much-anticipated solo show, Ahsoka, was so damn boring.

Master and Apprentice and Toil and Trouble kick off Ahsoka’s (Rosario Dawson) solo adventures, and I think it was a really smart choice to release both of these together – because alone, the first episode really struggled. It follows Ahsoka trying to decode a mysterious map she finds that apparently leads to the location of General Thrawn (babe, husband, love of my life, best thing about Timothy Zahn’s amazing Heir to the Empire trilogy, etc), and her strained relationship with Hera and Sabine after the events of Rebels.

It occupied a strange place, story-telling wise, as it seemed to try and set up for new audiences who might not be well-acquainted with these characters, while also appealing to those who’ve known and loved them for years. Even though it might have alienated some audience members, I would have preferred to see the show stick with one approach – either for the newbie or for the well-versed – instead of having Ahsoka clunkily drop in references to Anakin’s training just to make sure we’re all on the same page. It’s swampy territory for a premiere to have to handle, and, as someone who does know this character pretty well, rendered it a bit dull for me.

Written and directed by Dave Filoni, I was expecting some more of the lightness of touch, the wit and sense of forward momentum he brought to previous Star Wars projects like The Clone Wars, but this first episode was a trudging bore for me. The choice to make the main storyline driver a small sphere that people endlessly fiddled over stripped it of a lot of the dynamism a premiere like this needs, outside of a great opening action sequence with Ahsoka herself – I think the episode would have felt far more entertaining if we’d seen her tracking down the map, establishing her skills and powers more deftly as part of the plot in the process. I understand that the show has to move all the pieces into place to kick off the story it’s trying to tell, but you could practically here the scrape of the plot points as Filoni dragged them into position.

Master and Apprentice, though, most of all, lacked a sense of fun – I get that we’re in the gritty Star Wars era now, but to see these characters stripped of so much of the on-screen energy we’re seen the with in other shows felt like a miss.

Luckily, Toil and Trouble goes some way to fix that, with a much lighter touch, much sharper dialogue, and a better sense of these characters and their history together. Hera (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and Ahsoka make for a great pairing, with Dawson and Winstead bringing out a sly sense of fun in each other as they investigate a would-be repurposed imperial plant. Villains Morgan Elsbeth (the exquisite Diana Lee Inosanto, who really understood the assignment in her poised, imposing turn) and Baylan Skoll (the late, great Ray Stevenson) begin to shine in Toil and Trouble, and the action is pretty entertaining, as is the return of David Tennant’s iconic Huyang. It’s not a fantastic episode, but it’s a significant improvement on the bizarrely dour opening – it’s got flashes of rollicking adventure fun to it, reflecting a lot of the media these characters have starred in before.

But what of Ahsoka in all of this? Well, for one, this doesn’t feel so much like Ahsoka’s show as it does a Rebels sequel, which isn’t a bad thing (Rebels is bloody brilliant, after all), but it did throw me off for Ahsoka to act more like an ensemble than a solo piece. That said, I do think what we get of Ahsoka is generally really solid – her opening action sequence is great, resourceful and focused, and Rosario Dawson finds that subtle balance between Ahsoka’s heavy past and her more playful side in a way that generally works for me, at least in the much-improved second episode. I’m intrigued to see where her arc is going to go from here – while I’m not a huge fan of the choice to make Sabine Ahsoka’s apprentice, I’m interested to see what the show will do with Ahsoka’s fractured relationship with the Jedi as she begins to train a new generation.

Overall, I was pretty let down by this opening – I’m hoping this first episode was just a wobble, and we’re going to steady the proverbial ship now the pieces and people are where they need to be. Because Ahsoka deserves a great solo show – and I want more than anthing for her to get it.

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(header image via CNN)