Ahsoka S1E4: Fallen Jedi
by thethreepennyguignol
Ahsoka just keeps getting better and better.
This week’s episode, Fallen Jedi, is the most ambitious and most impressive outing yet; from the amazing visuals to a striking soundtrack, from great action to amazing character work, it’s downright brilliant, and I can’t wait to get into it.
One of the things that has always impressed me the most about Dave Filoni’s writing is how willing he is to make his characters fallible. In a world like Star Wars, with an often-clear divide between Good and Evil (eg, blue and green lightsabers versus red), finding that space where characters can make the wrong choices in a way that feels true to their arcs is a really interesting aspect. Sabine’s story this episode, as she accepts an offer from the enemy on the premise of seeing Ezra again, feels so well-earned based on her arcs in Rebels and the few episodes of Ahsoka so far. Even though you’re pulling for her to turn down the opportunity Skoll offers her, even though it’s obviously the right decision in the overall Galactic scheme of things, her choice to accept it makes perfect sense, and lands all the harder as a result. It’s selfish, but for all the most understandable of reasons. It’s a really bold choice that opens up a great plot for her and the show in general moving forward, and I can’t wait to see how it unfolds.
As for Ahsoka, she gets a great run of it this week – on top of some killer action (every time she brings out the double blades, I am whooping on my feet like someone has just scored a touchdown – and I love how, in Filoni’s live-action work, there’s so much drawn from samurai movies in terms of her combat and it’s execution), her story of taking the master position over Sabine is really engaging. She’s the one who pushes Sabine to accept destroying the map to Thrawn and Ezra, taking that painful position of having to give up finding their friend at the cost of the would-be Empire’s return.
Her maturity and poise here is so well-contrasted with the final moments of the episode, as she encounters Anakin again. Hearing him call her Snips, seeing the way her face lights up like it did when she was a child, and seeing all of that fall away in the face of the man who had such an influence on her life and path was just perfect – she goes from master to apprentice again in a matter of seconds. I really can’t overstate how impressed I’ve been with Rosario Dawson so far, and her understanding of the character and ability to embody all these aspects of Ahsoka is seriously elevating the show.
Outside of these two main threads, there’s so much to love about this episode and how it all comes together; Ray Stevenson Dramatically Looking in various directions and somehow selling the hell out of it, the excellent hyperspace jump sequence, Mary Elizabeth Winstead’s Hera, Huyang getting to have his multi-arm smackdown moment – it feels packed, but not overstuffed, an issue I had with last week’s very short outing. Apropos of nothing, though, I did find it really funny when Jacen hits us with an “I’ve got a bad feeling” moment, immediately after several of the X-Wing pilots die; yeah, kid, several of your friends were just slaughtered in an unthinkably horrible fireball, it would be weird if you were feeling good about it. This is what spending too much time with Chopper does to a child.
The introduction of Anakin at the end of the episode is a tantalising promise of more to come – I’m hoping for a real long, dark night of the soul episode for Ahsoka next week (or, let’s be real, a short, dark-ish twenty-nine minutes or so of the soul), and I’m really looking forward to seeing what Hayden Christensen can do with this character considering his pretty strong work in Obi-Wan. Overall, though, I’m just impressed with where this season is going, and I’m really looking forward to seeing where these next few episodes take us.
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(header image via Star Wars News Net)
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