The Cutprice Guignol

Ahsoka’s sixth episode, Far, Far Away, sees the return of two iconic Rebels characters – with varying results.

First off, let’s talk Thrawn. Now, Thrawn is a character I’ve been wanting to see in live action since I first read Timothy Zahn’s exquisite Heir to the Empire trilogy when I was about ten years old, but, I have to admit, I had my doubts about him here. The character design is just so inherently daft – a big blue bloke with red eyes and clip-on Lego hair – I was a bit concerned that it wouldn’t translate to live action without coming across as a bit…well…panto.

But my doubts have been well and truly put to rest by this outing. His introduction in this episode is everything I could have asked for from a live-action Thrawn and more; from the arrival of the Star Destroyer, literally shaking the earth beneath it, to the crisp, orderly ranks of his troops, before we even see him, Thrawn feels like a presence in this series and in this universe as a whole.

And when we do see him – God, Lars Mikkelsen did such a phenomenal job with the character here, bringing his cold, calculated confidence perfectly to life in a way that’s genuinely iconic Star Wars TV. I loved seeing him share the screen with Morgan Elsbeth, my favourite villain from the live-action TV universe so far, and this tantalizing snippet of his return has me desperate for more. I love Thrawn and what he represents for the Star Wars universe – a villain driven not by the arcane power of the Force, but by his own set of skills and logic – and I can’t wait to see where Dave Filoni goes with him now he’s here in live-action.

Elsewhere, Sabine, set free from the confines of Elsbeth’s intergalactic NuvaRing, is allowed to set off on a search to find Ezra (along with a packing brush for her constantly-freshly-applied forest green smoky eye, I can only assume), and this is…the less engaging part of the episode for me, by far. After so much of the series had been built around the staggering difficulty Sabine faces in even thinking about finding Ezra, this search in this episode runs way too smoothly – and quickly – to match up with that. There’s one encounter with bandits, an extended sequence of a cute animal being sassy, and then, just like that, she’s stumbled on the group who happen to have taken him in, and she finds him.

While the moment of their reunion feels right for the characters, this episode as a whole makes Sabine’s search for Ezra just a little too easy. I wanted to see a montage of her struggle searching the planet to find him – not even one that lasted much longer than the journey we got in terms of screentime, but one that made her work a little harder to get there. I get that there was some attempt to contrast between Ezra and Thrawn’s respective returns, one with all the pomp and circumstance and one far more informal to reflect their relationships within the series, but Ezra is a huge character in this show’s universe, and his return played a little flat to me.

And speaking of, I think this episode really underlined that this isn’t as much an Ahsoka show as it is a Rebels sequel. She’s in maybe the first five minutes of this outing, a pre-credits intro, and while I don’t hate the idea of a follow-up to the Rebels story, it feels a little disingenuous to market it under the title of an Ahsoka solo show. Sabine has had more impact on the direction of the story than the title character, and that doesn’t quite feel right, you know? I wouldn’t mind the show opening up to a broader scope in later seasons, but this first one should be Ahsoka’s more than anyone’s.

Far, Far Away isn’t a bad episode, by any means, but it’s an episode that once again struggles with pacing and focus. Thrawn’s introduction made it all worth it, though, and I’m looking forward to seeing how the show moves forward with his return now set in stone – if only because I can’t wait to see what else Lars Mikkelsen does with this iconic villain.

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(header image via Dexerto)