The Cutprice Guignol

Okay, let’s talk about this finale, and then this season as a whole, because…yeesh.

Now, to be fair, there’s a lot of great stuff in this finale. It’s got a propulsive sense of forward momentum that’s been lacking in a lot of the rest of Ahsoka thus far, with Sabine, Ahsoka, and Ezra teaming up to take on Thrawn and Elsbeth once and for all.

Diana Lee Inosanto gets a fantastic send-off here, as Elsbeth comes to her full power and faces off against Ahsoka after their previous match-up in The Jedi; Inosanto’s skill as a stunt performer is on full display here, and truly, she’s a joy to watch in her fight scenes. There’s a taut precision to her action that is so damn exciting to watch, and it acts as a great centrepiece to the rest of the excellent action this episode. Seeing Ezra, Sabine, and Ahsoka’s various fighting styles come together to enter Thrawn’s HQ is enormously fun, and the introduction of the zombie troopers was appropriately of the Halloween season. I love the way they move, that slightly slow and loping but totally focused advance genuinely creepy.

There’s also some really solid stuff between Ahsoka and Sabine in this episode, a nice rounding-off of their plot together over the course of the first season of Ahsoka, and of Ahsoka’s arc through all of Dave Filoni’s Star Wars shows. Her promising to stand by Sabine the same way Anakin stood by her feels really earned, and Rosario Dawson imbues the moment with real depth, weight, and history – the closing moment of the episode, with Anakin watching over Sabine and Ahsoka, is just the cherry on top.

But then that’s sort of…it? Ezra makes it back to Hera, and they have the world’s briefest reunion, but other than that, this finale doesn’t really wrap up a whole lot. Shin and Baylan’s plots, for the amount of screentime they’ve had this season, got a comically short hand-wave in the direction of acknowledgement; I mentioned that I was curious to see how they would satisfactorily wrap up Baylan’s plot after the huge revelation in the previous episode, and the answer is that they didn’t even try. Thrawn is out, but we don’t get so much as a nod to what’s coming next for him. Even Ezra’s return feels kind of muted. As a closer for the season, it felt very abrupt, almost like a first half to a finale instead of a full, satisfying finisher. I get leaving a door open for the next season, but it feels like most of the plots here haven’t had a decent sense of closure for even this season alone. Most of the doors have been left open. There’s a damn gale in the house now!

Anyway. What about Ahsoka as a whole, now that we’re at the end of the first season? Well, I’ve had some pretty mixed feelings about Ahsoka, as I’m sure you’ve been able to guess from these reviews. There have been some really impressive episodes, and Hayden Christensen getting to embody Filoni’s version of Anakin has been a true highlight for me, as has Rosario Dawson’s excellent performance as Ahsoka, but the show has consistently struggled with pacing and, for me, never quite recovered from it’s very dodgy premiere.

But my biggest issue with the Ahsoka series is that it isn’t really an Ahsoka series at all. This is pretty undeniably a Rebels sequel at this point, and, don’t get me wrong – I love Rebels, and I’ve got no issue with a sequel series for it existing. I just wish it hadn’t sort of been backdoored in via the promise of a solo Ahsoka show, you know? I truly don’t understand why this was sold as an Ahsoka-centric series when it’s obvious she’s just part of the Rebels ensemble; there was a whole episode with basically no Ahsoka in it at all, for goodness sake. Either it was a cynical marketing move to capitalize of her popularity as a character, or the show started out as something very different to what it ended up as. I don’t think either makes for a particularly good explanation.

As a whole, I was disappointed by this season. Not just because it wasn’t what I imagined it would be, based on the promise of the title, but because what we did get often wasn’t that well-executed. It had it’s moments – no Dave Filoni show in the Star Wars universe has been absent of them – but it never hit it’s stride in a way I was really satisfied with.

What did you think of the show? Will you be watching a second season? Let me know in the comments!

If you’d like to support my work, please consider supporting me on Patreon, or buying my books! You can find my other reviews of Star Wars universe shows under these links:

Obi-Wan 

 The Mandalorian

Movie Universe

(header image via Midwest Film Journal)