Star Wars: Ahsoka Episodes 1 & 2: It will be easier to state, and perhaps there will be an argument presented as well, that the original Star Wars had backstories only hinted at while the story works completely on its own. The difference between that and Ahsoka is that this is clearly a live-action continuation of Star Wars Rebels, dealing with characters who had substantial character arcs in the previous show and relationships in the interim that the new show will have to touch upon. It will be easier to state that this is a new viewer-friendly show, and credit to Dave Filoni; he tried his hardest to make it happen. But this is steeped in continuity, and watching Star Wars Rebels wouldn’t have just enhanced the watching experience. After watching the first two episodes, Star Wars Rebels is downright essential to understanding this show.
Star Wars: Ahsoka Episode 1 “Master & Apprentice” Recap:
To say that Dave Filoni is a protege of George Lucas would be to say that Star Wars was inspired by Flash Gordon and Akira Kurosawa. It is obvious, and yet every time we see a Filoni move in any of his creations, it only hammers home this information. The presence of an opening crawl is the first in any of these live-action Star Wars shows. That opening crawl is impressive though in managing to recap the post-Return-of-the-Jedi landscape of Star Wars and how Ahsoka Tano has been after a character named Morgan Elsbeth who could lead to a map that would finally reveal the location of Grand Admiral Thrawn, one of the last of these Grand Admirals, who had also been referenced at the season 3 finale of The Mandalorian, but who had disappeared during the Season 4 finale of Star Wars Rebels along with Ezra Bridger.
Yes, that is a lot.
And now, we meet the two villains of the piece as an old imperial ship is met by a prison transport ship. The old imperial ship contains old Jedi code, which is why the ship is given entry, but the captain doesn’t believe that they are Jedi. The two force-wielders agree, with the elder one force-choking the captain while the younger one igniting her orange lightsaber and mowing through the entire ship. It’s interesting how the clothes and set design resemble the post-Empire world far better than it had been shown in Mandalorian and even The Book of Boba Fett. These two force-wielders free Morgan Elsbeth, one of Thrawn’s closest associates and, as we learn, one of the Nightsisters.
For people unfamiliar, the Nightsisters are a coven of witches who were responsible for the return of Darth Maul from the dead (remember the post-credits scene of Solo, with Maul having metallic legs and being the head of a crime syndicate?). Interestingly, Darth Maul and Obi-Wan Kenobi have their final confrontation in a Star Wars Rebels episode titled “Twin Suns”. So Rebels is a pretty important show, even in Star Wars canon.
Anyway, the two force-wielders are a master and apprentice: Baylan Skoll (Ray Stevenson, in his final appearance before his untimely passing), a former Jedi who had disappeared after the events of the Clone Wars, and Shin Hati (Ivanna Shatko), who might have traces of a psychopathic nature, but I liked how she also has a sense of childlike curiosity for everything, even while facing new opponents.
When we finally meet Ahsoka, she manages to enter an ancient tomb. The whole sequence feels like one from an Indiana Jones film, with how she unlocks the platform housing the sphere containing the map. The sphere, though, could only be unlocked by a key, but before Ahsoka could figure out how to unlock it, she was attacked by old assassin HK droids. Fighting through and making mincemeat of them, she barely manages to make her escape by jumping aboard her ship, piloted by her trusty droid Huyang (David Tennant), before the HK droids explode, taking the entire Jedi Temple with them.
Ahsoka finally meets with General Hera Syndulla (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), the leader of the Old Rebels crew and now a general of the New Republic, who convinces Ahsoka to ask the help of one of their old associates, Sabine Wren, and, as we learn in this show for the first time, Ahsoka’s old padawan, before Ahsoka had left her to fend for herself. As Hera’s interactions with Ahsoka suggest, Ahsoka’s difficulty with Sabine is supposed to resemble her difficulty with her master, Anakin Skywalker (the late Darth Vader, for the uninitiated), but like Ahsoka states, Anakin never had a chance to finish her training before she left the Jedi order. The question is, does Sabine have much of a capacity to wield the force for Ahsoka to train her anyway, and Ahsoka leaving her padawan doesn’t exactly put her in a favourable light?
We then shift to Lothal, which, for the first time in live action, has been exquisitely recreated. Sabine Wren (Natasha Liu Bordizzo) has become a recluse, choosing to hide herself in the lighthouse, which had been the home of Ezra Bridger, later the stopover for the Rebels crew, and now her home. Even without all the extensive history, it is pretty evident that Sabine had been a Mandalorian, as her armour would suggest, but the goodbye message she plays for Ezra Bridger suggests a deeper past than the show is actually inclined to elaborate on. Ahsoka’s first meeting with Satine is again very strained, with Ahsoka handing her the map and asking for her help in decoding it, as she has the “artist’s eye”, while also reminding her that this isn’t just about finding Ezra but to stop another galactic war, so the map should stay on Ahsoka’s ship. But while Ahsoka and Huyang try to decode the identities of the two mysterious Jedi through their lightsabers, Sabine, of course, doesn’t listen to Ahsoka and steals the map, going to her hideout to think while petting her cute loth cat.
When Sabine finally manages to decode the loth cat by comparing the topography of the Jedi temple, the map shows a clear path from the galaxy they are into another galaxy at the outer rim, preferably where Thrawn is hiding. But before she can relay this information to Ahsoka, Sabine is attacked by Shin Hati and the HK droids. She makes quick work of the droids before finally beginning to fight Hati using Ezra’s old lightsaber. Sabine is clearly out of practice because Hati makes quick work of her before driving her lightsaber through Satine and leaving. As Ahsoka, who had heard Sabine’s call for backup, reaches the lighthouse, Sabine falls unconscious. But if you have seen “Obi-Wan Kenobi, you know driving a lightsaber through a human body isn’t really as deadly anymore as it looks, if Reva’s survival has been any indication.
Ahsoka Episode 2 “Toil and Trouble” Recap:
Lightsabers are great weapons because they are instantly able to cauterise wounds because of the heat. So Sabine surviving again isn’t much of a surprise. Neither Hera nor Huyang supports the idea of Sabine hacking the head of an HK droid to identify its origin. Sure, it will explode in a couple of minutes, and Huyang pulls the wire seconds before, but the information is gathered. The HK droids came from Corellia, and Ahsoka chooses to go there but is reticent to bring Sabine, saying she has done enough. Dawson’s portrayal of Ahsoka so far is far more like Star Trek’s Spock than a logical extrapolation of the character of Ahsoka from the last 15 years. The show is made by Dave Filoni, the creator of Ahsoka, so trusting him to deliver on his passion project is the least we as viewers can do. However, what is impressive is Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Hera, who completely sells the character’s leadership qualities and is the proto-mother of the Rebels crew. Hera had been in the few moments where she consoled Sabine by telling her that Ahsoka does need her help, even though she wouldn’t ask for it directly.
We also get Morgan Elsbeth joining Baylan and Hati on a planet with a Stonehenge-like platform. Here we see Elsbeth controlling the map using her powers, unlocking it farther than Sabine could, and showing the full breadth and scope of the galaxies contained within the map. Elsbeth also identifies the path towards the galaxy where Thrawn is supposedly hiding as the “Path to Peridea”, which apparently is a fairytale that had been told to children at the Jedi Temple, according to Baylan. Elsbeth reveals that the path is very real. While Elsbeth goes to perfect the next stage of their plan, preferably to create a ship that could take them through the path to Peridea, Baylan instructs Hati to go to Corellia to oversee their operations.
A majority of the episode takes place in Corellia shipyards, where the conversation of the head of the shipyard with Hera and Ahsoka and the resultant revelation of the slippery politics or “apolitical” nature of the people working here resembles how the rise of the First Order was caused more by the complacency of The New Republic than anything else. It had been hinted at and elaborated on in The Mandalorian episode ‘The Convert’, and it is definitely hammered home here. Things take a turn for the worse when Hera discovers a hyperdrive being built for a ship that is definitely not being built in the shipyards, and when asked for details, she is told that it is classified, even for a general of the New Republic. Ahsoka changes tracks and asks about HK droids being employed, and while the director denies everything, a protocol droid immediately informs them about a group of HK droids leaving the shipyards. Tensions running high, some of the workers immediately move to attack Hera and Ahsoka, screaming “For the Empire”. Hera kills the two workers, while Ahsoka jumps out of the large viewing screen and runs after the ship. She begins to fight the silent inquisitor, while Hera climbs up on the Phantom and follows the escaping ship containing the HK droids.
Another great reveal is the live-action adaptation of Chopper, the sarcastic droid who had been a part of the Rebels crew and who makes the transition to live-action completely intact, trading sarcastic barbs with Hera as the Phantom chases after the ship, and Chopper barely manages to throw a tracker on the ship before it disappears into hyperspace. As that ship disappears, the inquisitor stops the battle with Ahsoka and climbs on another ship that has just appeared, and Ahsoka watches as the inquisitor with Shin Hati escapes. But as Ahsoka is informed by Hera, they have managed to implant a tracker so that Ahsoka can follow them.
Ahsoka Episode 2 “Toil and Trouble” Ending, Explained:
As it turns out, Ahsoka isn’t going alone. Sabine gets a pep talk from Huyang, where Huyang basically states that Sabine is the worst force user that he has ever come across, and if Sabine wants to help her master, she better stop wasting time, start practising, and join her master. Meanwhile, we see that Hati and her crew have arrived at the Eye of Sion, a massive hyperdrive docking ring that would enable them to travel to the other galaxy to find Thrawn. Baylan’s reaction to Elsbeth ordering Ahsoka killed is fascinating because he is remorseful because there are so few Jedi left.
At Lothal, Sabine reassembles her old Mandalorian armour and then cuts her long hair off before calling Ahsoka in her full regalia and informing her that she is ready. The final moment is a shot-by-shot recreation of the final scene in the Star Wars Rebels series finale, which showed an older Ahsoka joining an older Sabine on a mission to presumably find Ezra. So these two episodes effectively catch us up to that moment as Sabine joins Ahsoka and sits beside her, with Ahsoka ordering her to “take us out, Padawan”. It’s an interesting, if not very decent, start, and like with every Filoni venture, it is symptomatic of only Star Wars more than anything else. So if you are a hardcore fan of anything Star Wars, there is a lot to like as well as a lot to ponder. For newcomers not attuned to seven seasons of Clone Wars or four seasons of Rebels, “Ahsoka” is definitely a harder sell.
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