It was fine. I’ve seen all the shows so I get the backstory and references.
That being said, there are just too many Star Wars and movie cliches to be bearable:
Oh wow she cut her hair dramatically, she’s such a rebel and such a badass. (Cheap and overused character moment)
Staring pathetically at a spaceship flying away after a lightsaber duel (has happened four thousand times in Star Wars)
“Get ready!”
Lightsabers are harmless
Fixing a bomb under a ticking time clock (false peril)
Ancient artifact leads to the location of a place or character in the present (another cliche and cheap writing)
Another star map mcguffin (overused cliche)
Did we ever get an explanation for why what’s-his-name had a map to Luke Skywalker in TFA? Why did Luke leave a map? Didn’t he specifically not want to be found?
Back to Ashoka, why did the ancient nightsister temple have a map that lead to Thrawn, when he disappeared not even a decade before? Also, if someone knew Thrawn’s location precisely enough to map it, why didn’t that someone also try to find him themselves?
Did you watch Rebels?
spoiler
There are space whales with organic hyperdrives. They grabbed Thrawn at the end of Rebels and took him to parts unknown (what we now know is another galaxy). The map appears to be an ancient record of their migration paths, so the presumption is they dragged him along their normal route.
Thrawn was carried away by giant hyperspace whales in the finale of Rebels.
The map has stylized hyperspace whales on it. It’s presumably an ancient hyperspace whale migration map or something.
R2 is a navigation droid, so presumably keeps a record of everywhere he’s been for audit trail purposes. He’s also (up until that point) never been memory wiped unlike C3P0, so having part of that route erased is a big change from previous canon.
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The map in Ahsoka isn’t necessarily a map to Thrawn specifically, someone else mentioned it being a map of migration patterns but equally it was mentioned in the episode that some beings travelled from another galaxy to the main Star Wars galaxy in the past. Morgan may just be assuming that’s where Thrawn was taken by the purrgil as they roam all over, so the map may be a bit of both migration patterns and a record of where the travellers came from.
Good points, but you gotta admit, this is done much better than the other live actions (maybe on par with Andor).
Sabine may have never seen anyone other than Kanen do the hair thing, and she wanted to get back to her old kick ass self.
The “ancient” star map and location of a character that supposedly got there after the map was made is really annoying. It makes no sense.
Also when the apprentice hunts down Sabine it felt like Maul hunting Padme on Tatooine.
Lots of positives about the site though too, right? CGI is good, acting is good, nice call backs to Rebels and when Force Ghost Anakin appears I’m sure there will be CW references too. I like the friction between Ahsoka and Sabine, and the remake of the closing scene of Rebels toward the end of Ep2 was simple but nicely done.
Just because the characters thought it was a map to Thrawn they were looking for and it actually being a map to where Thrawn was doesn’t mean that it was created with that intended purpose.
It seemed pretty heavily implied that Lady Morgan had supposed what happens to Thrawn and knew of the existence of this device that would let her travel to where she believed Thrawn was.
Disney has taken a lot of creative license with Star Wars cannon, and has been very unapologetic about it. At first I thought this was another example of fuck the story we want to sell toys, the surprise tie in to the final scene of Rebels was well done and gave me some serious nostalgia vibes.
I thought the same thing… there are so many recycled elements and tropes being used
One of the things that is at once amusing and annoying is that they’re really trying to get all they can in with fan service in the gaps of Star Wars history instead of moving forward: ie having Obi Wan fight Vader in his series really changes the dynamic of their encounter in A New Hope and kind of makes it seem weird that it played out the way it did
We know Thrawn technically can’t be a recurring villain or even have that much of an impact on the universe since he’s not even mentioned in the newest trilogy just like we knew that Obi Wan and Vader’s fight would not affect anything in the least. Nothing of note can happen since all of these stories are being shoehorned into the middle of the continuity
You know what’s cool fanservice? Andor using a Bryar Pistol. You know what’s not cool fanservice? Seeing the same 10 characters again and again and again. Seeing the same bar in an enormous galaxy.
Kenobi at the very least added some linking character development between ROTS and ANH, despite how awkward some of it was. So that I’m OK with.
Thoroughly enjoyed it. My personal favorite of the live-action shows, as a fan of the Jedi and all things Force. The new concepts of a Jedi with little Force sensitivity and an entirely new galaxy to explore are intriguing.
I’d average the first two episodes as a B-.
The pacing of the dialogue is off, and most of that could have been fixed in editing. That would largely help with the energy of the episodes.
Rosario makes a great Ahsoka. Baylan Skoll seems like a pretty great character, and I find it sad that Stevenson died for the obvious reasons, but especially because I already feel like he’s a character I’d love to see much more of.
People complaining about an ancient map leading to Thrawn and/or Ezra are missing that it’s not a map “to them”, it’s a map to something else that happens to be where they are.
Excited to have a live action “night sister”, some (seemingly) grey Jedi, and a ?former? Inquisitor As representatives of non-Jedi/Sith force users.
Weak points aside from the pacing:
Over telegraphing the imperial folks on Coruscant.
A bit too long spent on the Lothal highway scene which could have been about half as long, in fact the whole Sabine not showing up at the dedication was kind of pointless and it’s removal would have fixed a lot of pacing issues with the first episode.
A little less explaining of Sabine by Ahsoka would have been fine. Just too much telling, not enough showing.
I haven’t watched any of the CGI Ahsoka stuff, so I came into the live action show without that.
My verdict is that I want to like it, and will watch a few episodes, but what I’ve seen has made me suspect it won’t have the legs I was hoping for. I’m getting Book of Boba Fett feelings, basically.
I like how Ahsoka is played quite a lot, she has a screen presence I enjoy, but the vast majority of the supporting cast are played/written as too juvenile compared to her. Like, she’s clearly a mature women, and the cast around her are, by and large, kiddies. Mentally, at least. They don’t act or think like adults regardless of whatever war titles they gained.
I could tell they were playing on nostalgia for the animated show heavily. (Without having seen the animated show.)
Knowing nothing about Sabine or her history with Ahsoka, I just wanted to drop Sabine down a well. She runs off to decode the map, but then it turns out she doesn’t actually have to go home to do it, given what’s shown on screen…the two things she actually used were the two things she started with. You can argue she didn’t KNOW that–but from a writer’s perspective, something like this could’ve been written better, executed better. Sabine needed to earn sympathy from the audience, beyond having a cute “cat”, and that could’ve been delivered here but it wasn’t. (I do wonder if they lingered so much on the cat because they knew she had little else to make her likable in the first episodes.)
The map stuff would’ve been more palatable if she’d run off home–but just grabbed tools or something, then started back to the ship and got run into by the Apprentice THEN. Because at least it would have shown her THINKING and TRYING to correct her mistake. Like, still making the mistake because she’s hot-headed, but then at least trying to course-correct before it bit her.
And the scene with the “general” patting her on her little dumb head and saying it’s ok she disobeyed and fucked up didn’t much give good character development/portrayal to a character who is supposed to be a general. I can only assume “General” is a vanity title at this point, she’s not much acting like one.
Sabine fucking up majorly put them in a lot of hot water–and it’s just really weird (as someone going into it without knowing the history of the characters) that despite what she did, she gets coddled and patted for it.
It’s just very obvious plot armor–and the thing is (and I say this as a writer)…you can actually have a great show and great development when a character is correctly punished or correctly has consequences for doing something, you know? “Hurting” a character can lead to gigantic growth. It’s actually ok to put a character through hard things.
So it WAS possible for her still to fuck up in such a giant way and have the story continue and grow–WITHOUT having to coddle her. You don’t actually need to be gentle with main characters.
And having her treated as she should’ve been treated would have given a new show watcher who doesn’t have background knowledge of the characters some trust in the storytelling. That’s something you need to build early on when introducing characters.
There’s also the issue with the exploding robot head–I can see it’s an attempt to “show” she’s a hot-shot, but it still feels a lot like telling (rather than “showing”). And as someone else said–it was false peril to raise the stakes. Or perhaps to redeem Sabine as being useful? But the peril of the exploding head just underscores that Sabine is out of control and stupid–and I already came into that scene not liking her because she was out of control and stupid with the map. So fucking around with the head after she’d already fucked around with the map made me feel MORE negative towards her, not less. Her getting the data didn’t make me feel more inclined towards her–because I feel if she really was a hot-shot at this, she could’ve been hot shot enough to avoid the exploding head.
I know I’m ragging on Sabine a lot, but I feel it impacts the larger story too. Like, from bits and pieces I’ve heard, Thrawn is supposed to be really dangerous. And supposedly this character Sabine knows that in a very personal way.
Wouldn’t even a hot-headed stubborn person TRY to get their shit together if something that big showed up on the horizon again? So Sabine acting like an idiot undermines the threat of Thrawn, too. Clearly even his worst enemies aren’t even scared enough to get their shit together, so why should I care or be concerned as a show-watcher if he’s coming back?
Anyway. I suspect this show isn’t made for me, for someone who hasn’t seen the animated shows. It’s for existing fans of Ahsoka and Sabine who understand their backstory and sympathize with them enough that the things I talk about above don’t undermine the threat of Thrawn, and the competence of Ahsoka’s allies.
Loved it so far! Can only imagine how people who haven’t watched Rebels are dealing, though.
Sad that Thrawn is where he is, though, as that almost certainly rules out what I was hoping to see in the series (being vague for spoiler reasons).
spoiler
Thrawn being in a completely separate galaxy pretty much rules out the idea of the Grysks being part of the story, and Ahsoka + Spectres would need to team up with him to defeat them in an enemy-of-my-enemy sort of situation.
Given what I’ve heard about Zahn’s involvement (or lack thereof), I have rather low hopes for Thrawn’s character in this one. Best to expect a more typical villain Thrawn and be very surprised if he’s more than just another adversary.
I’ll admit that the first couple episodes have me slightly more optimistic, but only because I can see the “heir” references being a red herring and merely the expectations of those who only see the Imperial. Probably not though.
