Ahsoka premiere: Prepare to dive headfirst into the deep end of Star Wars

When Disney bought Lucasfilm and started developing its own Star Wars movies, it famously declared that everything but the movies and the Clone Wars animated series was no longer canonical—meaning decades of books, comics, and video games were now considered “Legends.” The thinking was that Disney didn’t want to go into the Star Wars universe with its hands tied by a mountain of Expanded Universe canon that the vast majority of people on Earth didn’t give a shit about, but the excesses of the old EU have gradually clawed themselves back into Disney’s Star Wars, with books that tie into theme parks, old characters being reintroduced to the new universe, and a bunch of Disney+ TV that (to varying degrees of success) fill in gaps that never necessarily needed filling.

And if any one thing is emblematic of the current state of Disney Star Wars, a franchise that I would argue is functionally identical to the needlessly complicated old Star Wars (just with different things filling in those gaps), it’s Ahsoka. This isn’t a show that benefits from knowing everything that led up to it the way that, say, Andor might have a little more punch if you’re familiar with where Cassian eventually ends up. This is a show that requires knowing everything that led up to it.

GRADE FOR SEASON 1, EPISODE 2, “PART TWO: TOIL AND TROUBLE”: B-

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But, to me, that on its own is not a criticism. I think, for example, that one of the great strengths of Avengers: Endgame is that it rewards you with constant little payoffs if you’ve been following the whole MCU to that point; and if you haven’t, then that’s your problem. The movie isn’t there to hold your hand. The issue with Ahsoka is that there’s so much mythology stuff going on that is deeply involved in various threads of the elaborate web that is Star Wars canon that the new characters and concepts are indistinguishable from the old characters being reunited here.

Unless you’re immensely invested in the relationships between Ahsoka, Sabine, and Hera, or the search for Imperial Grand Admiral Thrawn and young Jedi Ezra Bridger, or a forgettable villain who was in one episode of The Mandalorian years ago, then there’s really nothing here to connect to. That could change, and I think that’s why Disney wisely decided to release two episodes at once, but as it stands the villains are boring and the heroes are all way too insistent on being stubbornly stoic about everything—which is also boring!

In terms of what actually happens, though, the first episode opens with a New Republic ship transporting Morgan Elsbeth, an ally of Grand Admiral Thrawn who was introduced in the episode of The Mandalorian that also introduced Rosario Dawson’s live-action Ahsoka. When a ship that appears to belong to Jedi shows up, the captain of the transport assumes they’re Imperials and tries to call their bluff by inviting them onboard.

Unfortunately for him, the “Jedi” are actually Ray Stevenson’s Baylan Skoll and Ivanna Sakhno’s Shin Hati, two characters who…are definitely not Jedi, but that’s all we know. Ahsoka’s droid buddy Huyang (who is voiced by David Tenant and is great) eventually identifies Baylan based on his apparently unique lightsaber, meaning he trained at the Jedi Temple, but that’s literally it. Two hours with these characters and all we know is that they’re bad, they’re helping Elsbeth track down Thrawn, and they’re not Jedi. Anyway, they kill a bunch of people on the transport and escape with Elsbeth.

Meanwhile, Ahsoka is at some kind of ancient temple where she has to solve an environmental puzzle, suggesting that creator/writer/director Dave Filoni played Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, which earns her a metal ball of some sort. There’s dramatic music that implies you’re supposed to know what this is, but it’s not until later in the episode that Ahsoka bothers to explain that it’s a map to where Thrawn and Ezra are—but one that she doesn’t know how to unlock—and it’s never really explained why a map to where Thrawn and Ezra are is hidden in an ancient temple. Ahsoka takes the ball to Hera, her old buddy from Star Wars Rebels (now a general in the New Republic, following some Easter eggs from stuff like Rogue One), who suggests that Sabine, their other old buddy from Rebels, will know how to open it.

The problem is that Ahsoka and Sabine apparently had a falling out over Ahsoka’s attempts to train Sabine as a Jedi, which—correct me if I’m wrong, someone—happened completely off-screen in between the end of Rebels and now. I can get on board with being invested in these characters, because I saw and mostly enjoyed Rebels, but now we’re supposed to be invested in a fight they had that neither of them want to talk about and that was never depicted onscreen, all so they can beat bad guys who we don’t know anything about.

Sabine has been hiding out on Lothal, the planet at the center of most of Rebels, and she has a Bad Attitude. She’s sad about Ezra being gone, though I think it’s been at least a decade since he disappeared at this point. (The timeline is kind of a mess for reasons that come up in episode two.) Ahsoka arrives and sort of asks for help figuring out the map, but she also has a bad attitude, so Sabine takes the map and goes off to figure it out on her own.

Meanwhile, Hera and Ahsoka have a heart-to-heart about the latter failing to teach Sabine in the ways of the Jedi, and there is one truly goddamn great moment here: While talking about how Sabine was a difficult student, Hera jokes that, “I bet your master found you difficult sometimes.” We don’t see Ahsoka’s reaction to this, as the camera stays on Hera, but it’s clear as Hera’s smile immediately drops that Ahsoka didn’t take the joke well—because, of course, her master was Anakin Skywalker. See, emotional stakes work better when you know what the emotions are and what the stakes are because we’ve seen them and not just heard about them!

The bad guys attack Sabine and steal the map, but before Ahsoka can arrive to help, Shin stabs her in the gut with a lightsaber.

The second episode starts right after that, with Sabine waking up in a hospital. She seems surprisingly okay, considering how bad lightsaber injuries tend to be, but maybe Lothal has good medical facilities. Either way, Ahsoka leaves to investigate Sabine’s hideout and finds one of the bad guys’ assassin droids—an HK model, which is a nod to Knights Of The Old Republic. She takes off its head and brings it to Sabine so she can hack its memory and find out where it came from, which turns out to be a New Republic shipyard on a planet called Corellia (a shipyard that also used to supply the Imperials, including one Morgan Elsbeth).

Speaking of, the bad guys have arrived at some planet with a weird circle of rocks. Baylan thinks the rocks will lead them to the “reflex point,” and Elsbeth—who is apparently descended from the Nightsisters Of Dathomir (a Clone Wars thing) which basically means she can use magic—later arrives to activate the map and use the rocks to guide them to a “distant galaxy.” They talk about something called “The Eye Of Sion” and someone called Marrok, and Baylan mentions an old Jedi legend about the “Pathway To Peridea.”

On Corellia, Ahsoka and Hera are asking around about any suspicious activities at the shipyard. The boss says that a lot of the employees are ex-Imperials, but it’s okay because people just care about getting paid and don’t let political ideologies impact their work (sure). Hera spots a crew working on the hyperdrive engine from a Super Star Destroyer—a.k.a. a very big spaceship—but the shipyard boss can’t tell her what it’s being used for. It’s “classified.” When she and Ahsoka ask about HK droids, they get attacked by nearby employees (who, it turns out, are still loyal to the Empire). A transport tries to get away with the hyperdrive engine, with Hera chasing it in the Phantom (as seen on Rebels) with her crappy droid friend Chopper (Rebels), while Ahsoka has to find a goon sent by the bad guys.

I have no idea who this goon is, but he has an Inquisitor lightsaber (as seen on Rebels but also Obi-Wan Kenobi) and can use the Force, but Ahsoka doesn’t seem as confused by any of that as I am. The Inquisitors should definitely all be dead by this point, since they previously have only ever appeared in pre-A New Hope stories as far as I know, but maybe that will be explained later. (Again, it’s hard for me to care about the bad guys when I don’t understand what they’re doing or who they are.)

Up in the air, Hera and Chopper manage to attach a tracking device to the transport, even though The Last Jedi said that tracking a ship through hyperspace is impossible without specific technology, and they eventually get a signal back telling them where the bad guys are—which is orbiting some distant planet, building a giant ring of some sort that is apparently the Eye Of Sion.

As that is going on, Sabine decides to recommit herself to her Jedi training, so she pulls her Mandalorian armor and helmet out of storage and cuts her hair short. She calls Ahsoka and says she’s ready, and then goes to a monument that Lothal had set up to honor her and the other Rebels while she waits for Ahsoka. This scene is almost a shot-for-shot recreation of the end of Rebels, though Ahsoka is dressed a little different and it screws up the timeline a bit—because it’s implied that the Rebels scene is pretty much right after Return Of The Jedi, and this is at least several years after that, even though the people of Lothal have just now gotten around to setting up a monument honoring a group of heroes who saved the planet before the Galactic Civil War really kicked off.

But whatever. The good guys are back on good terms, and they’re ready to properly kick off this adventure.

Stray observations

• Hello! I’m Sam Barsanti. I’ll be piloting you through this whole season of Ahsoka. To start things off, I should say that I haven’t always been a huge fan of Ahsoka as a character. I think her existence caused unnecessary problems at first, but the way Clone Wars eventually solved that worked for me. I really liked how she was reintroduced in Rebels, but let’s just say that I was not a big fan of where (or should I say when?) the show took her after that. I’m still annoyed by the fact that she apparently sat out the whole Civil War, even though she could’ve been a big help to Luke Skywalker, but whatever.
• Is it weird that Hera hasn’t changed her clothes since Rebels? Ahsoka and Sabine get a few outfit changes, and I know the makeup and prosthetics on Mary Elizabeth Winstead are complicated, but it’s been so many years! Also, does she remember that she has a son? Or are we fully discounting the Rebels epilogue?
• And I’m sorry, I have to complain about this again: If tracking a ship through hyperspace is this easy, why is it such a big plot point in The Last Jedi? Ahsoka is insisting that we know who all of these characters are, but we’re supposed to ignore that? Are we to believe this is some sort of magic xylophone?
• We’re only two episodes in, but so far Dave Filoni has managed to include some sort of ancient temple in each one—a hallmark of his Star Wars stories. I’m going to keep track and see if he can maintain this streak.