Ahsoka recap: Welcome to a whole new galaxy
Grand Admiral Thrawn has arrived—and he has some annoyingly familiar friends
This week, for the first time ever in a mainline Star Wars thing (to the extent that these Disney+ shows count as mainline Star Wars things), we went to a whole new galaxy. Remember Tatooine and Hoth and the forest moon of Endor? That was the old galaxy. Those planets are boring. Passé. Welcome to the hot new galaxy, home of a planet called Peridea that’s encircled by rings of space-whale bones. What sort of fantastical new creatures must live there? Inconceivable beings with no concept of the Star Wars we know and love? And that’s all without considering the fact that Grand Admiral Thrawn has been stuck in this galaxy for about a decade, doing untold evil things and building up the army that is going to topple the New Republic!
So why, then, does Peridea seem like every other Star Wars planet? The initial moments of the Bad Guys flying down to the surface, zooming through the rain past gigantic spooky statues, were very cool. But then they casually land their shuttle on a tower and are greeted by the Great Mothers—a powerful trio of Dathimiri Night Sisters. Not only is Morgan Elsbeth acting like this is a totally normal place and that she’s been here before, but she’s meeting up with people who are just like people that exist in the regular universe. They even know about Jedi and can tell that Sabine “reeks” of them.
We might as well be on literally any other planet filmed with Lucasfilm’s Volume, which are all beginning to look increasingly identical anyway. Maybe it’s on me for expecting something more interesting on this new planet after the real-life years that have passed since Ezra and Thrawn were sucked away, but I thought this was all enormously deflating.
And while we’re talking about things I didn’t like, the opening scene of this episode gave me a feeling of deep Star Wars-related revulsion that I haven’t felt since every Leia scene in The Rise Of Skywalker. As Ahsoka and Huyang are traveling through hyperspace in the Purrgil’s mouth, the two briefly talk about Sabine before Ahsoka asks Huyang for one of his old stories about galactic history, and he opens with “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…” Cue episode title: “Far, Far Away.”
Reader, I wrote “I hate this” in my notes, which I don’t believe I have done since I was reviewing Netflix’s horrific live-action Cowboy Bebop adaptation. (I was far too generous with that letter grade, by the way.) The guts it takes to drop that line in a streaming spinoff of Star Wars that is more deeply indebted to other TV spinoffs than any of the actual movies—where that line appears!—is galling. Just completely unearned, way too winky, way too cute. I’ll concede that it doesn’t matter in any way, and there’s no point in getting so annoyed by it, but it speaks to the self-importance that I think some of Dave Filoni’s other Star Wars projects have that allows them to introduce huge concepts (like time travel) to the Star Wars mythology that aren’t reflected at all in the rest of the canon.
Buuuut, if you’re not already scrolling down to leave a furious comment, let me say that I think the rest of the episode was fun. Pretty much everything from the moment Thrawn arrived in his junky Star Destroyer (the Chimaera, I believe) was great. The ship lands on the tower where the Bad Guys are chilling, with the score playing some nervy droning techno thing that feels very different from regular Star Wars stuff, and even before we see the Grand Admiral we hear his legion of Stormtroopers—with cracked helmets, repainted bits of armor, and red stripes all around them—chanting his name. Then we see a trooper identified as Enoch, who has a big gold face molded onto his helmet in place of the usual Stormtrooper mask, and it becomes clear that Thrawn and his army have been through some weird shit.
Finally, Thrawn himself appears, still wearing his pristine white Imperial uniform despite the obvious decay surrounding him, which is a nice subtle nod to his ego and (perhaps?) some level of madness that is overtaking him. He cares about how he looks more than he cares about anything else, apparently, and I think that’s an interesting shade to his personality even if there’s no payoff.
He remembers Sabine from their battles during Rebels, of course, but when he hears of the deal she made with Baylan to give up the map in exchange for being allowed to find Ezra, he’s more than happy to follow through and give her everything she needs to complete her mission—including returning her weapons, lending her a big dog to ride (a Howler), and giving her some kind of…Ezra-detector to help point her in the right direction.
But as soon as she leaves, Thrawn tells Baylan and Shin (who he dismissively refers to as Elsbeth’s “mercenaries”) to go kill her. And as soon as they leave, he explains that he doesn’t really care what happens to them or Sabine. Once they’re ready to go back to the regular Star Wars galaxy, they’re just going to leave everyone behind anyway. The reason they can’t leave yet isn’t explained well, though, which is an annoying thing that this show keeps doing to maintain suspense. His soldiers are seen a few times loading big crates of something into the Star Destroyer from “the catacombs” for the Great Mothers, but we have no idea what any of that means. My assumption, based on the end of the episode, is that he is indebted to them in some way and that, perhaps, he is no longer the strategic genius he was back in Rebels.
As for Sabine, she fights off some bandits who are wearing cool armor. (This was a good fight scene, because Sabine uses all of her Mandalorian tricks before resorting to her lightsaber, suggesting that she doesn’t really like using it even though the fight ends pretty much as soon as she does.) Then her big space-dog leads her to a little guy called a Noti, who is like a hermit crab with a rock on his back that he hides in. She tries asking him about Ezra but they can’t understand each other, until he sees the Rebel Alliance symbol on her armor and pulls out a medallion with the same logo—which he only could’ve gotten from Ezra!
The Noti leads her back to its Noti village, where they’re doing regular village stuff (carrying boxes back and forth, rocking a baby Noti in a hammock) and then, almost anti-climactically, Ezra is there. “I knew I could count on you, though it sure took you long enough” he quips before he and Sabine share a big hug. It’s a sweet moment, and after the many mysteries about where Ezra would be and what kind of state he’d be in (remember Marrok?), I like that he’s just there and he’s okay. It’s nice.
In fact, everything seems to be coming up Good Guys, because while that’s all happening, the Great Mothers sense that Ahsoka is almost there. Thrawn says that he’s going to need more of the Mothers’ “dark magick,” and they agree because “the thread of destiny demands it.” I hope that leads in an interesting direction!
Stray observations
- I forgot to mention that I’m very curious about what Baylan and Shin are up to. He mentions that this planet is only supposed to exist in legends, saying it’s “a land of dreams and madness” and that the stories of this galaxy are “folktales” to him. There is an interesting parallel there with Star Wars itself, and I’m curious if his big secret plan will reveal more about this galaxy than what we saw in this episode.
- Something I haven’t mentioned before is that the creature and costume designs in this show have largely been pretty good. I like the Clone Wars-y armor that Baylan and Shin wear, I like the raiders who attacked Sabine, I really like Thrawn’s wacky Stormtroopers. At least there’s something to latch onto in a show that mostly takes place in big empty voids.