Dave Feloni’s latest gift to the Star Wars community has come in the form of the “Ahsoka” TV series, which springs off of the already overwhelmingly successful “Star Wars: The Clone Wars” and somewhat less, but still popular “Star Wars: Rebels.” These names will evoke good memories for any Star Wars fan who has had thepleasure of watching them. “Ahsoka” doesn’t disappoint (at least for the most part) whenit comes to building onto the lore and giving fans something to enjoy.
Feloni’s “Ahsoka” focuses on Ahsoka Tano, a former Jedi Knight turned independent force wielder Sabine, her old padawan, ventures with her to explore the disturbance of two Dark Jedi working to save the main antagonist, Thrawn.
Creatively, Thrawn is only introduced in the sixth episode; the previous five episodes are used to build up to his introduction. Nonetheless, his lack of screen time definitely doesn’t hinder his character, if anything, it improves it.
A common gripe about Thrawn’s character in “Star Wars: Rebels” is the fact that he is pure evil, not a rational genius working for a cause he believes in, which he was in his novel series. In “Ahsoka,” he becomes the Thrawn “Star Wars” fans know from the books. The improvement shows not only through his authoritative posture and soft yet confident voice, but also because he always seems to be a step ahead of everyone else, including the viewer, or I might just notbe that smart.
Now, it’s important to remember that “Ahsoka” is a Disney “Star Wars” project, and thus it’s destined to have some flaws. One of which was the casting of Natasha Liu as Sabine. Her acting felt lazy and annoying, almost like a whiny toddler who doesn’t want to eat their food, but I will admit that her fight scenes were good.
However, my main criticism is that while the last two episodes were mainly built to set up a jumping off point for the future, it worked against the show, the story felt rushed and scatterbrained as if the writers wrote these two episodes just by spitballing random plot points until they had 40 minutes of content.
As a result, there was no feeling of a cohesive finale. The redeeming quality is the aforementioned springboard, and the vast potential for some outstanding and original plot lines.
Thrawn’s return to the main “Star Wars” galaxy leaves Feloni with a lot to work with and a new major plot arc to build off of in the future in season two, “Skeleton Crew,” and his Mandalorian movie. If Feloni keeps taking inspiration from Expanded Universe content like the “Thrawn” novel trilogy, “Star Wars” fans have a lot to look forward to in the future, most prevalently, the Thrawn Campaign against the post empire New Republic.
I’m very excited for what Dave Feloni and the team have to offer in the future by building off of “Ahsoka”, but the show also suffered because of the focus on building sequels and one poor cast.
