First introduced in 2008’s Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Ahsoka Tano quickly became a fan favorite that went on to be featured in multiple cartoons and live-action series.

Ahsoka (S1 E1 & E2)

After abandoning her master, her Order, and her apprentice, to say nothing of giving up on Grogu, Ahsoka Tano is now a nomadic pseudo-Jedi who goes “where she’s needed.”

1 Vacation

2 Shop

3 Amazon

Set an indeterminate number of years after the events of Return of The Jedi, the series opens with our titular character vandalizing an ancient temple while in search of a space map that is reported to pinpoint the location of Grand Admiral Thrawn, a mysterious military leader that you have no reason to care about unless you’ve watched Star Wars: Rebels, or read the superior yet defunct Star Wars: Legends – Thrawn Trilogy. Unfortunately for Ahsoka, she’s not the only lightsaber-wielding Force user looking for it.

Disney, known for being an equal-opportunity employer, has managed to prove wrong all of the Kathleen Kennedy-era haters. For years now, those on the Right have both quietly fumed and loudly derided what many have mockingly labeled “New Star Wars” (an allusion to the marketing and branding disaster that was 1985’s New Coke). Many have loudly complained that “The Force is Female” Kathleen Kennedy hates male legacy characters such as Luke Skywalker and Han Solo and has done everything she can to hire those who would unceremoniously write them out of their own stories and replace them with less interesting and unworthy female successors.

With Ahsoka, we now know just how wrong we were. Kennedy et al. have shown us that they are just as willing to usurp relatively new female characters in their own program by introducing less worthy, even younger, snarkier, and less interesting gals while also making the titular character far less dynamic and compelling than in any other iteration.

Relative newcomer Natasha Liu Bordizzo plays Sabine Wren, a character known from Star Wars: Rebels but given no reason to care about in these first two episodes. She’s a rebel (get it) and a loner with no respect for anyone’s authority but her own. She’s also Ahsoka’s ex-apprentice. When the two come together once again (for reasons so uninteresting that I can’t remember a day later), they’ll have to deal with their shared emotional baggage… with a lot of quiet and slow-paced dialogue.

Bordizzo plays Sabine with all the dimensions of the ridiculous cartoon mural that makes repeated and “meaningful” appearances in both episodes. At 5′ 7″ and maybe 100 lbs, Bordizzo is completely incapable of physicalizing anything remotely resembling the tough loner that she’s promoted as.

There’s a scene in 2001’s Swordfish in which Halle Berry’s character drives a golf ball, and in the DVD commentary, the director says that this was the most difficult shot of the film because Berry had no aptitude whatsoever. So far, this series feels like the cinematic version of teaching a girl how to punch. It marginally resembles Star Wars but is awkward and has no power behind it (save your comments – of course there are women who can throw a punch – but if you’re one of the ones upset by this statement, you’re probably not one of them).

Nothing feels natural or organic in Ahsoka, from the story to the actors. The lightsaber battles lack polish, the Ahsoka headpiece looks like a lifeless rubber hat, and there’s even something odd about how some characters walk. Both Bordizzo’s Sabine and General Syndulla, played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead, walk with a stiff and stilted gate, as though they are actively and inexpertly trying not to “walk like a woman,” and Bordizzo holds a lightsaber like she’s never even heard the word before. Even Rosario Dawson, who was impressive in her introduction as Ashoka in The Mandalorian (I didn’t watch Book of Fett – Worth it or Woke didn’t exist – and I didn’t think the series looked like much), seems bored.

What’s most impressive about Ahsoka is how every element, from space battles and high-speed chases to lightsaber duels and conversations with galactic-spanning consequences to even characters running, all seem to happen at three-quarter speed. The low energy and pervasive sense of apathy are almost mesmerizing. It’s as though the entire cast and crew spends their mornings low-dosing THC.

There is one bright spot in this malaise of boredom. The recently past Ray Stevenson plays Baylon Skoll, a one-time Jedi apprentice and now Sith Lord (though that’s not expressly stated). Stevenson is the coolest-looking live-action dark Jedi since Vader (chronologically speaking, Vader was after Maul). The character design is simple and classic and aided by Stevenson’s imposing size as well as the character’s quiet thoughtfulness, which makes for a very compelling departure from what we’ve seen over the last 20 years. Stevenson’s Skoll would be a very interesting villain indeed, were it not that every other character in the show exhibits all of the energy of a PBS retrospective.

With dull and uninteresting characters, subpar special effects, a plot that fails to grab you, the most brutally slow pacing ever displayed in an action series costing north of $100 million, and the never-ending entertainment debacles that have been metaphorically and literally streaming out of Lucasfilm specifically and Disney in general, there’s no reason to assume that the remaining episodes of Ahsoka will improve enough to warrant spending any of your time watching them.

WOKE ELEMENTS

• Let’s get the big one out of the way. There are so many female characters artificially forced into traditional male roles. Were it not for the fact that they all suck (even Dawson – who we know CAN play the character – but isn’t), it would still be apparent. The representation ratio is off the scale, and it’s one of the main reasons we dinged the Basedness score so hard. It’s pervasive and distracting.
  • Furthermore, the bad guy is the only male character who isn’t a glorified extra.
• Sabine Wren is a snarky girl boss doing a mediocre impersonation of Han Solo. She’s about as bad@$$ as pasta salad.
  • She literally takes a lightsaber through her lungs and kidneys but is healed in a couple of days after using a Bacta patch. And no, it’s not because she’s exceptionally skilled in the Force. In fact, the show lets us know that she’s particularly weak in it.
    • Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn died from a nearly identical wound, but ok, sure.
  • Her hero’s journey consists of her getting hurt and then quietly thinking for a day or two. Then, she’s ready to take on the mantle of padawan.
• The modern trope of supplanting interesting legacy characters in their own shows with younger, snarky female pratts has set up this series to fail.

Ahsoka (S1 E3)

Picking up from last week, Episode 3 begins with Sabine early in her Jedi (kinda sorta) training-redux as she and Ahsoka continue their search for the ill-defined space thingy and the witchy woman who perpetually looks like she smells bad cheese. The good gals must find Bad Cheese before she and the two dark Jedi (one of which gets her hair cut at the same place as He-Man) complete construction and follow inter-galactic hyperspace lanes traveled by space whales to Grand Admiral Thrawn.

Don’t let the slight improvement in the overall score from last week fool you. Episode 3 of Ahsoka remains a remarkably slow-paced and underdeveloped piece of predictable Star Wars suck, and, as has become our inevitable and redundant refrain when criticizing Disney series, we once again are forced to inform you that this review won’t have much substance because virtually nothing happened in Episode 3.

Movies and TV programs can usually be split into plot-driven and character-driven categories. As the names suggest, plot-driven programs rely on high-concept stories with twists and turns to keep audiences guessing and/or on the edge of their seat (think Inception). Conversely, character-driven shows depend on interesting or funny characters to engage so that audiences root for or jeer them (e.g., Breaking Bad). Of course, the best of these merge to give audiences compelling stories filled with characters for whom to care.

Ahsoka does none of this. Although we suspect that Star Wars Rebels fans will enjoy this series far more than the casual viewer, except for Rosario Dawson’s two too-brief smiles, none of the characters exhibit any personality and generate no sympathy. They are merely there to carry audiences from one half-paced set piece to the next.

With each passing episode feeling more and more like a 2-hour plot stretched over far too many episodes, Ahsoka is some must-miss TV.

WOKE ELEMENTS

We already dinged the series for their sexist and misandristic hiring practices and won’t be deducting for more of the same.

• A stupid and reductive Leftist talking point has crept its way into the series for reasons.
  • Ahsoka says, “I don’t need Sabine to be a Jedi. I need her to be herself.
    • If you need her to be herself, why are you training her in the ways of the Jedi? She’s already herself. You are training her to be better than herself and more powerful than herself. It’s ridiculous and stupid like.
  • Master not said.
    • Much like the new TMNT movie didn’t call Splinter “Master” for what we can only assume to be woke reasons (many won’t call Master bedrooms as such because of slavery), Sabine refers to her teacher by first name.

Ahsoka (S1 E4)

Their ship still inoperable, Ahsoka and crew scramble to repair the craft in time to stop the cadre of dark Force users before they can fully decipher the map to Grand Admiral Thrawn.

Director Peter Ramsey has done the impossible. He took a series drowning in mediocrity, shocked its heart with some competency, and got it on its feet. But don’t let yourself get too excited; it’s far too early to tell if the directors of the remaining episodes will be able to maintain it. Nevertheless, Episode 4 of Ahsoka is the artistic adrenaline shot the series desperately needed.

The pacing is vastly improved, as is the visual storytelling. Ramsey, who is best known for co-directing Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse, has spent much of his career working as the storyboard artist of various films, and his eye for framing a scene is put to excellent use here. This is especially obvious when compared to the amateurish cinematic ministrations of the director of the previous two episodes, Steph Green.

The first to do so this season, Ramsey’s visual style managed to improve nearly every aspect of the show. The fight scenes’ camera work helped compensate for the still fraction-of-a-beat too-slow choreography. Likewise, his framing was dramatic without being overly stylized, allowing for the series’ first engaging scenes. While his skill isn’t enough to fully compensate for deeper problems like some poor casting choices, he was able to squeeze a drop or two of some heretofore criminally and conspicuously missing personalities out of the show’s leads.

Further aiding this episode was its focus. Whereas the three previous installments bounced from one uninteresting Rebels legacy character to the next, this one focused far more on the core duo, giving time for the two to develop, if only slightly, and thereby giving the audience (Rebels fans notwithstanding) their first chance to begin to bond with them.

Not to be forgotten, the music and sound departments were far more on point with Episode 4. For the first time in the series, both felt cogent and a part of the narrative thrust, helping to move the story along and helping the audience better connect emotionally to what was happening on screen.

In our final praise of this episode, one that cannot be ignored, this is the first in the series not to feel like either filler or a poorly constructed prologue. The stakes were felt for the first time, and the characters’ various motivations and place in the story took their first coherent steps forward.

Our exaltation aside, Episode 4, while a vast improvement, is far from perfect. It still suffers from some clunky dialogue, including but not limited to terribly forced easter eggs that remind you of how inferior this series is compared to what’s being referenced. Additionally, what constitutes original dialogue for this episode is mostly generic and recycled platitudes that might have been cut and pasted from any number of other shows, and that’s usually the best of it. At its worst, the dialogue is senseless packaging foam, taking up space until the next scene. For example:

Ahsoka: Relax.

Sabine: Don’t worry about me.

Ahsoka: I’m not. Should I?

Sabine: What?

It’s like Tolkien and Mario Puzo mixed with a dash of Hemingway.

Then there’s the cast. Much of the core characters have been woefully miscast. Mary Elizabeth-Winstead, who plays General Syndulla, radiates all the authority of a mall cop (and we’ll save her ridiculous costume for our final video review). At the same time, Ivanna Sakhno’s Shin Hati often looks as surprised to be on screen as we are that she’s there.

The final disappointment of this episode is also its biggest surprise. However, to remain spoiler-free, we’ll only say that the show takes an unfortunate detour into the Uncanny Valley.

Ultimately, while it wasn’t perfect, this was a welcomed improvement to the series, one that we hope will be maintained and improved upon in future episodes.

WOKE ELEMENTS

Aside from the casting choices that we already dinged for episodes 1 and 2, this episode was utterly woke-free.

Ahsoka (S1 E5)

As General Syndulla and her allies search for Sabine and her master, Ahsoka finds herself confronted by Anakin Skywalker, who has one more lesson to teach her.

The idea of Ahsoka meeting up with Anakin once again on the ethereal plane (or wherever they are) definitely has a cool factor. As unimpressive as Hayden Christensen’s turn as Anakin was in the prequels, largely due to George Lucas’s horrifically bad writing and pitiable direction, it was nice to see Christensen get an opportunity at redemption.

Unfortunately, as seems to frequently be the case with many of Disney’s Star Wars and MCU series,  there is far too little story to fill this season’s 8 episode run adequately. Subsequently, Episode 5 is meaningless filler stuffed with some decent fan service and nostalgia-porn but otherwise with absolutely nothing substantial to serve the series’ narrative.

WOKE ELEMENTS

• We get a whole new crew of New Republic military, and, once again, the ratio is 6 to 1 women to men. It wouldn’t be so bad if one of them could project even a modicum of authority. Instead, it comes across as distractingly forced and unnatural. In contrast, Leia never felt out of place.

Ahsoka (S1 E6)

While Ahsoka and her robo-pal continue their Jonah routine in the belly of the space whale, Sabine and the crew of the hyper-ring find their way to the ancient planet of the Dathomiran witches and to Grand Admiral Thrawn. Then, after a lot of talking and a short sojourn, Sabine coincidences her way into a pleasant situation.

With only enough substance to make for two or three scenes in a feature-length film, Episode 6 of Ahsoka is one of the otherwise dull series’s best entries. Most deserving of the accolades are the music department, whose pitch-perfect score masterfully captures the episode’s intended vibe, and director Jennifer Getzinger, whose ability to use pacing to build tension drives this otherwise nothing burger.

Another stand-out, though only relative to the rest of the lackluster series, is Ray Stevenson as Baylon Skoll. While he gets more time to shine in Episode 6, his tertiary status and under-use are criminal. Skoll is unique among dark Jedi. Where he is physically imposing and capable of ruthlessness, he is equally thoughtful and kind to his apprentice. His is a character that deserves focus, and his goal has potential ramifications broad-ranging enough to be worthy of far more thought and attention than they are getting.

Finally, this installment gives us the big reveal of Grand Admiral Thrawn, played with great instincts and loads of promise by Lars Mikkelsen. Unfortunately, Thrawn does little more than talk, if with aplomb.

With the exception of the season’s first decent lightsaber fight (mostly due to Getzinger’s eye more than anything else), Episode 6 of Ahsoka does little, says less, and is a tribute to form over substance.

WOKE ELEMENTS

Once again, we’re given an episode in which so little happens that there wasn’t time for wokeness.

Ahsoka (S1 E7)

Ahsoka and Huyang have finally made it to the galaxy far far away… and there are a couple of short skirmishes… and Thrawn… holograms… and that’s about it.

Easily the worst episode since 1 and 2, a space whale horking up an Ahsoka loogie is the perfect metaphor for the entire series.

You’ll have to excuse the informality of this review/rant. I’ve tried to remain objective so far and have intentionally refrained from writing in first person so as not to make myself part of the story, but what the h#!! is wrong with the people in charge of this series? Has any one of them ever played with a lightsaber, toy spaceship, or a toy gun before? Have they seen any Star Wars, sci-fi, or friggin films from before 2010? Does anyone involved have the slightest notion of how to tell a cogent story with interesting characters and a plot worth giving a d@mn about? Let me answer that. No.

The writers are either children or poorly edited AI, or AI poorly edited by children. Early in this never-ending 40-minute debacle, Sabine and Space Jesus share one of the dumbest conversations ever put to paper:

Sabine: I was beginning to think that we’d never find you.

Ezra: How did you?

Sabine: What?

Ezra: How did you find me?

What the actual ####? Does Sabine have a bad cybernetic implant from Rebels or something? Honestly, I want to know. I didn’t watch Rebels because I was already disillusioned with Star Wars by that point. Is that canon? Is that how she can, without being distracted by something or looking off into the distance, or without even a fraction of a second pause by Ezra to indicate that maybe, just maybe, he had in any way, shape, or form changed the subject from the one that SHE JUST STARTED ONE SECOND AGO, forget WHAT SHE JUST SAID? Yes, I know that it’s supposed to a comedic moment because she doesn’t want to tell Space Jesus that she betrayed Ahsoka to get here, but the delivery sucks.

It’s not like it’s a challenging metaphysical question or as though the “What” helped to reveal some secret truth. No, it’s just the same dumb and schlocky writing that has poisoned virtually everything to come from Disney for the last ten years.

And before you try to call me out for nitpicking, it’s NOT THE FIRST TIME in this series that the writers have done this exact same thing. They did it in Episode 4 as well. If Sabine is this developmentally delayed, perhaps, instead of training her to be a Forceless Jedi eunuch, maybe Ahsoka should start her learning how to color within the lines.

“But James,” you say. “Is that really such a big deal?” No, of course not. What it is is one of the countless instances of ineptitude that have culminated into the most boring seven episodes about laser sword-wielding space wizards ever conceived by (wo)man.

They can’t even make Thrawn sound intelligent. In one of his blink-and-miss-it scenes in this episode, he says, in reference to Ahsoka, “We must control all variables. Put her on a course of her own choosing so we can always be one step ahead of her.”

I’ve got news for you: the nature of someone being on their “own course” is in direct conflict with someone else “controlling all variables.” How exactly does someone put someone else on their “own course?” They are mutually exclusive concepts. In the final episode, will Thrawn give Frau Forcebissina infinite selections from a single piece of candy, or will he maybe go outside indoors?

But the stupid dialogue isn’t the only thing wrong with this episode. It opens with Rosario Dawson performing the world’s slowest and least skillful kata ever done by a martial arts master. Her lines suck, her speed is laughable, and her forms have zero snap. It’s a great reminder of how p!$$ poor every single fight scene in this “action/adventure” series has been.

How is it possible that no one in the production picked up six episodes ago that Dawson doesn’t have what it takes to pull off the fight scenes? Do you mean to tell me that they couldn’t have diverted some of their $100 million budget to hiring a stuntwoman? They should have sprung for whoever sliced up the fight scenes in Taken 3. Sure, that movie gave you motion sickness, but I’d rather have a good reason to feel like puking than to watch another sad and mopey reminder of what’s been lost, which was once one of the greatest creations in all of sci-fi cinema.

But wait, there’s more. Has anyone else noticed that everyone in this series, with the exception of the criminally underused Ray Stevenson, looks like they’re cosplayers? I can’t be the only one. You’ve got General What’s Her Lekku wearing WWI aviation goggles in a SPACE SHIP! Not to mention her stupid leather durag. Hey Filoni, I know that you’ve got a raging h@#don for your Rebels crap, but not everything translates well to live action.

In this episode, Syndulla (who no casual viewer cares about) is in front of a board of inquiry (for reasons that no viewer cares about) and has a real possibility of being court marshaled (which no human alive cares about). And what do the costumers put her in? Is it the same dumb-looking leather bomber jacket that she’s been wearing so far? Of course not. Don’t be ridiculous. Now, she’s in a childish-looking cropped tweed jacket and brown denim jeans and the Purina One rank insignia that she made at home, AND SHE’S BACK ON THE ESCALATOR… I mean that she’s still wearing that ridiculous leather durag.

Let me summarize my rant: Ahsoka is a waste of your time. This episode was the suckiest filler that ever filled a suck. And Kathleen Kennedy has now made Star Wars the Jar Jar Binks of Star Wars.

WOKE ELEMENTS

Something would have to have happened for there to have been wokeness in this episode.

Ahsoka (S1 E8)

The moment that we’ve waited eight weeks for has arrived: the final showdown between Thrawn, the Witches of Dathomir, the dark Jedi, and Ahsoka and her lovable gang of misfits that is sure to be the heart-stopping conclusion of Season 1 of Ahsoka… or not.

As Thrawn and crew scramble to leave the galaxy far far away with all of the sense of urgency of waiting for toast, Ahsoka and her crew must battle a small group of disposable randos in an effort to fill the episode’s runtime. Once the battle is won, they will hightail it to Thrawn for an explosive battle with a small group of disposable randos. But let not your hearts be troubled; there’s still a battle with a small group of disposable randos to look forward to.

However, this time, Frau Forcebissina will join the randos to give Thrawn and company time to escape, and, in an exciting twist, she has been granted completely undefined special abilities with a name gotten from a DnD spell name generator, as well as the Sword of Gryffindor – only green – both granted to her by the red-coated Death Eater sister-witches for reasons.

It’s the showdown we’ve all been waiting for, except no one was. Forcebissina, a character whom Fioni and crew have devoted whole minutes of character-building to, especially focusing on what makes her presence particularly relevant to the show’s heroes so that their final battle will build to such a crescendo as to make the gods tremble… or at the literal last minute she’ll have been granted abilities that she never uses and a sword wrapped in green Adobe After Effects that is a defacto lightsaber because Disney lightsabers have all the specialness and mystery of your most recent bowel movement (is that corn?).

The final episode of Ahsoka leaves the audience with dozens of thought-provoking questions, like just how braindead and lazy can Disney Star Wars writers be? It’s a 45-minute parade of stupid decisions, meaningless efforts, and randomly thoughtless new canon that does nothing to further a narrative, let alone add substance to a once beautiful tapestry. Its plot completely depends on stupid, cliched decisions and characters who behave inconsistently from one moment to another.

WOKE ELEMENTS

• Girl Bosses.
  • Sabine is a nearly self-taught Jedi who sucks but still manages to rule.
    • In one scene, she’s fighting a creature that is strong enough to pick her up by the neck as though she weighs nothing, but she can deflect his blows with her itty bitty forearms.
    • In that same scene, she can barely muster up enough Force strength to call her lightsaber to her from 6 feet away. But not two minutes later, she can easily launch a full-size man 30 feet through the air.

FINAL THOUGHTS ON AHSOKA

Long gone are surprise hit standalone movies for which no one considered the possibility of a sequel, so when we got one, we ended up with The Matrix Reloaded, but at least we still had the first one to love. Now, all of these series and films are heartlessly manufactured out of the same resin as their action figures. Their only purpose is to tease audiences to the next episode, the next season, and the subsequent spin-off.

They are artistic Leukemia, attacking the marrow until all their once great properties have left are hollow and brittle dead bones that crumble at the slightest touch, and few have suffered from this terminal illness like Disney’s Star Wars.

The House of Mouse has managed to take everything interesting and special about the once-great property and water it down to meaningless nothingness. Every villain has an army of henchmen with lightsaber-deflecting armor. Lightsabers are given out like stripper pamphlets in Vegas. The Force is nothing more than a means of pushing objects.

This entire series is the weakest of teas, with a single interesting character who was pushed to background noise, a plot that wasn’t worth an entire episode, let alone an entire season, and characters with almost no personality. Rosario Dawson plays a virtual block of wood whose arms only uncross long enough to deliver lightsaber battles filled with amateurish, uninspired, and maddeningly repetitive fight choreography and have less energy than Joe Biden.