Ahsoka

Ahsoka is, for most of the first episode, fairly decent. Rosario Dawson is a rather muted hero, but there's a good fight scene early on and I thought the general was an appealing character.

But the character of Sabine makes no sense. She starts by doing something rebellious for no other reason than to show that, yeah, she's a rebel just for the sake of being a rebel. Later she does something blatantly idiotic that results in exactly what you expect to happen. And once again, the reason for her decision makes no sense.

If the rest of the episode were great then I might forgive it a blitheringly stupid turn of events, but nothing else made up for that foolishness.

I hadn't planned to watch anymore, but then someone on social media raved about how the series really took off in episode 4, which was directed by the guy who did the first Spider-verse movie. So I checked that out. And it was not remotely better than episode 1. Sabine was still stupid, the characters were still bland, and I was generally bored throughout.

Should have gone with my first instinct.

After Andor showed how amazing a Star Wars show can be when competently written by people with talent, directed by people with creativity and performed by actors with passion for their roles, this show comes along to remind everyone that Andor was a one-off occurrence, an anomaly. Ahsoka exemplifies the (few) strengths and the (many) weaknesses of recent Disney Plus Star Wars shows. It wastes time, it has bland characters and it exists to remind you of better things Star Wars has done.

The plot of Ahsoka can easily be summarised as being stretched beyond belief. The story of Ahsoka and the Rebels crew trying to prevent the return of Thrawn and rescue Ezra could have easily been told in at least 3 or 4 episodes, with the other 4 being used to build to an epic battle with Thrawn. Instead it takes us 8 episodes to set up the next season or movie, instead of resolving the plotlines of this season. It moves at an agonizingly slow pace wherein it doesn't build any of its characters and just serves up meaningless action and fluff.

The characters are mostly bland and one-note. The returning Rebels characters are all far less expressive than their animated characters and the actors all look bored and confused. It's clear the direction they were given was poor since most are competent actors in other projects. Rosario Dawson is wooden as Ahsoka which is a real shame. She reacts to everything with bored indifference. Sabine is now insufferable who basically screws over the good guys more than once and is never called out on it. The only exceptions are Baylon played by Ray Stevenson, and Shin played by Ivanna Sakhno. They're dynamic is legitimately interesting but that is all there is. Interest. They're characters are given lackluster wrap-ups.

Of course this show contains all the fan-service you'd expect. It is all there to hide the clear lack of any substance in the script. The show is visually pretty great but the costumes look so cheap and bland. When the volume is used it is very obvious. Another issue is that no casual viewer can really enjoy this show without having consumed 7 seasons of Clone Wars and 4 seasons of Rebels. The show keeps telling us that Thrawn is dangerous but we are never shown this. Thrawn does barely anything in the overall plot and there is no reason to fear him.

In the end, this is another show with nothing to say. It lacks substance. Two decent characters, pretty visuals and fan service can't save this show from the pool of mediocrity/stupidity of its fellow TV show brethren. Just re-watch Andor.

I'm going against the tide here, but this series has started off like some of the failures before it.

For every Andor (great!) we get a Boba Fet and season 3 of the Mandalorian.

Rosario Dawson is a good actress, not a rock solid lead actress. Her work in Luke Cage, The Defenders, Zombieland Double Tap and many others is good. Not great.

In this series she isn't given enough to work with, and the actress playing Sabine is so bad that their scenes together are painful to watch.

The frequent establishing shots using cgi critters is a Star Wars staple and frankly wasted space.

The head scratching bad decisions to move the plot along and put the protagonists in danger are too stupid to ask the viewer to buy into. Jedi ship seems sketchy? Let them board and kill the captain. Old padawan with an axe to grind? Entrust her with the "key" to the secret mission so she can run off with it and essentially get herself killed in the process.

Retread plots anyone? We have a secret map hidden in a device that will lead us to...the Death Star's fatal flaw...the empire's hidden fleet...Luke Skywalker...the hidden empire general that could undo the alliance...you get the picture and we've seen this way too many times.

And one thing I struggle with, whether it's Star Wars, Marvel, or DC is the scale and balance of character battles. Ahsoka handles some assailants easily, and then seems challenged by one, or two canon fodder baddies for no apparent reason. As with other Disney created Star Wars series, that inequality exists here too. Too often.

I doubt that I'll be motivated to watch another episode.

What I've seen in the first two episodes is the definition of mediocracy. It's not bad, it's not good, just hanging somewhere in between.

The story so far is non-existent. There are some bad guys and... that's it.

Writing is horrible. The character interactions were pretty much the most boring I've seen in a very long time. It was painful to watch sometimes. It was that bad.

Forced wisdom... is the worst kind of writing.

Logic has left the show. When I saw Sabine, one of the smartest fighters in the SW Universe, punching a robot in the face, I immediately lowered my expectations. After that, it even got worse. She's definitely NOT the Sabine I knew from the Rebel series.

Acting is also generally ... bland. Even Rosario Dawson seems off as Ahsoka.

But there are also good things.

CGI and scenery are breathtaking.

David Tenant is amazing as the voice of Huyang. God I love this man.

The show has some promise of mystery in the distant horizon, and that's what encourages me to watch more. If they can deliver, the show can get a lot better.

This is another forgettable and mediocrely-written Star Wars show by the best streaming service ever!

It is overall not as bad as Obi-Wan Kenobi and way more well-produced and well-made, but it's still a soulless show that has barely anything to offer.

In order to keep my review of the whole show short and get my points across more easily, I will just list the pros and cons and won't get into details.

So for things I liked first:

• The music is decent at first but gets kinda forgettable after a couple of episodes

• The action scenes are well-choreographed and surprisingly well-thought-out, but ultimately get dull

• The visuals and CGI is pretty good

• Ahsoka's style of fighting is pretty cool

• Sabine not being a superhero and gradually getting better but still getting hit nonetheless

• There are some setups and payoffs and things don't just magically come to aid the characters and also they don't always succeed on the first try

• The flashback episode was pretty good

• Bad guys getting a decent screen time as much as the protagonists

• Ray Stevenson

• Thrawn's intro

.... and, that's it I guess? I can't really think of other things I liked about the show other than some cool action scenes and some moments here and there. But there is really nothing to like about its characters or the writing in general.

Now the bads and the uglies:

• Dave Filoni's writing and not having other writers work with him on the show

• Ahsoka being a black void of a character and having zero personality whatsoever. She's just devoid of any characterization.

• Sabine getting more screen time and character arc than Ahsoka. Might as well call the show Sabine instead.

• Sabine's baffling decision-making and having zero plan gambling the fate of an entire galaxy over one person

• The barebone story and plot that could've even been a 3-episode mini-series

• Main characters having the biggest plot armor in recent years

• Bad guys/good guys having the clear opportunity to end each other multiple times but doing nothing

• Thrawn being wasted and turned into something even worse than a cartoonishly evil character. He is a forgettable terribly-written villain that does nothing and basically runs to his grandmas for help every 5 minutes. They did a terrible job of making him intimidating or powerful.

• The trope of bad guys having every opportunity to kill the good guys and even getting the orders to shoot but still standing around looking at each other and doing nothing. Even worse is when they do decide to shoot, they stop because the good guy said "Wait"!

• Maybe too much use of nostalgia-baiting and random name-throwing and references for its own good. It's basically all for the hardcore Star Wars fanboys to lose their mind because they name-dropped Glup --ito and now they think the show is a masterpiece because an old character had a cameo.

• Ahsoka not feeling like the main character at all and having less and less screen time every episode

• Ahsoka having a semblance of a character arc which turns her into a worse character with having a more baffling mentality of actually agreeing with Sabine's stupid choices

• Introducing the element of witchcraft which makes it feel less like Star Wars. I understand that the Jedi are basically space wizards. But this is just too un-Star Wars-y, and feels like they don't know how to make interesting stories with Star Wars anymore, so they resort to throwing every genre at it.

• The story is more like a video game, especially in the finale, because there isn't much meat to the story so they have to resort to video game storytelling and level design instead of actual good writing

• Forgettable dialogue and sometimes even childish

• The pacing is pretty bad especially in the beginning with many pointless drawn-out scenes where characters just stare and do nothing

• Too many action scenes in the second half of the season that get boring and dull after a while

• No tension whatsoever. There are no stakes because you know the outcome every time and an action scene without any tension of stakes is a boring one.

• Not giving a good characterization to the main protagonists, or a reason as to why the audience should care about them for those who haven't seen the animated shows.

• Uninteresting story a show overall since you don't care about any of the characters.

• Unfinished storylines and plot when the show is advertised as a mini-series. So basically the nothing sandwich of a story also didn't have a conclusion.

• Did I forget to mention how awful and forgettable the characters are and how terribly written they are?

These are the problems I can think of right now. I'm sure if I got into details I would remember more problems I had with it, and the review would be 5 times bigger than this.

But overall, I'm not sure what the point of this was. Basically, everything from this show is forgettable and I feel like I'm being generous with giving it a 6. I do not care about the characters especially Ahsoka herself and I'm just observing them from afar and not caring about them at all. The plot is really thin and how it unfolds and things happen is only because of the stupid decisions Sabine makes. The only interesting and intriguing character is Baylan Skoll which is all because of Ray Stevenson's acting. But they waste him and his character so badly too.

I understand if they're trying to prepare a new trilogy of movies maybe? Or a season 2. But this was the worst way to go at it, especially since they botched the main bad guy from the start by making him as unintimidating as possible as if it was on purpose. They really dropped the ball with Thrawn.

I'm not sure what the point was, but as long as Disney isn't willing to hire actual professional writers who know what they're doing, this is what we're gonna get with the shows and the movies. The shows apart from Andor have been nothing sandwich after nothing sandwich with barely any story to them. Basically, drop some references and names here and there and show some cool action scenes, bring back old actors from the prequel trilogy and utilize them as much as you can, and nostalgia-bait really hard so fans would lose their minds as they just witnessed a masterpiece because there was a cameo. Also don't forget to make the most forgettable and black holes of characters you've ever seen. Congratulations, you just made a $100M Star Wars show that will definitely turn a profit and be called an actual good show by the fanboys.