Typically, what Star Wars fans want is when all of the links on a new movie or TV-show's Wookieepedia page are already purple -- familiar characters in familiar locations, the pleasurable spark of recognition whenever a character, a name, is referred to on screen. These, of course, are empty calories, but at this point the lack of nourishment seems to be by design. Keep the audience hungry, Disney might reason, and they'll eat gruel.
Long review below the break:
The problem arises when the creators of Star Wars have no inspiration but Star Wars, that all they know is reference, with little interest in a text that gestures at something beyond itself. The Mandalorian was fresh when it released, but the novelty of a live-action Star Wars show did much to occlude the fact that all we were seeing were old characters squinted at until they blurred into indistinction. Boba Fett? No, this is Din Djarin. Yoda? No, this is Grogu. Modern Star Wars is the story of the plundering of cultural artifacts to be resold again and again.
Perhaps no show could have been more representative of this than Ahsoka, where the references to the rest of the franchise reached a level of obliqueness that they began lose their ability to compel. Unable to extort the presence of character unseen for forty years like Luke Skywalker, Ahsoka was forced to rely on the gravitas of cartoon characters uncannily rendered in a physical space, whose flat colors and lack of depth only served to remind me of how beautiful and stylized those original animated shows often were.
It is very easy, as a Star Wars fan, to only focus on reviewing the internal universe when encountering a new entry in the franchise. How do the events of this show affect characters, plots, events that are not actually present here? The Star Wars universe is rich enough that we often fall into supplying the text in question with a reality outside its own bounds. What is Luke Skywalker doing during the events of Ahsoka? Where is Zeb and Kallus? Nothing, and nowhere. These questions are red herrings encouraged by the show's creators, which rely on them to be more interesting than the show itself and therefore relieve it of the burden of having to be good.
To its credit, Ahsoka is the most mediocre of the new batch of Star Wars television series. If this review seems harsh, it is because Kenobi, the last season of The Mandalorian and the The Book of Boba Fett were simply not even good enough to critique. Ahsoka has many positive qualities. Kevin Kiner's score, predictably, is very strong, and is immediately the most memorable part of the show, though it is merely building off of the great work he and his kids did on The Clone Wars and Rebels. The practical design of Huyang was excellent and the Noti were strongly reminiscent of The Dark Crystal in a great way. Natasha Liu Bordizzo and Eman Esfandi far exceeded my expectations. The appearance of Hayden Christensen was able to tickle the nostalgic part of the brain far better than any of Disney's other recent attempts. The late Ray Stevenson was an incredible standout whose magnetic presence energized and elevated whatever scenes he was in.
However, Ahsoka was in most respects not very good at being a television show, which is one of the things that television shows often try to accomplish. Both the dialogue and the action choreography suffered from the same problem of having the actors circle around one another and never connecting until it was time to move on to another scene. Instead of conversations producing meaning, they refer to events in the Star Wars universe as if the reference itself can substitute for character. Even when they are devoid of references, the writing is often so clumsy and amateurish that scenes often spin in more circles than an Inquisitor's lightsaber.
"Part 5: Shadow Warrior," the apex of the show's potential, seemed to be the only time when Ahsoka felt confident enough to allow its characters real conversations -- of course, this is only because it is entirely retrospective, a series of flashbacks and visions with old characters and old locations. Ahsoka is only comfortable when swaddled in the blankets of past Star Wars.
For the rest of the show, it seems that showrunner Dave Filoni is mostly motivated by contriving scenes around his samurai-fetishism, which at this point I suspect is inspired not by the Kurosawa films as Filoni claims, but by the rendering of those films as they inspired George Lucas when creating Star Wars, a level of abstraction that reduces meaning down to style. Dialogue that clumsily describes Ahsoka as a "ronin," Ezra as a "bokken Jedi," and even going so far as to give Ahsoka a literal katana in the finale are far too unwieldy and awkward to be as dignified as an homage, and instead feel like they were introduced by a middle-schooler wearing a T-shirt of a wolf howling at the moon.
After eight episodes, what was Ahsoka able to succeed at as a work? A weak plot stretched too thin across too long, characters like Hera with no real development. Few, if any, memorable lines of dialogue, and a central drama that is utterly unconcerned with establishing tension because it knows that the payoff will come later in some other future show. Even smaller elements disappoint, like the astonishing waste of talented actors like Claudia Black and Wes Chatham -- while both of these two had little more than cameos, they had just enough screen time that something far more interesting could have been done with them, two outstanding physical performers whose best features were hidden and neglected, a running theme with Star Wars cameo performances.
Ahsoka is an inbred show, the result of marrying back up the line of previous works. The difference between successful Star Wars shows in the Disney era -- like Andor and the Visions anthologies -- and Ahsoka is the difference between having source material and idolatry.
I want Star Wars to be good because I love Star Wars -- those pleasures of knowing that universe are so powerful that when watching Ahsoka I was so excited by seeing characters that already had a place in my heart that I forgot to ask myself if the show was actually good. But Star Wars can be about things, have rich characters and deeper meanings without sacrificing the joy of its aesthetic and the wonder of the world it imagines. Ultimately, Ahsoka fails to consider that someone might want something more out of Star Wars than mere recognition.
