Ahsoka Tano was the best new Star Wars character introduced during the prequel era of 1999-2013. She was introduced in The Clone Wars animated series as Anakin Skywalker’s padawan apprentice. Ashley Eckstein voiced the head-tailed Togruta hero as she grew up on-screen during the show’s seven seasons. As the war, the contradictory demands of the Jedi Council, his secret romance with Padmé, and the malign influence of Senator Palpatine slowly changed Anakin from gung ho Jedi to genocidal Sith Lord Darth Vader, it was his relationship with Ahsoka that kept him balanced. But Ahsoka could see what Anakin could not, and she became disillusioned with both the war and Jedi idealism. When she was falsely framed for war crimes in season 5, she became one of the few Jedi to ever resign from the order — as it turned out, just in time to avoid Order 66.
When The Clone Wars returned after cancellation in 2017, showrunner David Filoni spent most of his time wrapping up Ahsoka’s story. But then she returned, 20 years older and much wiser, as Fulcrum, the nascent Rebellion’s most valuable intelligence asset, in Rebels. The character makes her live action debut in the limited series Ahsoka, now portrayed by Rosario Dawson. Filoni, who has been integral to The Mandalorian and other Disney+ live action Star Wars series, returns to oversee the fate of his most beloved creation.
Ahsoka is set in the same era as The Mandalorian. The Empire has been defeated, and the New Republic is struggling to rebuild as much of the galaxy slips into warlordism. Ahsoka and her comrades Sabine Wren (Natasha Liu Bordizzo) and Hera (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) survived the war. But nascent Jedi Ezra Bridger (Eman Esfandi) is missing, having apparently sacrificed himself in the final operation which sent Imperial Grand Admiral Thrawn (Lars Mikkelsen) into exile in a galaxy far, far away. Sabine, who had previously been training with Ahsoka, feels heartbroken and betrayed in the aftermath of the war, while Hera, an ace pilot who fought with the Rebellion, is now a New Republic general. Ahsoka travels with Huyang (voiced by David Tennant), a thousand-year-old droid rescued from the ruins of the Jedi Temple, but her own attitude towards the Jedi remains ambivalent. But she does suspect that a group of defeated Imperials is trying to rescue Thrawn from exile, which is confirmed when Jedi-turned-mercenary Baylan Skoll (Ray Stevenson) rescues Nightsister Morgan Elsbeth (Diana Lee Inosanto) from New Republic captivity. Meanwhile, Sabine is convinced that tracking the Force witch’s movements are the best way to get Ezra back, if he is still alive. Hera is unable to convince the war-weary New Republic to commit assets to the search, so she, Ahsoka, and Sabine set out alone to track down a star map to the distant space whale graveyard where they suspect Thrawn and Ezra have gone.
If all that sounds confusing (Space whales? Yes, they’re a thing.), then you’ve identified the first problem with Ahsoka. After 40 years of movies, comics, novels, and TV series, Star Wars is currently suffering from a bad case of Marvel-itis, where the needs of maintaining the increasingly convoluted continuity take up all available narrative time between the wham-bam space battles and lightsaber duels. Much of the charm of The Mandalorian was that it positioned itself as a monster-of-the-week series apart from the main story. In later seasons, when Luke Skywalker showed up, things went downhill fast.
Ahsoka and Thrawn are both genuinely great characters, but the series gets bogged down in Easter eggs and barely comprehensible lore. Dawson, a legend in her own right, gives an uncharacteristically reserved performance as Ahsoka. (In flashbacks, Ariana Greenblatt portrays young Ahsoka and nails the mischievous spirit Eckstein brought to the role.) Winstead is, as usual, the best thing on-screen, while Stevenson (in his last role before dying in May) understands the level of camp required of a serial villain.
But the biggest problem with Ahsoka is the direction. ILM’s special effects and production design are, as usual, absolutely top-notch, and with the level of acting firepower at his fingertips, Filoni should be able to craft some quality space opera. Yet the bread resolutely fails to rise. The patient, indie-film-inspired editing that works in the political thriller Andor sucks the life out of Ahsoka. The dialogue has been bad even by Star Wars standards. Things liven up when Thrawn arrives in episode 6, but with only two episodes left, it might be too little, too late. Maybe Ahsoka is right, and the Jedi are the problem.
Ahsoka is streaming on Disney+.
