★★★★
4/5
The Star Wars franchise is in a weird place right now. After boshing out five films in five years in the second half of the ’10s, there are no new movies on the immediate horizon. The hitherto enjoyable Disney+ tentpole show ‘The Mandalorian’ ran out of steam with its recent third season. Though there are a couple of new TV shows due soon-ish (‘Skeleton Crew’ and ‘The Acolyte’), we’re in the curious position where ‘Andor’ – an explicitly un-Star Wars-y Star Wars show – is its most beloved current property.
So it’s down to Dave Filoni’s new show ‘Ahsoka’ to carry the flame for old school lightsabers’n’aliens Star Wars. It’s an eight-part series following the adventures of not only Rosario Dawson’s orange ex-Jedi, but also a clutch of characters who hail from the Filoni-masterminded cartoon series ‘The Clone Wars’ and ‘Rebels’.
The prospect of a live-action continuation of a load of cartoons you didn’t actually see might seem a bit off-putting. But Star Wars has always dropped us in the middle of the action, beginning as it did with Episode IV. And after the thin characters of the sequels, it’s really not a bad thing to have a lead with some 15 years of character development behind her.
Anyway: fans of the cartoons will be delighted that ‘Ahsoka’ begins with our heroine investigating a creepy Dathomiri temple – yes, Dathomir is a thing in live-action now, guys!!! – where she handily obliterates a squad of assassin robots then escapes with the help of Huyang, the 1,000-year old lightsaber droid who was last seen in a ‘Clone Wars’ story arc about space pirates.
Newcomers… will surely grasp the idea that the orange lady with two lightsabers is a total wrecking machine and note that it’s fun she has a kooky droid companion voiced by David Tennant.
Set in the same post-‘Return of the Jedi’ timeframe as ‘The Mandalorian’, the plot of the series revolves around the threatened return of ‘Rebels’ big bad Thrawn, who was catapulted out of the galaxy at the climax of that show. As Ahsoka begins, a ruthless but not entirely monstrous ex-Jedi named Baylan (the late Ray Stevenson) and his wild-eyed apprentice Shin (Ivanna Sakhno) are trying to bring Thrawn back. In the most thrilling scene of the first two episodes, they brutally rescue Thrawn’s lieutenant Morgan Elspeth (Diana Lee Inosanto), in a sequence that pays twisted homage to the opening scenes of ‘The Phantom Menace’ and ‘A New Hope’.
To be honest, the literal plot of the first episode is classic hokey Star Wars: there is a ‘map’ to the galaxy Thrawn has been banished to, and the two factions are trying to find it. While it turns out to be less dumb than the sequels’ ‘map to Luke Skywalker’, there’s no denying it’s a big old McGuffin hunt.
What makes the show stand out is the characters, and the atmosphere. Dawson’s Ahsoka is a still, contemplative heroine with a fascinatingly different energy to pretty much every other Star Wars lead, wise and dangerous and the opposite of the classic wide-eyed naif who must grow into their powers. Her foil is Natasha Liu Bordizzo’s subversive Sabine Wren: a free-spirited youngster in ‘Rebels’, now bitter and lonely after a falling out with Ahsoka, still mourning the loss of her friend Ezra, who disappeared with Thrawn. There’s also a nice turn from Mary Elizabeth Winstead as another ‘Rebels’ mainstay, the twinkly-eyed, no-nonsense General Hera Syndulla. (There is something pleasing about the casualness with which ‘Ahsoka’ wears its virtually all-female lead cast).
Although ‘Rebels’ was conceived as a fun romp in the spirit of the original Star Wars, ‘Ahsoka’ is much darker and more elegiac, with later ‘Clone Wars’ and Filoni’s twilit ‘Mandalorian’ episode ‘The Jedi’ the clear precedent. So it’s a McGuffin hunt with laser swords. But underneath that it has an impressively mature tone, a magnificently eerie score from Kevin Kiner, and some strikingly beautiful sequences that even the sniffiest of ‘Andor’ heads ought to appreciate.
It’s also not really a show that bears judgement on the basis of two episodes. There is a lot of character-building and story set-up, with the dopamine hits of the lightsaber and space battles dispensed sparingly so far. It feels like we’re very much waiting for Dawson’s Ahsoka to show a little emotion. ‘Rebels’ nerds will not find every answer to what went down in the years between shows in these two episodes.
What’s most heartening is that it feels like the start of a coherent story. ‘Andor’ is pretty much the only Star Wars TV property not to be wilfully episodic. But ‘Ahsoka’ seems to be settling in for the long run to tell a big, slow-burning yarn. The action will surely pick up, but we can hope it won’t be overwhelmed by the triviality that did for the last season of ‘The Mandalorian’. Too early to say if ‘Ahsoka’ is the chosen one, but The Force is certainly strong with this one.
‘Ahsoka’ episodes one and two hit Disney+ at 9pm PST Aug 22/5am UK Aug 23. New episodes will be released at the same time every Tuesday/Wednesday.
Star Wars ‘Ahsoka’: everything we know so far.
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