Ahsoka, so far, feels like a missed opportunity.
I have many friends who are huge fans of the animated series, Rebels. I, too, am familiar with the series. I watched the entire first season. Then kind of decided it wasn’t really my thing and moved on, catching a handful of other episodes here and there. But I certainly understand why people like it. But it’s hard to explain to fans of Rebels that Rebels doesn’t hold a grip on the zeitgeist like they think it does. Fans of Rebels are, trust me, really into that show. But if you walk down the street and ask 100 random people if they know who Ezra Bridger is, how many people get that right? One? I suspect you’d get a lot of answers like, “Isn’t that the guy who used to run that deli?” Now ask if they know who Luke Skywalker is. I bet it’s a lot more.
A lot of people who like Star Wars just don’t watch the animated series. That’s just a fact. And I know a lot of their fans will say, “Well, you’re missing out.” Maybe! But that’s not the point here. The point is, a lot of people who do watch the live-action just don’t watch them. And Ahsoka really could have been a great introduction of this character to people who only know her from a couple of guest appearances on The Mandalorian. But, unfortunately, Ahsoka not only assumes you know everything about her from the animated Clone Wars series, it also assumes you know everything from Rebels. Which is probably wonderful if you’ve watched those shows, but to everyone else it’s so far been a huge bore. And if you are a fan of the Rebels animated show, you should want more people to be interested in these characters. And this series probably isn’t doing that. (Not to mention, I remember these characters being much more interesting in the animated series. For whatever reason, in Ahsoka, the dialogue flows like toothpaste. A character will say something, then the other character will stare off into space for five seconds before responding. For the life of me I can’t figure out why anyone would choose to do this.)
One of Ahsoka‘s biggest problems is the whole story, once again, revolves around “a map to a guy.” What’s weird is the first six Star Wars movies all successfully avoided maps in general. The first Star Wars had plans to the Death Star, which is sort of a map, but it’s not the same thing. The Empire Strikes Back is kind of opposite of a map, as everyone is sort of scrambling to get anywhere. Though, it just hit me, if Empire came out today, Ben Kenobi would appear to Luke on Hoth telling him to find the map to Yoda and the whole movie would be about that. It’s funny, now, Ben just says, “You will go to Dagobah,” and Luke is like, “Okay, sure, I know where that is.”
In The Force Awakens, the “map to a guy” – in this case Luke Skywalker – felt somewhat fresh, at least for Star Wars. By The Rise of Skywalker, a movie seemingly made to just repeat and erase everything from the prior movies, the “map to a guy,” this time Palpatine, already felt tired. Actually, in this case, it was the map to another map to the “map to the guy.” Which was basically the plot of Justice League. (I assume it’s a coincidence both The Rise of Skywalker and Justice League had the same screenwriter.)
With Ahsoka, right off the bat we learn the series is about, you guessed it, a “map to a guy.” The first two maps to guys were maps to household name characters. So which guy is it this time? Han Solo? Lando Calrissian? No, it’s a map to Grand Admiral Thrawn – a character who people think is a lot more popular than he really is. Thrawn, if you don’t know, is the “big bad“ of Timothy Zahn’s 1991 book Heir to the Empire, which was the first story to take place after Return of the Jedi and is no longer canon. At the time, the consensus was, “Yeah, he’s fine,” because how do you top Vader and Palpatine. You don’t, hence, “good enough.” When Thrawn was reintroduced in Rebels it was kind of a fun, “hey, the guy from the books!” moment. Now he’s apparently important enough to be a “map to a guy” guy, even though most people really don’t know who he is, but the series sure thinks you know who he is. There’s a lot of talk of him being banished to another galaxy. Even I have absolutely no clue what that’s about and the series doesn’t even think explaining that would be a good idea because obviousl we have all watched the animated series. (Again, we certainly have not.) But all I know is there’s a map, Thrawn is a guy, and all the characters are going to follow the map to the guy.
As I said, this seems like a missed opportunity to introduce, you know, the title character of this show to a wider audience. Instead, it’s all about the Rebels characters, which is a mistake. A show actually about Ahsoka, on her own, going on weekly adventures (like the early episodes of The Mandalorian would have been preferable. Instead, there are just all these characters that Dave Filoni seems to think everyone is already in love with. And in a weird way I get it? Have you ever been to Star Wars Celebration? I’ve been to a few and it’s literally a fantasy world. If you are a creator of anything to do with Star Wars you are royalty at these things. This is a place where the guy who plays Dack (John Morton, I met him, very nice guy) can get a standing ovation. When Filoni walks around Celebration, it’s a sight to be seen. He is Mister King Shit. So if I’m him, yeah I probably am under the impression everyone on earth is extremely familiar with all these characters. I mean, just look around! Everyone is dressed as them! But, unfortunately, Ahsoka isn’t streaming exclusively at Star Wars Celebration. It’s on Disney+, a place that exists to make money in a current environment where streaming services are losing subscribers. Like it or not, Ahsoka absolutely needs the casual Star Wars fan. Remember, even Obi-Wan Kenobi and Boba Fett had series that didn’t light the world on fire, and those are very popular characters that have been around for over 40 years. (Though, the former did get an Emmy nomination.) And after watching the first two episodes of Ahsoka, I can’t imagine the casual fan will be coming back for more.
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