Warning: Major spoilers ahead for Ahsoka!
Image credits: Screenshot via Lucasfilm/Disney Plus
Ahsoka is a TV series available on Disney+. Though the show is titled after Ahsoka Tano, a force-sensitive outcast who left the Jedi order, the show mainly focuses on establishing what happened after the fall of the Galactic Empire. It also serves as a continuation for the Star Wars animated series Star Wars Rebels. Though Ahsoka faced controversy for its heavy use of “nostalgia bait”, I found it to be the third-best Disney+ Star Wars TV show, after Andor and The Mandalorian.
Parts One, Two, and Three (episodes are referred to as “parts”) were very videogame-like in their appearance. Like the much-maligned The Rise of Skywalker movie, Ahsoka also features a magical macguffin: a map that supposedly leads to the location of Grand Admiral Thrawn, a high-ranking Imperial officer and strategist who was forcibly launched to another galaxy by space whales at the end of Star Wars Rebels. In one notable sequence, Ahsoka Tano solves a temple puzzle in real time, a scene which reminded me of my time playing Jedi: Fallen Order. For a show with a precious 5 hours and 53 minutes across 8 parts to tell its story, should it have been included? Probably not.
Once the villains are finished constructing a massive hyperspace ring capable of traveling between galaxies and retrieving Thrawn, the show finally becomes interesting. Part Five is essentially The Clone Wars in live action, with Anakin Skywalker training a young Ahsoka Tano amidst the violence and turmoil of the era. Though I saw a lot of online criticism for once again relying on the Skywalker family to artificially boost ratings, I personally love self-referential scenes in shows and movies. This part even ends with a duel between Anakin Skywalker turned Darth Vader and Ahsoka, which was amazing.
The last three parts are just as good, featuring one of the best introductions for a character in a long while. Thrawn’s entrance in his beaten-up Star Destroyer was epic, and the Roman Empire aesthetic crossed with his Stormtroopers is a refreshing choice. I’d like to note the cameo by C-3PO, who has been played by Anthony Daniels since 1977, and Thrawn’s night troopers. The night troopers, zombie stormtroopers reincarnated by Nightsister magic, had great costumes that I would like to see available in stores by Halloween. They were very reminiscent of the zombies from the novel Death Troopers, only those stormtroopers were infected by a virus instead. My only wish is that they were utilized more. Instead of a squadron of night troopers, what about an entire Star Destroyer full of them?
Overall, Ahsoka starts weak, but ends strong. Now that Thrawn successfully escaped purgatory, what machinations will he unleash? I’m looking forward to seeing the continuation of the story, either in future seasons of Ahsoka or the teased feature film about The Mandalorian.