Ahsoka – Part Five: Shadow Warrior Review

Deus ex Purrgil. That was my immediate thought as soon as Ahsoka returned from Jedi Purgatory (also known as the World Between Worlds, although this felt more like a test of her abilities than a portal through time like in Rebels) – how fortunate for her and the rest of her crew that a pod of Purrgil were still hanging around Seatos, seemingly waiting for the exact moment she would need them to travel to the new galaxy to confront Thrawn (and Sabine). I also feel like I should say upfront that I enjoyed this episode, since this review is going to be much more critical than my past reviews of the series. After all, a series titled Ahsoka should, at its heart, be about the character of Ahsoka, so taking time to walk through a greatest hits of her past and try to apply that past to her present and future makes sense on paper. It’s just the execution that left something to be desired.

I’ve mentioned before in these reviews that I haven’t watched Rebels in its entirety, however I’ve done a good bit out research to prep myself for the series so I felt pretty solid on my knowledge of that series and Ahsoka’s role in it. But I know next to nothing about The Clone Wars, so this was the first time that I found myself actively confused as to what was happening and how it applied to Ahsoka today. I knew Anakin was her Master and I knew that she left him and the Jedi Order, but I wasn’t sure how that particular battle in the Clone Wars mattered or what Ahsoka did in the Siege of Mandalore to make her return to that battle matter as well. When the Star Wars experts release their episode breakdowns later today, I’ll watch them (shout-out to ScreenCrush, who is my go-to for all breakdowns) and learn what I was supposed to know going into this episode and perhaps it will make a lot more sense to me, but this was the first time I watched and episode and thought “Ok, this is a cool continuing lightsaber duel, but I don’t really get what I’m supposed to learn about Ahsoka here.”

And like I said in the opening paragraph, I enjoyed that the episode was willing to focus on its titular character for most of an episode – especially after having her (and Rosario Dawson’s performance) be so emotionally aloof for much of the season. This is her show, it should be about her journey first and foremost. So, did those flashbacks matter in terms of helping Ahsoka decide that she wanted to live? That’s the real question I asked myself. Because we weren’t given any indication that she wanted to stay forever in the afterlife she found herself in at any point in that sequence. There was no statement saying she was tired and was ready to rest. There was no indication in her fighting that she wasn’t willing to keep doing so to best Anakin (the less said about that wonky de-aging of Hayden Christiansen the better – they can let him be unchanged in Obi-Wan, but we’re de-aging him here?)* So, the journey through her past didn’t appear to have any true impact on her decision to live. At all. And if it was meant to, well, the episode failed to telegraph that in any way, shape, or form. Which is a failure on pretty much every level.

*And yes, I understand that this was meant to show Ahsoka completing her Jedi training. But still, I don’t really understand how this series of flashbacks and this particular fight with Anakin did that. So, I understand the purpose of the episode, but I don’t understand its execution.

The return of Anakin also didn’t do what it appeared to set out to do. Sure, it gave Ahsoka a chance to grapple with her past guilt and her past actions, but again, it never went deep enough to really get to the heart of her character. Does she still feel guilt and pain over leading troops to their deaths in the Clone Wars? Does she think Anakin was too flippant in his easy dismissal of their lives? Does she feel like she didn’t do enough in the Siege to save Mandalore? And does she still blame herself, on some level, for Anakin’s turn to the Dark Side? I think we can infer that she does, for all of the above, but again, all of it was addressed so surface level in the episode that we never got a true sense of how Ahsoka feels about her past actions and how that relates to her present worries. We can pretty easily infer that her worry about taking on a true Padawan stems from seeing how her relationship with Anakin fell apart so spectacularly – and why she opted to train Sabine, who lacks strong Force sensitivity, hoping that by taking on an Apprentice who lacked that power, she wouldn’t have to see her fall to the Dark Side (so this particular choice by Sabine, to go with Baylan, is feeding into all of her fears in that area, although she didn’t know about Sabine’s choice at this point in time). But the rest of that flashback? Yeah, I don’t know nearly enough about her time in both battles to understand why the series took us there specifically. And that was pretty disappointing.

I’ve always been someone that was on the fence regarding an audience needing to do their homework before watching a series. Obviously, if it’s a continuation of a certain story (say, how WandaVision was the continuation of Wanda and Vision’s stories in the MCU), homework in terms of watching previous films or appearance of characters is fair game to me. And for Ahsoka, I was aware that this was meant to be a new season of Rebels, only with a focus on Ahsoka’s character, so I was fine with that series being a lead-in to this one. And I suppose, by my past metrics, I should have included The Clone Wars in my pre-series homework. But man, that’s a lot of work for an eight-episode series. And I can absolutely understand how frustrating this might be for audience members who saw Ahsoka on The Mandalorian, thought she was a cool character, and wanted to watch her TV show. But for the first time, I finally experienced that same frustration for myself.

But that wasn’t my true disappointment with this episode – that stemmed from the total lack of depth provided for out titular character when it came to how her flashbacks impacted her current self. If Ahsoka was truly on the verge of giving up and laying down her life in her Purgatory, the series needed to make that clear to us. If those flashbacks were meant to inspire her current way of thinking, provide her inspiration on her coming journey to Thrawn, or even give her greater insight on how to approach her own Apprentice, we needed to see that realization bloom in the character. Instead, all we saw was her decide to live – a decision that didn’t appear to be in jeopardy at any point in time in Purgatory. It was a strange choice – giving us an episode meant to deepen our titular character, only to do none of the work to actually deepen the character and then pretend that it did. The writing in Dave Filoni’s live-action series has always been its weak point, but this was the first episode in this series where I truly was left scratching my head trying to determine just what the purpose of a large set piece was.

I was more invested in Hera’s side of the story (and not just because of the Leia shout-out and the return of Mon Mothma). Sure, Teva needs to learn that when Hera says she’ll handle things, she means stop worrying, she’s going to take the blame, so he can stop asking her every ten minutes what they should be doing. But it was interesting to see how Hera seems to understand – along with Mothma and Leia – just how the New Republic is already starting to fail its people by their unwillingness to believe that danger still exists in the universe. From our point of view, we know that this inability to accept that the Imperial remnant exists and is building up its support and forces will lead to the First Order’s emergence. But to watch people like Hera, Mon Mothma, and Leia already see the cracks – and see the negligence among the other leaders – this early in the New Republic and know they can’t truly do anything to stop this willful ignorance is particularly crushing to see. Yes, I can certainly understand that the idea of Thrawn massing an army and planning to attack after so long away seems far-fetched to those who want to believe all the hard work is done and they won. And sure, the presence of Ezra in the equation can definitely make Hera and Sabine’s actions a bit more suspect. But a complete refusal to even investigate the possibility is just idiotic – and precisely the thinking that will doom the New Republic. It’s absolutely fascinating to see that playing out in these shows – watching the cracks form, seeing Mon Mothma, who literally risked everything she had to help found the Rebellion, recognize that she can’t necessarily protect the new order she has helped found – has helped make some of the less-than-stellar installments of Filoni’s universe work. And that was definitely the case with this episode. While I’m still confused as to the Ahsoka side of things – perhaps because of my own lack of Ahsoka knowledge – I was engaged much more fully with the New Republic political side of the story. Which, let’s face it, is something I never thought I would care this much about. So, I guess Ahsoka does have something for everyone.