Having now watched the first two episodes of Disney’s new Star Wars series Ahsoka, it’s hard to understand why the titular character is so beloved. The former Jedi warrior Ahsoka Tano does nothing to love, belove, or even much like in the series’ opening double episode.
Rosario Dawson plays the character with all of the vim and excitement of a heavily medicated accountant. She floats disinterestedly on a cloud of self-satisfied contentment through most of the episodes. I suspect Dawson was shooting for an air of zen and wisdom but just ends up coming across as a bit smug.
The only time she’s not being stoically serene is when she’s running very fast after - or sometimes away from - baddie droids or effortlessly dismantling them with some fancy swishing of her two lightsabers.
Of course, the stakes are so low in these fights that they won’t get your blood pumping. Story-wise the fights may be important but seeing our hero squaring off against a quartet of nameless, featureless battle droids is about as tense, thrilling and dangerous as a nice cup of tea.
Dawson first appeared as the orange-skinned, rubber-haired character in a cameo during the second season of The Mandalorian, where she revealed that Baby Yoda actually had a name that wasn’t “Baby Yoda”.
She was pretty cool in that episode. She came across as mysterious and deadly. But now, having been granted her very own series she seems to have come down with a case of the Boba Fett-sies.
If that last reference was too oblique for you, then good luck with Ahsoka. The series presumes a lot of prior knowledge from the viewer. The nine movies and the recent live-action series’ are not gonna cut it here.
No, to really understand the nuance, subtlety and depth of what’s going on you need to have seen all seven seasons and 133 episodes of the animated show The Clone Wars and all four seasons and 75 episodes of its animated spin-off series Star Wars: Rebels.
If, like me, you haven’t, you’ll be left wondering why this boring and dry character is so popular.
Still, it’s not all bad. The series opens with a fairly cool scene. Two shady Jedi are welcomed aboard a rebel spaceship that’s transporting a highly valuable prisoner, before proceeding to stick their lightsabers through everybody on board and rescuing said prisoner.
It’s an exciting start. Then Ahsoka shows up and spends five minutes in an Indiana Jones-like underground temple sloooowly and carefuuuuly rotating statues around like a Rubik’s cube. Eventually, she lines them up and a gold ball pops up. This is no ordinary golden ball but is in fact a space map.
Then she fights some droids.
Off on another planet, a young woman with funky, multi-coloured hair called Sabine Wren is rebelling against whatever you’ve got. She has a pretty cool speeder chase but because things are getting too exciting Ahsoka turns up to drag down the pace. She needs Sabine’s help decoding the map because that’s the sort of thing Sabine does. Sabine doesn’t want to help because she’s beefing with Ahsoka because Ahsoka abandoned her before completing her Jedi training and because her boyfriend (I think) died in an important battle in Star Wars: Rebels.
Natasha Liu Bordizzo as Sabine Wren.
She’s so upset with Ahsoka that she steals the ball. Then a masked baddie turns up and stabs her in the stomach with their lightsaber before stealing the ball. Oh no! All that character set-up just to kill off a main character in the first half-hour?
Lol. No.
Despite having a laser sword thrust right through her belly and out the other side she’s totally fine. A single day in the hospital and she’s good as gold. She forgives Ahsoka, who nods sagely and then the pair zoom off on their first quest to get the ball back.
They need the ball because it will show them where to find the series villain Grand Admiral Thrawn. If that name means nothing to you, well, Ahsoka will often repeat that he’s bad news while carrying a look of vague concern like she can’t remember if she left the iron on after leaving the house.
Sadly, that name does mean something to me because I’ve read the Thrawn novels. These are gripping and exciting books that put a unique spin on the familiar Star Wars universe by showing the inner workings of the Empire and the enigmatic alien Thrawn’s rise up through its military ranks.
In the books, he’s a compelling character. Think of him as a blue-skinned mix between Spock, Sherlock Holmes and Jean-Claude Van Damme. A faithful adaptation of his novels would have been brilliant and given us a genuinely new take on Star Wars.
While Ahsoka herself is fairly dull, the series does show potential. It’s one of the best-looking Star Wars shows so far, its world-building is incredibly detailed thanks to pulling lore from more than 200 animated episodes and the two shady Jedi are very intriguing. On top of that, the promise of Thrawn, even reduced to mere villain status, is enough to keep my interest.
It all makes Ahsoka watchable. But it is any good? Not yet.
