Late to the party. Some quick hits.
Like Dawson as Ahsoka a ton. But didn’t like the portrayal in this series. Too aloof and snarky, that’s not Ahsoka. Bad writing and directing there.
Really disliked Sabine here. Didn’t like the casting choice, the portrayal wasn’t too bad, but the character arc is so dumb. She’s a Mandalorian, not a Jedi. I know the whole “everyone has some aptitude for the Force” discussion, but I don’t like it. Saying if you try hard enough you can be a Jedi is dumb. And she literally levels up from not being able to move a cup to being able to force pull a lightsaber with perfect aim and then she’s force pushing Ezra in mid-air? That is lazy shitty fan-fic level writing.
I didn’t like the way they characterized Thrawn in Rebels and I don’t like the carry over here. Lars’ voice acting is okay, but his look is wrong to my eye. The way Thrawn was sketched out in Heir to the Empire paints a much more formidable person. This Thrawn is like the old creepy uncle with a bad hairpiece. Thrawn should be built like a former Marine, not like a paunchy bureaucrat. Also, he seems to kind of be an idiot in this series too.
Ezra was pretty solid. Not much to add there, but I’m not loving the whole hippy dippy vibe. That’s not the kid from Rebels. Sure, he’s gone native for 10 years, but that just felt off.
Hera was just a trainwreck. Awful casting. Awful dialogue. Completely clueless as a character. She wasn’t the jokester on the Ghost, she was by far the most militaristic of the team and was the one working with Fulcrum in secret. To see her with zero political acumen and seemingly no support as a General is just a bizarre choice. This show would have been a lot better with less Hera and more Ahsoka.
Baylan and Shin were great. Would have loved a lot more time with the two of them so we could see their master/apprentice dynamic more. Super sad that Ray died, and we won’t get to see him expand this role. I fully expect them to recast it, I think writing around him being gone will be tough.
Do Star Wars stories have to be insufferably dumb? Like all the time? Andor and Rogue One mostly managed to write something that wasn’t paper thin. Maybe there was something here salvageable, but they really missed the mark.
First off, the whole gimmick with the star map was nonsensical as shown. I read the link early in the thread that explains this was a map based on Perrgil migration routes…that makes perfect sense! It would have been great if the show actually showed us that somewhere.
Episode one could have been either Ahsoka or Morgan deducing that Perrgil migration routes could be the key to finding Thrawn/Ezra. That kind of detective story followed by a map heist would have been interesting to watch play out over a couple episodes. Then the other antagonist does their own detective work following the break in to figure out what the map heist was about, that’s a fun and interesting story. You could have shown a lot of stuff with the Imperial sympathizers and the Republic’s poor management to flesh out this time period using that device.
Also, a map of space whale migration routes would not be in some stupid ruin’s basement. It would have been in, say, the remains of the Jedi archive or maybe in some former Imperial database. It wouldn’t be some silly Indiana Jones scene. A more urban setting would have been a nice change of pace from Mando.
The role and motivations of the Nightsisters is a total mystery still. Thats a problem. Maybe they’ll flesh it out in the coming season, but for how central they are to this story you probably needed to at least hint at something coherent. If you weren’t going to do that, you might as well have just used Morgan for all the witchy stuff and brought the others in next season.
Sabine betraying everyone, including Ezra, by opening the door for Thrawn to come back is just garbage. And then everyone just sort of shrugs it off at the end? Seriously? That is dumb, dumb, dumb. You could have instead made this some sort of failure of her Jedi training if you were so committed to that story line. Like some kind of Luke in the cave thing that causes her to doubt herself, not just some selfish betrayal.
All things considered; I think I might have preferred if this was more of an Ahsoka show than a Rebels live action sequel. I know the Mando/Book of Boba example isn’t exactly something you want to repeat, but I might have preferred a more Ahsoka focused season 1 and then maybe a Rebels team-up spin off as a season 2 crossover show.
I would have been a lot more interested to learn about Ahsoka’s time as a lone Jedi in the wild. Her anxiety and her doubts. The challenges of being alone with no support while being hunted by Empire loyalists and Inquisitors. Tell us more about who this adult Ahsoka is now, then maybe later I’ll be interested in how she handles taking on a padawan.
Anyways, enough of a rant. You all have mostly said all this before. I’ll be back if there’s a season 2, lol.
