The final word (for now) on Ahsoka is here, and I’ve got at least a thousand words to share on that final word, so let’s dig in!
1. Give the people what they want
Ever since getting a tantalizing glimpse of it in The Phantom Menace, fans have wanted Star Wars to have bigger, more epic lightsaber battles, and this episode features three lasersword wielding Force users going to town with them. It feels like the moment where Dave Filoni and co. realized that they needed to toss the fans a bone, because after the first seven episodes of the season was bringing Ahsoka, Sabine, and Ezra together, the rest of the episode was going to be pulling them apart.
What is interesting about this one small moment of fan service is that the rest of the episode is all about how everybody sort of wins and sort of loses. Morgan Elsbeth becomes a Night Sister, but dies, abandoned a galaxy away from Dathomir. Ezra gets home, but loses his friends along the way. Thrawn escapes, but unknowingly brings Ezra home and gives the Jedi he thought he was entombing on a far away land a chance. Sabine both saves Ezra and unlocks a greater control of the Force, but does so at the expense of the reunion and a trip home.
The only characters that really get what they want are Baylan and Ahsoka. Yes, Ahsoka. Ahsoka’s goals were to save Ezra, to stop Thrawn, and to train Sabine. While Thrawn is not stopped, by saving Ezra, she puts the wheels in motion to stop him. And she gets time to train Sabine on a planet with strong Force energy on it. And, now that she can see and, presumably, commune with Anakin’s Force ghost, she is better equipped to train Sabine.
2. Baylan and the Father?
Baylan’s whole plan was to get to Peridea because he was seeking power beyond what he felt he could get in the ‘main’ Star Wars galaxy. We now know why; Peridea has giant statues of the Father and the Son (and seemingly, a crumbled one of the Daughter) from Mortis, aka the avatars of the Force in balance (father), Darkness (the son), and Light (the daughter). Baylan isn’t a Sith, but he isn’t a Jedi. It seems like he is seeking balance in the Force, but seeking it through means that are more aligned with the Dark than the Light.
Now, we know that Ahsoka is, essentially, the living embodiment of the Daughter (again, you folks need to watch both The Clone Wars and Rebels to really understand any of this stuff), and we are reminded of this when her owl shows up at the end of the episode. If Baylan wants balance, he needs Ahsoka. But if he’s actually the son, or the unbalanced Force because of the crumbling of the Daughter statue, will she actually help his cause? Is she necessary to rebuild the Daughter, both metaphorically and physically on Peridea?
Ray Stevenson’s death is going to make this incredibly hard to do. I think they must recast him, as hard as that is to accept, to tell this story. Or, maybe there’s just an animated Baylan Chronicles show to tell this story.
3. The Dathomir of it all
When Morgan Elsbeth says “For Dathomir,” it begins to put everything that Thrawn and the Nightsisters have been doing in context. While this was always presumed, it seems like Thrawn’s deal with the Nightsisters was something along the lines of “get me out of here and I’ll help you rebuild Dathomir to its prior strength.” This episode saw the most extreme reanimation we’ve seen yet by Nightsisters, with an entire battalion of troopers brought back, not quite to life, but into a zombie status, by Nightsisters magick.
It sure looked like coffins that they were loading into the Chimera, so is the plan to return all of these fallen Nightsisters to Dathomir and resurrect them? Is this the army that Thrawn will use ‘for the Empire?’
For a season that has had a lot of both literary and biblical analogies, this is one of the strongest: Elsbeth is Moses, who led her people out of exile, but did not live to enter the promised land. Her sacrifice was for the good of her people, not for personal gain. Ain’t that a bitch?
Continued below4. Sabine’s awakening
This episode sees Sabine, for the first time, really harness the Force, both in her ability to summon her lightsaber and to help push Ezra across the chasm to the Chimera. We’ve established that Peridea has a lot of Force energy; are her abilities heightened because of where she is? Or has she simply now, perhaps through the inspiration of Ezra along with her training, begun to feel the Force in a more visceral way?
The fact that Sabine was mixing her Jedi training with her Mandalorian ways was the perfect illustration of what Ahsoka said earlier in the season: she wants Sabine to be the most fully realized version of herself. That version has to include her Mandalorian roots and abilities, or it is presenting an incomplete picture.
My one critique of the Sabine story is that it took until this episode to get Ahsoka to reveal why she stopped training her, which is that she was afraid she was becoming a Jedi for the wrong reasons after seeing her family and planet destroyed. This is information that would’ve made their struggles and tension so much more clear on both sides.
5. What’s next?
So we know a few things: there will be a fourth season of The Mandalorian, at least one season of Skeleton Crew, and a film that will culminate all of these stories, directed by Dave Filoni. However, it feels like there is more Ahsoka needed before that film comes about. There’s also been a rumored second season of The Book of Boba Fett for some time now, as well as the never officially cancelled Rangers of the New Republic series. My hunch is that we get all of those things. Ahsoka season 2 is the Peridea story; Rangers is the Hera and Carson Teva-led series. The Mandalorian deals with the newly reclaimed Mandalore, and The Book of Boba Fett continues to build up the underworld of the post-Empire era, and…whatever Skeleton Crew actually is. We know it’s about kids.
Anyway, I see Grogu and Din as the connective tissue between all of these shows as we barrel towards the film.
Of course, this will likely all be wrong, but I have a point for fantasy booking this whole plan besides just sharing my ideas. The Star Wars TV landscape has had some really good stuff and some not so good stuff, but when you take a step back for a moment, it has created a vibrant, and incredibly viable, period of Star Wars that was once considered fallow land. Let’s appreciate that and until next time, may the Force be with us.
