The fifth episode of Ahsoka is easily the biggest episode of a live action Star Wars show thus far. Why do I say that? Well, because Disney had special screenings of the episode in a handful of theaters across the United States. Clearly, Disney thought that there was something here that would transcend the typical Ahsoka experience. Was there? Let’s find out.
1. Implied importance
I had a strange thought while watching this episode. It began as a warm, nostalgic feeling. Here it was, the first meeting of Anakin and Ahsoka in live action, aside from last week’s very short final scene. This as a moment that felt momentous and significant, until I realized that, actually, this wasn’t really at all what I had made it out to be.
First of all, to put more import on the live-action representation over the animated one is a bad look. There are more hours of Star Wars animation than live-action, especially featuring Anakin and Ahsoka, and many of the best Star Wars moments of the 21st century originate in The Clone Wars. While it is obviously cool to see animation bleed into the live-action space, I think I was making too much of that particular migration pattern.
But the bigger thought was that while, yes, this is a long awaited live-action moment, it was being shared by two actors who have no history with the moment. Again, this is not a knock on either Hayden Christensen, who is awesome here, or Rosario Dawson, who has really inhabited the older, more stoic Ahsoka in a wonderful way. But every moment between these characters that we love is between Ashley Eckstein and Matt Lanter, not Christensen and Dawson. This would be like if there was a meeting between Han Solo and Grand Moff Tarkin, but it was played by Alden Ehrenreich and Guy Henry. The actors involved who made those characters who they are aren’t present. Again, this is not Christensen slander, but the Anakin that people are excited to see is the animated version, not the one who had to choke out stilted George Lucas dialogue about hating both sand and Sand People.
And so, when we get Christensen and Ariana Greenblatt recreating moments from The Clone Wars, replete with a voice-cameo from Temura Morrison as Rex, it felt like the world’s most elaborate and expensive cosplay. Again, it was cool, and I’m glad I got to see it, but once I realized how much work the implication of import was doing, I sort of lost interest in that whole element of the show. Everyone involved did a good job, but the magic of the moment slipped away from me.
The other piece of these scenes that didn’t really work for me was how they supposedly changed Ahsoka. Ahsoka didn’t awake after her rescue with a newfound sense of purpose; she space-walked and took out fighters with her lightsabers just two weeks ago. That doesn’t seem like the action of someone who had reservations about her mission or the value of her life. After reliving moments from her past, she seems exactly the same as before, if, perhaps, a little sunnier? But for the character to go through all of this and to have no real change on the other side feels like she went through it all for no reason.
2. Anakin or something else?
While Ahsoka absolutely saw the vision of Anakin Skywalker in the World Between Worlds, I do not think that she was communing with his Force Ghost. I don’t see why Anakin, now at one with the Force, would be flashing images of Darth Vader and wield a red lightsaber. I’ve seen some folks theorizing that it is, perhaps, Morai, the owl with the connection to Ahsoka that we’ve seen numerous times throughout the animated series. My personal theory is that Anakin is a realized image of the Force itself, much like Ellie seeing her father at the end of Contact. The Force needs her to live, and so is doing all it can to make her choose life. That involves bringing her master ‘back to life’ in front of her, and when that’s simply not enough, it has to improvise and incorporates fear, guilt, and remorse in the guise of Vader to further motivate her.
Continued belowI wouldn’t be surprised if we get an actual Anakin Force Ghost somewhere down the road in this series, but I don’t think this was what we saw in “Shadow Warrior.” And because of that, the reunion of Master and Apprentice, Jedi and Padawan, did not have the catharsis and emotion that I think many of us thought or hoped it might.
3. The colors of the rainbow, so pretty in a lightsaber
Speaking of Anakin, at some points, wielding a red lightsaber, when Ahsoka and Anakin first are dueling in the World Between Worlds, her lightsaber is a pale orange color, while Anakin’s is the traditional pale blue. Her lightsaber isn’t the blood orange of Baylan and Shin, but rather the color, in the pre-Disney canon, of a ‘grey’ Jedi, that is a Jedi that draws equally from the Dark and Light Sides of the Force. The scene in the World Between Worlds happens right after Ahsoka uses what sure looks like Dark Side energy to send Shin rocketing into a wall, and Ahsoka has made it clear that she is not really a Jedi, as she walked away from the Order.
This follows what Ahsoka says to Huyang about Sabine earlier in the series, stating that she doesn’t have to be a Jedi, but she is being trained to be herself. This colored lightsaber is a big hint that, perhaps, the reason that we don’t see Ahsoka in the sequel trilogy, working with Luke to create a new Jedi Order is that she no longer thinks of herself in that binary. I mean, Luke himself says in The Last Jedi that Jedi do not have exclusive right to the Force; that sounds an awful lot like something that Ahsoka might say.
4. Once a rebel, always a rebel
The narrative of ‘the New Republic is already a bureaucratic nightmare’ is very front and center. Hera is, for this series, the avatar of what got the New Republic to its current place, with the various senators and generals as the avatar of the new status quo. Mon Mothma, in a role that is familiar for her, falls somewhere between these two worlds. She’s sympathetic to Hera and wants to help, as does Leia, apparently, but has to maintain a certain level of propriety due to her role. Poor Carson Teva has to be a really obnoxious embodiment of Hera’s pull between what is really important (her son and her friends) and what is perceived as important (following orders).
While Hera was always one of the most in lock step with the Rebellion in the broad strokes, this role makes sense for her. She saw the love of her life sacrifice himself for the sake of the team, and saw a kid she felt some sense of responsibility for blink away to another galaxy to save the galaxy. She knows what needs to be done often doesn’t fit into a neat package.
That said, Hera needs to play ball a little more if she wants to keep the level of autonomy she has now, let alone continue to have decision making power in the New Republic, which will ultimately be more valuable to her friends than her ability to show some moxie and disobey orders. In this one case, however, thank goodness she did so, as she saved Ahsoka’s life.
5. The Jonah plan
Ahsoka’s plan to use the Purrgil to find Ezra and Sabine is a solid one, and is clearly inspired by the biblical story of Jonah, although you can’t really call this being swallowed. But this sure seems like the Force (God) protecting Ahsoka (Jonah) and delivering her safely to the new galaxy (Nineveh) after she was thrown overboard.
As mentioned in earlier reviews an elsewhere online, the first half of this series felt very much like Sabine’s story, not Ahsoka’s. This feels like the beginning of a reclamation for Ahsoka’s story.
