Ahsoka - Full Season Review

If you look at the reviews of the first few episodes of Ahsoka, they describe a slightly uneven pace, slightly too stoic and uninteresting performances and a slightly lacklustre opening. At the risk of being the most enthusiastic reviewer in the room, I felt quite the opposite. Through the third season of The Mandalorian, Andor before that and now Ahsoka, I felt from the start that Disney, and perhaps most of all Dave Filoni and Jon Favreau, had a better grasp of the universe and were taking it in interesting new directions.

As it turns out, Ahsoka only got better as the episodes went on, and while there's still room for improvement here and there, the series remains one of the best things we've seen from the Star Wars universe in a long, long time.

It was clear soon after the beautiful, solidly staged opening sequence that Filoni intended to use Ahsoka as a pretext to transfer the popular Rebels animated series to live-action, picking up where he left off. The central cast is largely the same, and while the tone has taken a turn towards something a little darker, Filoni understands genre and tone blending quite masterfully.

But perhaps most importantly, Ahsoka proves that Star Wars can still be about Jedi and Sith, about mysterious artefacts and ancient prophecies, without instantly triggering unpleasant flashbacks to The Last Jedi and Rise of Skywalker. Ahsoka is characterised by both the new creative direction shaped by The Mandalorian, which is seen in both set design and tone, but at the same time it's also more old school Star Wars, with intense duels, Kurosawa-inspired image shifts and mysterious MacGuffins that all characters are desperately trying to get their hands on. It works, and the series manages to prove across its eight episodes that there's plenty of life in the standard Star Wars premise yet.

In my opinion, Rosario Dawson delivers a solid performance as Ahsoka Tano. She has been hardened over many years, and although she continues to show affection for those closest to her, there is a distance, an irony, a protective mechanism. It's acting in the subtle, and it works. The same can be said of both the sadly deceased Ray Stevenson, who gives it his all as Baylan Skoll, and while I'm not crazy about Lars Mikkelsen's stature as Thrawn, he's well made up and gives a convincing performance as the master strategist.

Combine that with some excellent set design, a good piece of music here and there and a fantastic episode in the middle where Hayden Christensen really manages to tie a memorable bow on his time as Anakin Skywalker, and this is hard to call anything else but a hit.

There are small issues here and there, of course. The actress behind Sabine Wren, Natasha Liu Bordizzo, doesn't have quite the same range, and the series can't help but tie back to more classic Star Wars characters. One exchange in particular seems particularly lazy, which leads me to a bigger gripe. I'm tired of all these exciting new stories happening in this small time frame where we all know what's coming just over the next horizon. Yes, there are many years until the First Order takes power, but at the same time, it just seems to be necessary for Star Wars to throw off the Skywalker shackles and think outside the box chronologically.

Ahsoka really, really doesn't need to take place in this time period. We don't need to hear about Leia, and the clone wars, and Anakin, and all the other narrative baggage that prevents Ahsoka from going in a completely different direction.

But other than that, Filoni has the right end of the stick here.