I love Star Wars. Let me say that first so it’s clear right off the back. While I haven’t found commercial success as a writer, I’ve been a screenwriter for over twenty years and have won enough awards to feel like I know something about the craft. I’m not just a fan. I’m a writer, but feel free to ignore everything I say. This is an op-ed, to be sure.
Over the past few years, I’ve watched all of Clones Wars, The Bad Batch, and Rebels. I’m an enthusiast. I think Dave Filloni is a worthy successor to Lucas. I like the way he tells stories and I think the Bad Batch, in particular, is some of the best Star Wars there is, period. Full stop.
That said, I’ve wondered more than once while watching Ahsoka if Dave is too busy to give the story his full attention. While I’ve enjoyed most aspects of the series, all the technical aspects certainly, and the actor’s performances especially, the material feels.. underdeveloped. Episodes seem more interested in posing, literally, than storytelling. I’ve never seen a show that spends twice as long doing half as much.
I’ve heard it said that ‘there is never enough time in TV’, and I don’t think that applies to the episode lengths. I think it applies to the time to generate layered, nuanced, and engaging material. No matter how good my first draft is, my second draft is always better. Because I’m not lifting the heavy stones of the first draft, I’m arranging the rock garden to make it more pleasing for those walking through. I’m laying out paths for others to follow.
All of the S1 episodes are… fine. They’re fine. They are enjoyable to watch on first viewing, but they don’t really warrant a deeper study or repeat viewing. It wasn’t until about Episode 6 when I started to feel like I was seeing the problem clearly, and the problem with Ahsoka ironically is… Ahsoka. Here’s why.
Ahsoka is a character without an arc in a self-titled series. This is a show about passing the torch, mentor to mentee, Jedi to Padawan, and Master to Apprentice. It’s the heart of the show.
As such, Ahsoka is theoretically meant to be struggling with her place in the universe. She’s in a sort of limbo. The Jedi are gone, but there are a few left, like Baylan Skol and Ezra, Luke and Grogu, a smattering of others. When Ahsoka left the order during the Clone Wars, it felt like a well-earned character moment. Ahsoka had been betrayed by her former masters and was sitting out to carve a new path. So why are we still treading old waters? Ahsoka seems to be a Jedi in all but name – she’s on a Jedi ship with a Jedi droid, training up a new Jedi in the old ways. It just seems like… she can’t quit the old ways.
The more interesting characters on the show, by far, are Sabine Wren, Shin Hati, and Baylan Skoll. Baylan isn’t exactly the Dark Jedi the trailers make him out to be; he’s conflicted, which is interesting to watch. Shin and Sabine feel like mirrors of each other, which is also interesting. I like watching them struggle with the lessons they are learning, and they are often left by their masters, which feels like a real ‘sink or swim’ teaching style. The show is more about Sabine than Ahsoka, by far.
Around episode six, I started to understand that Ahsoka’s real problem, or the one she should be facing, is that she was trained by the same Jedi that became Darth Vader. The question then becomes… am I cut from the same cloth? Is there a bit of Vader in me?
This might explain why Ahsoka left Sabine Wren behind.. She was scared to continue the dark legacy left to her by Anakin. It’s a story about Legacy, like most of Star Wars.. .can we rise above our mentor/parents/teachers and not be shackled to the same burdens they bore?
Luke proves this in ROTJ, which is why that fight is, by far, my favorite Star Wars Jedi battle to this day… we have come to care about both characters and whoever wins, we will feel the loss of the other.
Skol presents as an Anakin-like figure – had Anakin survived he would be about Baylan’s age. He’s a man, human, and he even dresses a little like Vader (black clothing, dark armor ). He’s meant to represent Generic Jedi Mentor (ala Obi-Wan, Kanan Jerrus, Rahm Kota, etc). The similarities are clear. So Baylan represents Anakin, and Ahsoka should be struggling with questions about her legacy and her ties to Anakin – if Vader trained me, am I susceptible to his path as well?
Those are good questions and questions I would love to be asked and answered over the series. But those aren’t the questions being asked and I can’t even say what the dramatic question this series poses even is.
The narrative drive might be ‘Can they find Ezra’ and, more importantly, ‘Can they stop Thrawn?’ but those are plot-motivated and nowhere near as interesting to me as ‘Who is Ahsoka now?’ or ‘Why did she stop training Sabine?’ Frankly, the show spends too much time building up Thrawn and too little time exploring Ahsoka. As much as I like a good lightsaber duel, and this show has them in spades, I’m just reminded that without character stakes, it’s just not as engaging as it could be.
I don’t know how much of the development is behind the scenes, narrative by committee, mandates as part of a grander story arc, or the like, but what I can say is that from a consumer standpoint, this series doesn’t bring much new to the Star Wars canon that wasn’t done better in animated form. If I have any advice to give here, think about the characters in your story. We have seen enough Star Wars at this point that the spectacle has worn off, and it’s up to the storytellers to weave amazing character journeys into a story set in the Star Wars Galaxy. Put simply, if you can’t take the sci-fi out of the story and it still stands, you don’t have a story.