#filoni critical

[hailperseusjackson]

the way that, if you took away her armor and the two or three lines referencing it, you would literally never know that sabine was a mandalorian in the ahsoka show. filoni completely stripped her of her culture (and personality) and never gave her a meaningful scene talking about the destruction of mandalore or her family. all in favor of giving her a bad and poorly executed padawan storyline, because apparently a character can’t be interesting unless they’re a jedi

[antianakin]

Literally why are people who hate the Jedi even writing for Star Wars?

Why do they keep LETTING people who hate the Jedi write for Star Wars?

Can't these people just go make their OWN sci-fi about how selfishness is cool actually? We could all use more original sci-fi stuff anyway, it's vanishingly rare in film and TV, leave Star Wars and the Jedi alone.

[lieutenant-teach]

I love The Clone Wars series. I love the clones. I like both Rex and Cody. But since the very beginning of watching the series, I felt like smth was kind of off about them. Specifically, why do we have so much content about Rex? Why at least part of these clone-centric moments are not given to Cody? He was there first! He’s the only clone in the movies who has some semblance of characterization and he’s actually very important for Star Wars.

Like, the episodes about a clone deserter – why not give them to Cody instead of Rex? Why not use the 212th instead of the 501st? If you imagine Cody instead of Rex, the plot won’t change, the message of the episode won’t change – they both would have similar attitudes to the situation. But we would know more specifically about the most important clone of SW. And I’m not exaggerating this claim – Rex’s presence doesn’t change the movies narrative in any way. I’m not saying they should’ve cut him out completely – just divide some adventures between Cody and Rex.

Being a Filoni original character is very advantageous.

[tarisilmarwen]

Sabine choosing to frequently pick the Jedi choice of action in Rebels is not in fact evidence that it was always in the cards for her to become a Jedi in Ahsoka.

And it's especially not evidence that she was intended to be Force Sensitive.

Sorry, no, that still has established worldbuilding rules that the writing for Ahsoka just barreled over in favor of the story Filoni wanted to tell with his preferred blorbo, no matter how ill suited other characters were for the roles.

[kanansdume]

What's crazy and really shows off how impeccably awful this show managed to be is how DIFFERENT Anakin feels between the Kenobi show and the Ahsoka show, despite the fact that he's being played by the same actor probably within a year of each other if that.

And it's so clearly not the fault of the performer, Hayden Christensen is doing the absolute MOST to give an authentic and familiar performance of Anakin in the Ahsoka show and on a STRICTLY acting standpoint, I think he succeeds. People have pointed out that the Anakin that Hayden is playing in the flashbacks, despite being in the TCW costumes, does not at all feel like TCW Anakin. There's nothing suave or charming about him. When he tries to joke and Ahsoka pushes back against it, he immediately gets defensive, which is perhaps one of the most in-characters thing about the entire performance. And obviously his performance as Sith Anakin is pure perfection.

But it's not just the performance that creates a character. It's the way other people discuss the character, it's the way that character impacts the world around them, it's what we as the audience are allowed to see of them.

In the Obi-Wan show, Anakin at his best is still a whiny little asshole. In the flashback scene, he's arrogant, he's overconfident, he's a little bit of a bully, he's stubborn, and he's a sore loser. It's left a little ambiguous as to whether this scene was a true flashback or something Else, but the dialogue of the scene and who is currently "winning" the match clearly are intended to parallel what's going on in the actual plot between Obi-Wan and Anakin. Which means you can just as easily interpret this as saying that the whiny little asshole you remember from the prequels is still the person behind that mask. Yes, he's got a vocoder changing his voice into something more menacing, his expressions hidden behind an emotionless mask, but that whiny teenager is still calling the shots here. That's precisely what motivates him. Even if it's intended as a more legitimate flashback, that's supposed to be Anakin at his BEST and he's... whiny. He's arrogant. You can say he can grow out of it at this point and that's clearly what Obi-Wan believes in the moment, but the best he's got is... still this.

And he never grew out of it, he never left that arrogance and entitlement behind. He decided to let it define him instead. He might've had promise if he'd chosen to outgrow his more negative traits, but he didn't. He just stayed forever in the mindset of that annoying little 19 year old asshole.

And at his worst, Anakin's a literal unhinged MONSTER. He's casually walking by and murdering innocents just to get Obi-Wan's attention, he's stabbing Reva just because he can, he's ripping open ships, he's burning Obi-Wan alive out of vengeance. His face when that mask comes off has a manic GLEE as he talks about having "killed" himself just to try to manipulate Obi-Wan and the way he screams Obi-Wan's name at the end is so intensely disturbing. So many people saw that moment as Anakin having this moment of mindfulness, but I didn't see or hear a single sane moment in the entire scene. The whole thing is off-kilter and it feels pretty intentionally off-kilter, both in the writing and the acting and directing. Anakin's made his choice. This is it.

In the Kenobi show, Anakin might've once had promise. But he also had immense potential for monstrous evil, that was ALSO there as well. And whatever promise used to be there is now squandered in favor of the arrogance and cruelty and entitlement, which means that it's not worth Obi-Wan's time and effort and energy continuing to wonder what if about it. Because, quite honestly, it doesn't MATTER. Obi-Wan isn't fighting for Anakin anymore by the end. He's not fighting to destroy Anakin, but he's not fighting to save him, either. And the whole point of his relationships with Luke and Leia is that he has to learn to care about them for who THEY are rather than because he cared about their biological parents. He has to see them for who they've become and allow them to grow without worrying about how much like Anakin or Padme they might end up being. They're not Anakin and Padme, they're Luke and Leia, and his relationship with them is ultimately better for letting go of seeing them as anything other than who they actually are.

The people who were in charge of the Kenobi show clearly understood that in order for Obi-Wan to stand on his own as a main character of his own story, they needed to clearly differentiate him from Anakin and FREE him from Anakin. Yes, Obi-Wan is built to be Anakin's narrative foil and has been since day 1. Yes, Obi-Wan's story is very tied up in Anakin's. But this was OBI-WAN'S story and just for this one moment, they could let Obi-Wan be more than just someone who revolves around Anakin. He's his own person who makes his own connections and relationships that have nothing to do with Anakin and he only truly starts to feel like himself again when he walks away from Anakin and leaves him behind and accepts that Anakin has chosen to be someone that Obi-Wan cannot change. No one writing the Kenobi show wanted Obi-Wan to be more IMPORTANT to the narrative than Anakin, but they were able to allow Anakin to take a back seat so that Obi-Wan could actually grow and develop into his own character.

The same cannot be said for the Ahsoka show.

In the Ahsoka show, Anakin is portrayed IMMENSELY positively. At his best, Anakin is a wise powerful sage watching over someone he cares about and pushing her to be better. At his worst, he's... pushing her a little? They MENTION he's intense, and we see visions of him as a Sith, sure, but if that was Anakin at all, then it leaves you with the impression that he only pushed Ahsoka because he cared about her and she needed it and he was ultimately right to do so anyway. Was it tough? I guess, but nothing that would ultimately truly hurt her at all. Anakin's worst sins aren't touched on at all. Anakin is constantly remembered as someone who was GOOD without really acknowledging that while he might've been good at times, he wasn't always. Even when Ahsoka remembers him as a good master, he was still someone who believed in fascism and had massacred an entire village down to the last child. That person Ahsoka remembers was still a bad person and this show desperately wants you to forget that any of that is true about him.

And via proxies like Sabine and Ahsoka herself, this show DEFENDS Anakin's choices across the board. It's not even just that he was a good master, but that he ultimately did the RIGHT THING by choosing Padme over the galaxy because he did it out of "love," turning the genocide of the Jedi into something that was caused by their OWN failures instead of Anakin's failures.

There's zero recognition that Anakin was, ultimately, a failure. He was a failure as a Jedi, a failure as a master, a failure as a husband and a father, and a failure just as a generally good person. Anakin was a bad person who did bad things. Maybe he wasn't always, maybe he had his moments, fine, but overall? What's the legacy he leaves? What are people going to truly remember him for most? Despite his choice to save Luke in his last moments, his impact upon the galaxy is still a net negative.

And Ahsoka can have good memories of him and still recognize that Anakin's impact upon the galaxy was a bad one. She can choose to focus on the good memories she has without pretending like he was in actuality a good master who did nothing wrong. It's not like those two things can't co-exist and that is, in essence, exactly what Obi-Wan has to do. It's why he can say honestly and genuinely tell Leia at the end of the show that her father was "passionate, fearless, and forthright" even though just a day or so ago he'd accepted that Anakin himself had chosen to be an evil person now. He can remember Anakin as the friend he'd cared for AND recognize that the person Anakin is now is not that person anymore. Anakin NOW is evil, Anakin NOW doesn't deserve Obi-Wan's time or focus or grief, Anakin NOW needs to just be let go of. They aren't two separate people, obviously, but people do grow and change, and Obi-Wan once loved Anakin, but the boy Obi-Wan loved is gone because Anakin has chosen not to be that kind of person anymore. He's not kind, he's not compassionate, he's not merciful, or thoughtful or any of the good qualities he used to have. The Kenobi show forces both Obi-Wan and the audience to recognize that no matter how good someone might once have been, it's important to recognize when they're not acting like that person anymore and it's better to let them go and walk away.

And the reason Ahsoka can't do that is because the writers can't. The people in charge of writing Anakin in this show see him so differently than the people who wrote Kenobi. The the writers of the Ahsoka show, Anakin is "the greatest of all of the Jedi," not even just for raw power reasons, but because he understood what love was all about and felt it so deeply. So instead of that love twisting him and being in so many ways his greatest flaw, it turned into his greatest strength, something the Jedi just didn't understand. They're coming at Anakin from a WILDLY opposite direction here and so the way he gets depicted and spoken about comes across so unnervingly different.

You CAN see it as Ahsoka just... viewing Anakin differently. Obi-Wan knew Anakin as a child and was a Jedi Master before the betrayal, so he is more capable of viewing Anakin as the whole of what he was and letting him go. Whereas Ahsoka was a lot younger, she barely got any training before the betrayal, so her perspective on him is intensely skewed by this. She can't truly conceive of Anakin as both the good master she remembers AND the nightmare monster she knows he became, so she just... picks one. She chooses to see him as a good master and that's it. Nothing else he ever did matters. She never has to think about the genocide, the murders, the enslavement, the betrayals. He was a good master, and that's the end of the story. This is the best way she can learn to cope with this particular trauma is to just... ignore it and decide it didn't happen and so her version of Anakin is the ONLY version of Anakin.

But the narrative itself sort-of presents this as the honest truth of Anakin rather than just Ahsoka's perspective on the matter. It's not that Ahsoka just can't cope any other way, it's that this is, legitimately, who Anakin was. Anakin WAS a good master and the fact that he abandoned Ahsoka to die and tried to kill her and genocided her people and desecrated her home apparently doesn't change that at all. Because he did all of it for love. And the fact that Anakin was the "greatest of all the Jedi" because of this means that Ahsoka gets exalted even more so because of that.

But Obi-Wan doesn't need that. He doesn't need to be exalted as better than everyone else, he doesn't need to be made important by manipulating the narrative. He already IS important and the people writing his story know that. He's not important because he's better than Anakin, he's important just because he is. He's baked into this story and can't be removed from it without completely undoing it and telling a totally new story. Obi-Wan and Ahsoka are, in some ways, total opposites. Obi-Wan is a massively important character to the narrative who's never been the main character of his own story before the Kenobi show, while Ahsoka spent a long time as the main character of her story but has never and will never be that important to the narrative. She can be added to it and give some extra dimension to it, but she can be pretty easily removed from it, too.

And their relationships to Anakin in their respective shows seem to reflect the way the writers feel about those facts and their understanding of the characters themselves.

[nateofgreat]

No one hates Grievous like Dave Filoni

So I've heard that when TCW began Dave Filoni was mandated to use General Grievous as his primary villain... And I've got a feeling he holds a grudge about it because man, does he hate the guy lol.

-Cad freaking Bane is more of a Jedi hunter than General Grievous who holds a whole collection of lightsabers. Cad freaking Bane fought two Jedi Masters and beat Obi-Wan at lightsaber combat... And Grievous can't kill more than a single throwaway character throughout the entire series.

-Ventress upstages him as the Separatist's main assassin, shown to be able to fight Anakin and Obi-Wan simultaneously and get the better of a Jedi Master in combat. She tops it off by defeating Grievous in under 60 seconds, thus cheapening his only victory in the show over the Nightsisters.

-Padawan Ahsoka twice fights and survives an encounter with him without injury save for once where he managed to choke her... Only for her to cut off his hand and escape.

-General Grievous was beaten up by gungans after being tricked by Jar-Jar Binks.

-He's all-but erased from the show as soon as Dave gets the clear to use other villains; any conflicts set up with Grievous (like his icy relationship with Dooku) is immediately forgotten.

-He gets captured again alongside Dooku in the Maul comics that were based off unreleased episodes. Although he at least does something when he's freed which is a first for him.

Like man, Dave Filoni really hates the guy. Every other villain he gives cool moments to, but Grievous? He gets one or two brief moments but that's about it.

As ridiculously OP as General Grievous was in the original Clone Wars (The early 2000's one) was they at least put thought into how exactly he'd able to defeat Jedi without the Force. That being to catch them off-balance and use fear to throw off their focus... Dave uh, really should've copied that over.

[mr-bottle-28-3-96]

Filoni may excel at worldbuilding myth and magic, but good god his politics and political writing are as clueless and reactionary as ever.

Do we really have to go through this whole thing with bureaucracies holding back the cops/military from fighting the bad guys? Clearly Filoni learned nothing in the past decade.

I already compared Hera's meeting with the Senators to Shepard meeting the Citadel Council, and it's such a bad look for every character involved.

Especially frustrating is that Senator Xiono makes an incredibly serious accusation - that Hera is deliberately misleading New Republic leadership by invoking the threat of Thrawn's return in order to funnel New Republic military assets towards a personal quest - and no one seems to acknowledge the weight of that accusation! Not Hera, the accused, and not Mon Mothma, Hera's sole ally on the committee and the New Republic's Head of State!

Once again, Star Wars fails to comprehend its own gravity!

---

Edit: In fairness, Hera does respond with her "Have you ever fought in the war?" retort, but I'm now wondering - is Xiono meant to be so toothless that what ought to be a serious accusation is so easily dismissed, or is he meant to be a genuine obstruction to Hera here?

---

And worst of all, Hera's not even making an effort to present her case well! She has the evidence! And we know she can argue better than this, we've seen it in Rebels when she convinced Alliance High Command to attack the TIE Defender factories.

There's so much that could be happening here, but Filoni has defaulted to the cheap trope of "hero/cop/soldier gets stalled by the useless bureaucracy".

Will the show do anything with this in coming episodes? I certainly hope so, but I am far from impressed right now.

[0alix0]

friendly reminder that it took Arcane only 3 episodes to make us cry like little bitches despite having no prequel series/comics/etc... meanwhile ahsoka show exists :)

[hailperseusjackson]

i’ve seen a few arguments now in support of the sabine padawan/jedi storyline that talk about her reaching her full potential, or ‘of course it makes sense bc she’s been working towards this the whole time,’ things akin to ‘isn’t it great that her story is complete now that she’s a jedi.’ now look. I’m not a fan of the sabine jedi storyline regardless, but i could have (maybe) been swayed by a well written sabine padawan plot.

but i think what’s irking me about this is that sabine was ALREADY a complete character!!!!! she’s a competent and formidable mandalorian warrior! she’s an artist! she’s really smart and handy and uses those skills for good but also used them to build terrible mandalorian-killing weapons for the empire because she was prideful and ambitious when she was younger! she butts heads with kanan many times bc of his jedi ideologies! she has a complicated relationship with her mandalorian family but she loves them and she loves her planet and culture! sabine didn’t need a jedi storyline to be a complete character. if it had been well done, it could’ve added another layer to her character. but we never dig into her motivations, why she wants this, so it didn’t add anything to her at all, and the way it was executed ultimately stripped her of everything that made her her.

[antianakin]

Filoni: I have made the best Star Wars.

Pro Jedi fans: You fucked up a perfectly good space opera is what you did. Look at it. It's Christian.

[owenthetokencishet]

Regardless of what you think of the writing the ahsoka show is just... not very well made.

Nothing is propely weathered. it's all far too clean for Star Wars, the movie that INVENTED the dirty space aesthetic. Come on, they made CHOPPER look relatively clean and polished

The bad guys' costumes look like they're surplus from a doctor strange movie

Sabine Wren spends a LOT of time NOT wearing her armour and even when she does, that's not what her armour looks like

The sheer amount of contouring on Lars Mikkelsen's face makes Thrawn look like Elon Musk

lucasfilm is WAAAAAY overusing the volume

The lighting and colour grading make every shot look beige and muddy

The editing paces the show like it was supposed to be a movie, regardless of whether or not it actually was

This show has a budget of over 100 million dollars but it looks like it was made for a fraction of the price. Where is all that money going? Because it is clearly NOT being given to the production crew

[tarisilmarwen]

Ahsoka "The Jedi, The Witch, and The Warlord" Liveblog

Woo boy, there were certainly some Choices in this.

Yeah yeah, I'm late and spoilered to hell I know, look, I have been Going Through It out in realspace and my priority has been finishing Whumptober fics, cut me some slack.

Anyway.

Lars Mikkelson continuing to crush it as Thrawn.

"Even I fell victim to the... heroics of a single Jedi." Looooooool another bit for my collection of Pissy!Thrawn moments.

We're not going to get an explanation for why the Nightsisters and Thrawn are so tight, are we?

Morgan looks a little bit trepidacious about all of this ha ha.

All right, a point in this show's favor, this look at Nightsister rituals and culture is interesting.

And the flaming sword is cool, I'll admit.

Ngl, the editing really needs to be tightened up in this scene, we really only needed the one or two establishing shots before cutting into the interior.

Eman continues to be the perfect Ezra. I love him. 10/10 no complaints.

Ngl, this is sweet on the surface that Ezra's new saber has pieces of Kanan's buuuuuuuut *waves Green Saber Ezra Supremacy flag*.

Sabine, let him borrow y'all's lightsaber and YOU build a new one.

Ah goody, an Exposition Reveal.

-_-

This... doesn't actually explain Baylan's "Your family is dead because your Master didn't trust you." line btw. JUST SAYING.

I don't even know what the narrative wants anymore re. Sabine's choice to gamble Thrawn's return for Ezra.

Aaaand please not to be reminding me of the Wrong Jedi arc kthnx.

Oh good an action scene.

Ezra and Ahsoka being cool Jedi together, nice. Could be more emphasized and staged even more coolly tho.

Well poop, I guess that's the reason why we had to risk stowing away on Thrawn's ship.

Oh good! This holomap thing is exactly the kind of plot device I actually needed for one of my Sabezra Week fills.

Lol Thrawn be taking NO chances lololol.

Oh hello finally some of Thrawn's theme in the score here. Thrawn using the men's loyalty and fanaticism towards him personally to achieve his goals, fits the culty vibes, sure.

I am liiiiiviiiiiiiiiiiing for the subtle nervousness in Ezra's voice when talking about Thrawn finding the Dathomir castle and waking the witches. PLEASE CAN I HAVE A THOUSAND WHUMP AND ANGST FICS ABOUT THE IN-BETWEEN BEFORE EZRA'S ESCAPE FROM THE CHIMAERA?

His arms are so comfortably around Sabine awwwwww.

Thrawn be all srs bznss and I'm loving it.

Yeah no, Jedi!Sabine is REJECTED, she did not have any kind of necessary mental or emotional breakthrough, she wasn't shown calming her mind properly, sorry Dave THE LEGWORK AIN'T THERE, Imma fix this to be Ahsoka in the inevitable rewrite/fixfic that I've apparently decided I'm doing.

Oh Ahsoka is helping too, well I'm still not having Sabine be able to do it.

HAAAAAAAAAA THAT PISSED LOOK OF THRAWN'S OH MAN THE SNARLING LIP CURL, THE RAGE, YES PLEASE MORE.

The struggle to recompose himself OH MAN.

This is peak Mirrorverse!Thrawn and I'm here for it. I love seeing my headcanons playing out onscreen.

Aaaaaand this would have been the perfect scene to have Ezra and Sabine sharing the Our Lightsaber, meanwhile Sabine should be fully kitted out Mando style.

*simmers*

STAGE THIS DIFFERENTLY SO THAT SABINE'S BESKAR IS NOT CONSTANTLY LITERAL PLOT ARMOR PLEASE.

Aahhhhhhh Ezra my love! <3

Should have either let him use the Our Lightsaber or continued with the Force martial arts though, pick a lane. Or have a conversation about why they need to actually get him another saber.

Eman is... waaaaaaay better at this than Rosario, sad to say, lol.

Look at him GO THERE'S MY BOY.

I love him.

Oh what are we doing now?

Ohhhhh the zombie!troopers!

Lol Ezra must have left before the Nightsisters could show Thrawn their zombie techniques.

Eman makes this look flawless, I am in love.

Battle Couple Sabezra moment, awww.

"I missed you."

FAKSJHFAKJFHHKKHHHFHFH OKAY DEAD.

DEAD AND DECEASED.

LIKE THE ZOMBIES LOL.

Aaaaaaaaand I'm gonna adjust this in the fixfic, because right now it looks like they were waiting to actually dock.

And my typing is being slowed down hang on a second.

Still dumb.

Okay back.

Thrawn basically telling Morgan, "Right, so you're going to have to go fight the Rebels and stall die for me, mmkay?"

She's looking like she might regret all of this now lolol.

I do like how the finale is making it very very easy for me to fix later lol.

Like here. Morgan should have attempted to stop Ezra and Sabine. Just a small attempt, and then blocked by Ahsoka, and Ezra and Sabine run around and outmaneuver them.

BATTLE COUPLE SABEZRA. :D

Aaaaand final trailer shot accounted for.

Okay, can there be a little more effort on the choreography there please?

Oh no Sabine, EZRA SAVE HER.

Or we could retcon Sabine into actually legitimately being Force Sensitive and have her pull the Our Lightsaber.

SIIIIIIIIGHHHHHHH.

*grumbles, takes down notes about how to fix this in my rewrite*

Oh come on Ezra, you can jump that.

Catch me melting at the sheer and utter trust Ezra has in Sabine's abilities.

(But also, screw this, she's getting a jetpack in the rewrite.)

Aaaaaaaaaand I do hate that they got separated again, screwing alllllll of that.

Nice of the troopers to just politely stop shooting.

Yeah so, this is basically gonna be a 1 v 100 for Ahsoka when I rewrite it, let my girl have a hard fought climactic battle, she can take it.

"Your friends are dead." Uhhhh nah they ain't what does this bit of dialogue even connect to?

Lol Ezra gets to put on the big boy stormtrooper armor.

The vaaaaaaaaaguely panicky twitches that Thrawn has here. A+, excellent, no notes.

No kill like overkill LOLOLOL.

Thrawn, internally: Shitshitshitshitshitshitshiiiiiiiiiiiiit.

Ah Thrawn is going to try Break Them By Talking. Ezra tanked this let's see if Ahsoka can do the same.

Nope, she's Affected.

Aaaaaand he out.

Bye Thrawn!

Hmmmmgh, yeah no, because in my rewrite I'm axing the entirety of Sabine actually becoming a Jedi it's going to be better that she goes with Ezra on the Eye of Sion instead of stays with Ahsoka, if she stayed a Jedi then yes that's what the conclusion should have been that makes narrative sense now that I see it.

But also again, I Do Not Like That Plot Point so--*grumblegrumble mumble*

Hi Morai!

Bandit queen Shin? I could dig it.

Baylan chilling with Mortis god statues.

I STILL DO NOT SEE ANY SOLID EVIDENCE THEY'RE GONNA DO ABELOTH GUYS, SORRY.

And Thrawn is setting up base on Dathomir. Lol wait til he finds out that there's basically nothing there anymore lololol.

Those uh... those be a lotta dead troopers. Probably most of the Chimaera crew.

...Cripes did they die naturally, did Ezra kill them, or did Thrawn pull some kind of Jonestown thing in order to enact his eventual revenge?

Oh maaaaan what if it's that last one, that would fit with the cult-like chanting in his intro omgghghhhggkajsfkjh.

Frick man, Thrawn fixing to unleash an undead army on the GFFA that can really only be taken out by lightsabers.

Oh come on, you're telling me Ezra was on the Eye and didn't pull some last minute shenanigans before he left?

Didn't screw Thrawn over one last time for nostalgia's sake?

(He and Sabine are blowing up some engines before they skedaddle, in the fixfic.)

HERA AND EZRA SHOULD HAVE BEEN ALLOWED A HUG, FILONI.

The attempt at bookends here is cute but no. LET HERA HUG HER SON.

THIS DOESN'T EVEN REALLY WORK AS A BOOKEND.

YES THE PART WHERE CHOPPER RECOGNIZES HIM IS CUTE BUT THIS IS WASTED DRAMA. THERE'S NO REASON FOR THIS.

LET HERA HUG HER SOOOOOOONNNN.

This whole scene just doesn't work because we're trying to shoehorn it into being a bookend for the opening, it doesn't wooooooooooorrrrrk.

THEY SHOULD HAVE HUGGED.

*furiously taking down notes on how to rewrite this scene*

*grumbling*

Blah blah Sabine can feel Anakin there but Ahsoka can't? blah blah blah.

Aaaaaaand closing us out with "As The Sun Sails And The Moon Walks"

Well.

Where do I begin?

Okay so... final verdict... I DO actually like this show.

THAT BEING SAID.

There was soooooooo much about the execution and so many of the narrative choices that I just NEEDED to be better and it frustrates me. Because this show by all rights should have been a spectacular emotional thrill ride like Kenobi and it just wasn't.

A lot of the problems and nitpicks I had with Kenobi are exacerbated here, especially under Filoni's brand of, "I didn't care for what Lucas did with the Prequels, here let me fix it." NO FILONI IT DIDN'T NEED FIXING IT WAS FINE! HOW THE FORCE WORKED WAS FINE! THE JEDI WERE FINE!

But there's such GOOD STUFF in here that I can't discount it all fully like I can with the Sequel Trilogy. (Which, believe me, I have attempted to workshop and fixfic but ultimately gave up on.) The purrgil lore! The Ancient Dathomiri! Another galaxy! Whatever Baylan was up to! Sabezra being adorable! Thrawn!

Soooooo yeah, basically join me sometime in the future for when I inevitably create a fixfic AU for this show like I did for Aldnoah.Zero because unfortunately I can't give up on this show I need to fix it, just hand me the characters and story and I can fix it.

Can't do much for the camerawork, choreography, and occasional stiff acting (Not you Eman, Natasha, Ray, Evan, and Lars, you're all great.) but I can at least salvage that part lol.

Ultimately... mid. Excellent premise and cool concepts brought down by subpar execution and some frankly baffling narrative decisions. But gimme like a week and I will workshop a Fanon AU that I can be completely happy with.

Hopefully we get a Season Two? Maybe? Or resolve everything in the Mandoverse movie?

Peace out, y'all.

[kanansdume]

In all of the discussions about Ahsoka being called a "former Jedi Knight" in the opening crawl, I am remembering that Felony recently did that interview where he claimed that Luke Skywalker was not TECHNICALLY a Knight because no one ever officially knighted him, and uh.

Hm. The hypocrisy is just... so pungent.

[aviandistressmachine]

Let the comparison speak for itself...

[nateofgreat]

The true power to keep those you love from dying isn't found in the Sith at all... It's found in Dave Filoni's writing.

Seriously, if his fav's ever in danger he can just beam down a time portal or plot contrivance to keep her going well after it makes narrative sense for her to be alive.

[auditect]

"In the untold stories of the Clone Wars, we would have seen that Mandalore would get occupied by the Republic, and that became the Empire."

And now we know that's Ahsoka's fault, and Obi-Wan is the bad guy for trying to stop it!