To talk about why I don't think the Ahsoka show works, I'm gonna have to drop a hot take: Ahsoka Tano has never been an interesting character. Interesting things just keep happening to her. Please put down the pitchforks for a second and hear me out. Ahsoka Tano was created for The Clone Wars animated series, to be a point-of-view character for the younger audience to relate to. It's no coincidence that when it came time to premiere this show, rather than pick any storylines from Season 1, the decision was made to cram the arc that debuted this character into a "movie" that would serve as the show's pilot, even though it'd mean as a viewer you'd have to wait several episodes to actually see her again since they still had all of the prior episodes to release first. What this meant is that it mattered less who Ahsoka was and more about how capable she was of allowing the younger audience to project themselves onto her. To immerse themselves in the magic of Star Wars. This is why her signature snark that earns her the nickname "Snips" exists. She's not exactly what you'd expect of a child in a war. She's a trained warrior in her own right, even if she still requires Anakin's teaching to an extent. This is, I think, one of her central character traits. The other major character trait I would ascribe to Ahsoka is compassion. There is a warmth to this character that always came through Ashley Eckstein's performance, one that meant that every time she makes a new friend, I bought the connection. And she makes a *lot* of friends. Almost too many. This character has met half the Star Wars characters at this point. Both of these things don't come together to create a particularly deep character, but they meant Ahsoka filled the role she needed to in The Clone Wars. The trouble, then, is what happens when you try to make her the focal point of a story long separated from the events of that show. The Clone Wars was over half of this Ahsoka's life ago. That's not who she is anymore. The Ahsoka Tano we follow in the present day is missing both of these traits, and they've been replaced with nothing else. Neither leaving the Jedi Order nor the events of Rebels seem to have fleshed her out in any meaningful way. She's empty. Ahsoka Tano is yet another flat and lifeless Disney+ Star Wars protagonist, joining the ranks of Boba Fett and The Mandalorian Season 3's Din Djarin. Much criticism is leveled at Rosario Dawson's performance, especially as extra scrutiny was placed on her due to replacing the actress who gave this character her iconic voice, Ashley Eckstein, but I don't think this is her fault. It's not just her performance that's bland and lifeless, it's her writing. I don't know who this character is, really. How she thinks, how she makes decisions, what makes her stand out. It's almost hard to even elaborate on. At this point all I can really ask is, who is this version of Ahsoka Tano other than a hollow recreation of childhood memories? This is not a good headspace for your viewers to be in when talking about a character with 15 years of history behind her, and more importantly, when she's the titular character of this show! The arc she goes on is gestured at, but without a compelling character filtered through it, it's meaningless. As we learn in Episode 4, the Empire wiped out Sabine's family along with most of the rest of the Mandalorians shortly after the end of Rebels. For nebulous reasons that are never really elaborated on, this is, apparently, partially influenced by Ahsoka's inaction. Following this, a rift formed between the two, Ahsoka believing these events and how they affected Sabine made her a poor fit to be a Jedi, and Sabine upset by losing her family and becoming more and more determined to find a way of locating her missing friend Ezra Bridger. Over the course of the show, in particular a vision quest in Episode 5, Ahsoka realizes her mistake, the ways in which her own fears forced her into that inaction that caused such a tragedy, and the ways they're causing her to fail Sabine even now. And by conquering these fears, master and apprentice can work together again and continue the fight against the threat of a returning Empire. Here's the thing, the "character" is missing from that character arc. This show is unwilling to really unpack what any of these things say about Ahsoka, display any of the way these supposed flaws actually influence her decisions in the present day. Her actions are an enigma, she seems entirely driven by one thing: plot. Stopping Thrawn for no other reason than that the plot demands it. When she is forced to work with Sabine again, they just start Jedi training again like nothing happened. Sabine only ever expresses anger over Ahsoka quitting that training the first time, not the far larger resentment suggested by the "Sabine's family is dead and it's Ahsoka's fault" plot point. In fact, I'm still not entirely sure if those events *are* supposed to be Ahsoka's fault or if Sabine is just blindly looking for someone to blame. Regardless, there is no true moment of resolution to this thread, no conversation between Ahsoka and Sabine about what happened to Sabine's family, confronting those feelings that have been building for years. We only ever resolve the "abandoned Jedi training" thread, and even then, what actually changes about how Ahsoka intends to train Sabine are left vague. This is due to the fact that Ahsoka herself doesn't really change. She's stoic at the beginning, but after a vision quest tells her that her problem is actually that she's too afraid of history repeating itself and that she needs to get over this fear (despite it never coming through in her actions before this point), now we see her able to crack a joke every now and then as if that alone is emblematic of a broader character shift. Ahsoka's actual actions don't really change after this point. Everything's as empty as it used to be, even those jokes come across as mere distractions from Ahsoka's usual flat demeanor she still retains from the very beginning of the show. This is supposed to be a story of failed master and apprentice, but it seems unwilling to actually display the failure of that master. It barely seems to matter. The event that drove these two apart is barely a footnote, explained after the fact as if we saw it in some unseen season of Rebels. There's another Star Wars entry I think they could have learned from here. In The Last Jedi, the main event that caused Luke and Kylo's relationship to fracture isn't explained until over an hour into the movie. But that doesn't mean you don't feel its presence in every interaction before then. Something BIG happened, and you're on the edge of your seat waiting to see what it is. A Sword of Damocles hangs over the heroic image of Luke Skywalker, and once it finally drops, you understand just how bad things are, how Luke feels about it, and how much he needs to change. Your perception of this man is shattered, but it also serves as the catalyst for his transformation in the second half of the movie. We see the fall of Luke Skywalker the paragon, but also another rise. When Ahsoka's blade drops in Episode 4 with the reveal of what happened between her and Sabine, it's not the Sword of Damocles, but a tiny, dulled dagger, one you didn't even notice was there until it harmlessly plopped her on the head. It doesn't feel like there was this massive point of tension building up to this moment, and its revelation doesn't affect anything that comes after it. From this point on, all Ahsoka and Sabine talk about, both to each other but also ABOUT each other is the former's decision to abandon Sabine's training. It might as well not have even happened. It's a reveal that exists almost solely to contextualize a single choice Sabine makes immediately after we learn this information. There's minimal conflict, no one made any substantial mistakes, and yet we spent 8 episodes with these characters supposedly dealing with this. How am I supposed to believe these people have changed when the story never really gave them reason to change? When they weren't really characters to begin with, and don't really become proper characters after? What actually... happened? Sure, a lot of plot moved forward. The "Mandoverse" side of Star Wars will never be the same again. But the journey these two characters went on barely affected them. We're just told it did. But telling us the outline of the arc, telling us that this change happened, doesn't mean it's what actually came through in their characterization. Perhaps it was the serialization that hurt Dave Filoni here. The main difference between this and his previous shows isn't the medium (though, that certainly creates its own issues) but the format. In previous shows, they were episodic or contained to short multi-episode arcs. Which meant that each episode or arc had to serve not just as a piece of the wider story, but its own bite-sized narrative. Characters had to learn a lesson or otherwise change as people by the end. These lessons and changes would all come together to form the wider arc, the broader way the events of the show changed them. Here, though, the entire 8 episodes are one continuous story, and Filoni is *only* left with that broad strokes change. He's failed to fill it in with the small-scale changes that made his storylines work in the past. Perhaps, then, the real villain of this show is the Disney content machine, preventing this from merely being the Rebels sequel it wanted to be. No, instead it's part of the wider story being told with this franchise. In this Ahsoka show, they have to spend vital time building towards Heir to the Empire, even if it comes at the expense of Ahsoka herself. What a disappointing result for the culmination of Filoni's 15 years of storytelling for this franchise so far. Favorite episode: Far, Far Away