‘Ashoka’ Is Promising But Here’s Why It’s Also Frustrating

The latest Star Wars series, Ahsoka, premiered on Disney Plus on Tuesday and the reactions are deservingly mostly positive. I personally believe it to be a promising show but I also find numerous things about it quite frustrating.

1. The Opening Sequence

Few things annoy me more in a story then when the writer(s) insult the intelligence of their viewers. In the opening of Ahsoka — even in the context of the rather unreal story — no viewer is really going to believe that two complete strangers would be happily welcomed onto a ship that is transporting a major criminal.

The entire, “Hey, we’re Jedi,” shtick wasn’t even what got them on board because the captain knew they weren’t Jedi. He let them on board basically because he found the whole thing entertaining and he wanted to “call their bluff,” which is something no captain anywhere would ever do when their job is to transport a criminal. It’s the strangest opening to a Star Wars series or Star Wars movie that I’ve seen — and that includes Phantom Menace — which is further disappointing when you consider that the opening 10 minutes to Rebels might be the best.

It’s the type of element to a story that relies too much on hoping the audience will buy into it and not care about the reasons behind it, but no story should actually start that way. This opening depends entirely on the viewer deciding to be ok with overlooking it, but a Jedi mind trick — sorry, a non-Jedi mind trick — would have actually been more believable.

2. Another Map Storyline

The “This map leads us to where we want to go” idea was already used in the most recent Star Wars film trilogy. In fact, it can be said that a map to find someone (in that case it was Luke Skywalker) is what the plot of two of those films centered around.

A map in Attack of the Clones was also what made Obi-Wan Kenobi realize something’s amiss because the planet he needed to go to — the stormy ocean world of Kamino — was wiped off the Jedi Archives Galactic Map. I personally can’t stand it when I plan a trip to a different planet and the map doesn’t even include that planet. The younglings told Obi-Wan to go to the area where the gravitational pull is because that’s likely where the planet is, though I personally would have suggested to just buy a different map.

There are likely two pieces of good news, however, for all this map madness in Ahsoka. First of all, it does set up what could be a great story. Secondly, this certainly has to be the last map storyline we see in Star Wars, right? It has to be.

3. Morgan Elsbeth can sense Thrawn, despite his being in another galaxy

This was too much of a stretch for me, and practically laughable. Elsbeth explained to Baylan Skoll when she was showing him the map to the other galaxy that “Thrawn calls to me across time and space.”

This is the entire reason why the story we are about to be entertained by is about journeying to another galaxy — because a character uses the force to call to another from a completely different galaxy.

That has to be one of the most outrageous ideas in Star Wars and that’s saying something. Between that and the opening of the series, it’s a wonder I still like it because sometimes writers do the very best they can to push the boundaries but often don’t realize when they’re going too far. In this case, they are both figuratively and literally going way too far.

4. Dialogue so dry, one could cry

Star Wars has always had some strange dialogue but it’s rarely ever extremely dry. In the double episode premiere of Ahsoka we get dialogue so dry that I strongly feel as if a child could write better dialogue. It doesn’t seem to matter which character it is either, proving the scriptwriting was at least practicing equality.
There wasn’t one memorable line from the premiere, other than the laughable one I noted earlier and maybe “I’m no Jedi,” from that poorly thought out opening sequence. Ironically, that line was spoken by Baylan Skoll, who turns out to have pretty dry dialogue anyway, though for his character it actually makes sense.

However, such dryness only lends itself to my biggest frustration in the series so far.

5. No personalities

One can argue that Star Wars Rebels has the most personality of any Star Wars film or series because every character was so perfectly presented with their own respective personality that it’s the real reason why the show felt so alive. In that respect, it was an extension of The Clone Wars series which initially presented fresh dynamics between characters and made you enjoy the personalities of many of them. Ahsoka was snippy, it was even a part of her nickname, and although she matured by the end of the series, she still had a bit of snippy in her. Where did that go?

Rosario Dawson is likely limited to what the filmmakers are trying to achieve, which appears to be a more serious tone for this series. However, serious shouldn’t necessarily equate to dullness and, let’s face it, dullness is definitely a word that can describe EVERY personality we have seen so far in the young series.

Ahsoka literally has no character traits she had in Clone Wars or Rebels. It’s all gone. Dawson is perhaps doing her own version of the character but the single most appealing thing about the Ahsoka character was her personality. Now, she’s just someone who walks around very slowly and is like, “Hey.”

This is further puzzling when you consider that Rebels was Dave FIloni’s baby and here he is creating this series with some of the same characters but he forgot what made Rebels so unique.

Hera Syndulla was very forthcoming and often outgoing in Rebels but now she has also become flat and is practically a completely different person. It’s as if her and Ahsoka have been drained of their characteristic soul. The sad reality is that Chopper, despite being a droid, actually has more personality than any of them now.

Then, there’s Sabine Wren. She was a colorful person inside and out who also, when trapped in conversation, has suddenly become dry. Filoni seems to rely strictly on actions to present the personalities of the characters so when Sabine Wren was riding like the rebel she is away from the celebration in Lothal, it became our lone moment of recognizing Sabine Wren in the Ahsoka premiere.

This is all further realized when you notice that Star Wars Rebels excelled in character dynamics. Here, there’s not a single dynamic conversation or interaction between anyone. The humorous thing about this is that it actually works for two characters: Baylan Skoll and Shin Hati. However, that’s because they are the dark moody type. Why is everyone else in such a mood around here? We need some Hondo Ohnaka in this series.

Just because they look like their characters doesn’t mean they are acting like their characters. This is by far my greatest disappointment in the premiere, especially after surviving the moodiness of Andor. The Star Wars Rebels I looked forward to watching every week has actually not been revived in Ahsoka despite it basically being a sequel to Rebels.

We’re stuck in the moodiness era of Star Wars, thanks to the success of The Mandalorian, but I still believe things can get better. Star Wars is fun. It’s meant to be a pop band with some funk elements and a twist of rock but it has become a grunge band with very little pop.

At least make it a punk band. If it were then I’d be ok with that. Rebels was basically a punk band with pop but Ahsoka so far is like listening to a great Alice In Chains song on a Taylor Swift album. It’s cool but it seems out of place.

I hope that Star Wars can get swiftly back to what made it fun, even if in increments, because fans deserve fun outside of just the action.

And the force is strong with fun.