Main cast: Rosario Dawson (Ahsoka Tano), Natasha Liu Bordizzo (Sabine Wren), Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Hera Syndulla), Ray Stevenson (Baylan Skoll), Ivanna Sakhno (Shin Hati), Diana Lee Inosanto (Morgan Elsbeth), David Tennant (Huyang), and Eman Esfandi (Ezra Bridger)
Director: Dave Filoni

First things first: I have not watched any of the cartoons with Ahsoka Tano, and no I don’t care to.

I have heard, though, that she’s Dave Filoni’s personal creation, his Mary Sue of a waifu that comes with plot armor thicker than Emperor Palpatine’s, and also that Mr Filoni has no issues breaking lore just to let Ahsoka reign supreme forever and ever. 

Of course, as an open-minded and discerning intellectual, I will come into this show with only the certainty that, as with anything recent that came out of Disney, this thing has a high chance of being full of obnoxious girlbosses acting like they are the best ever when in actuality, the plot allows them to exist in easy mode and the whole thing is actually an insult to the concept of a strong, independent woman. 

I’d like to be proven wrong, naturally.

I haven’t heard a peep of pre-show hype, though. Then again. Lucasfilm has far more things to worry about, like how to cover Kathleen Kennedy’s big fat ass after she allowed the studio to lose billions of dollars in the last two years.

Okay, back on topic: here’s Ahsoka, and here’s the first episode, Part One: Master and Apprentice.

Oh, and there’s a “required viewing” list of the cartoons out there to help people understand what is happening here.

In this one, the diseased fingers of present day Lucasfilm are digging into the Expanded Universe books, which Ms Kennedy herself had famously dissociated her Star Wars from, so I guess these people are just desperate and out of ideas now. This is galling, because Mr Filoni is going to perform rectal surgery on Grand Admiral Thrawn’s hot and handsome form with his own hot take, and Thrawn is one of my favorite EU characters from my favorite EU series, Heir to the Empire by Timothy Zahn.

Ahsoka Tano has escorted her prisoner Morgan Elsbeth—don’t know who that is; don’t care—to the New Republic for an undoubtedly fair and effective trial when she also discovers a plot to draw Thrawn, thought to be dead, out of hiding and galvanize the Empire into poo-pooing all over the New Republic.

She has captured one of the Empire’s lackeys that talked about a map that will indicate Luke Skywalker’s hiding place… oh wait, different movie, sorry… anyway, it’s an important map.

The opening scene has me wondering whether I’d accidentally watched one of the leprous present day Star Trek shows, with a blue-green C3PO acting like Data, which just proves that these days, all these present day mutative “modernization” of old sci-fi classics are done by the same incestuous bunch of untalented hacks that only get by by playing the DEI card instead of actual merit and experience.

These budget Star Trek extras are soon mowed down by the characters referenced in the title: the fallen Jedi Baylan Skoll and his apprentice Shin Hati. The dumb crew were carrying Morgan, and these two release her and learn of Ahsoka’s plan.

Seriously, is making a non-standalone show wise, when Lucasfilm has already driven off every other Star Wars fans? Who’s going to make the effort to re-watch those cartoons to keep track of who is doing what?

Then, the good guys show up and things become far more dull as a result.

No, really, the bad guys steal the show the moment they appear, and while Rosario Dawson is capable of producing the gravitas necessary to carry off her role as the title character, she and the rest of the mostly female goody-goody main characters feel so dreadfully familiar by now. I feel like I’ve sat through all these characters’ shows before, only this time they have maybe a different jumpsuit or hair color.

Even the episode feels formulaic, right down to a girl on girl fight that sees them swinging glow sticks like kids play acting as Jedi warriors at some carnival, and yes, I totally believe they would get rid of the main girl in the first episode instead of announcing to the shill media that they are making a spin-off show with her. 

I’m also really bored of all those extras on both the good and bad sides having atrocious aims and being unable to do anything competent when they are against the main characters. Sure, it may look okay back in the 1970s and 1980s, and nowadays this is just lazy writing that puts the main characters in the easy mode stage and it’s boring to watch. This is something that they could have modernized—make the other side credibly threatening, damn it!—but I suppose it’s easier for these lazy slops to just turn everyone into a black or Latino lesbian girlboss before calling it a day.

Anyway, the first episode of Ahsoka is on the ah-so-meh side. Without the carryover rose-tinted fondness of those cartoons, I don’t find it particularly compelling and memorable. 

Sure, it won’t hurt to watch this episode, and it is already be 10 times better than the entire third season of The Mandalorian.

Then again, I can’t underestimate the ability of present day Disney to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory. 

I may stick around to see how they will ruin Thrawn though, because I’m that much of a masochist sometimes!