The Jedi, The Witch And The Warlock (Ahsoka - S01E08) - Live Action Series

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"Ezra?" SPOILERS.

Morgan Elsbeth has unlocked a new skill point and gets an upgrade

So this is it. The first season of Ahsoka, a second one has yet to be officially greenlit, has come to an end. Was the finale satisfying, was it fun, did it answer any questions? To spoil my own review: it depends. You can absolutely enjoy the finale if you like lots of action and pretty looking shots. If you expected any real answers for any of the mysteries, you will be very disappointed. And if you forgot to switch off your brain you may even wonder what the heck it is that you just watched, because once more little to nothing makes any actual sense.

Ezra has gathered 1,000 gems and unlocks his new lightsaber

You see, on the surface "The Jedi, The Witch and The Warlock" (Filoni is apparently a fan of C.S. Lewis) is entertaining and fun. Things happen. If by "happen" I mean people dueling, lots of lightsaber action, TIE fighters shooting, Stormtroopers not killing anyone. But as for an actual plot... there is little.

So now Thrawn sends his TIE fighters?

Let's cover the basics first. Early in the episode Morgan receives a power upgrade, she is made a full blown witch, the head Nightsister transfers mystical power to Morgan. And since this is not enough the Nightsisters conjure up some magic blade (the Blade of "Talzin"), so Morgan can have her endgame boss fight later in the episode. Ezra meanwhile crafts his own new weapon, he apparently needs a lightsaber after all. Sabine gets to keep Kanan's old saber, maybe it would have been a good idea for her to make her own saber too? But in this scene we get a rare moment of plot and some revelations at least. We learn that Sabine lost everyone after the purge, all of her family is gone and Ahsoka abandoned her training because she feared what might become of Sabine if they kept on training, so apparently Ahsoka sensed the dark side in her and thought it best to stop training. But all is good now in the present and Ahsoka talks to Sabine about her old master always stood by her side. Meaning, she will of course stand by Sabine and not abandon her once again.  

Thrawn is informed of the latest developments

Thrawn meanwhile wants to delay Ahsoka and friends because he absolutely expects them to come for him. So he sends two TIE fighters to deal with the Jedi shuttle and the very same Jedi shuttle which could take blaster hit after blaster hit and only suffered minor damage after what felt like hours of dogfighting in space is seriously damaged after a first round of blaster cannon fire this time. But Sabine manages to steer the ship into the TIEs which explode, but then the ship crashes and is out of commission for the time being. Huyang is tasked with repairs, while Ahsoka and the others ride to the old temple where the Star Destroyer is almost ready to fly off. Now my question is: why didn't Thrawn send not two, but ten or more TIE fighters in the previous episode to blast them all to bits and pieces and solve any and all problems once and for all? And why did he not send ten or more TIE fighters now at least, why just two? Well, because Dave Filoni cannot have Ahsoka fail of course, so the antagonists are all graduates of the Dr. Evil School of Supervillainy.

Stormtroopers, as ineffective as ever

Of course it takes no time at all for Ahsoka, Ezra and Sabine to arrive at the temple (how awfully convenient, isnt't it?). There they are greeted by a platoon of Stormtroopers who willingly sacrifice themselves to delay Ahsoka just a bit, so Thrawn can finally take off with the Star Destroyer which is now coupled to the hyperspace ring. Why this takes so much time is anyone's guess. The timing is as usual extremely convenient here.

The Walking Dead, Star Wars style

The heroic trio has of course little problem with disposing all the Stormtroopers... but the Nightsisters then chant some magick spell and the dead troopers all return to unlife as now zombified troopers Marrock style. Ahsoka and co try to reach the top of the temple, with zombie troopers now chasing them, but they too prove to be mostly just a minor inconvenience. Now you may wonder why Thrawn doesn't just say "to heck with the last two caskets or so" and just gives the order to launch BEFORE any of that happens? But of course he can only launch in the nick of time just as the heroes reach the top for dramatic effect.

Dave Filoni successfully passed the "Foreshadowing for Beginners" course

The action is not over yet. Morgan Elsbeth, a character that was completely wasted in the series and had very little to do, gets her 10 minutes of fame after all. She did receive her power up and bought her super cool endgame weapon in the magickal microtransaction store for a reason. Thrawn sees that despite sending 20 or so ineffective Stormtroopers Ahsoka is still making too much progress, and he still won't launch his Star Destroyer. So he orders Elsbeth to fight Ahsoka, which means he sacrifices her, because even if Morgan survives she will be left behind. But she accepts willingly, because, why not. They are all in love with Thrawn in this show without any real explanation.

Ezra believes he can fly, with the wind beneath his wings kindly provided by Sabine

But that is still not enough action, so two Death Troopers try to deal with Sabine and Ezra who left Ahsoka fighting Elsbeth, so they can still board the Star Destroyer. And we actually learn something new: the Death Troopers are literally some kind of zombies, they are certainly very dead, or at least seriously decomposed. Now this opens up a lot of new questions, but at least we now know what's beneath that Death Trooper helmet. And the scene also serves an important purpose, because Sabine, after trying only ever since episode 1 or so, finally unlocks her own power upgrade and when one Death Trooper is just about to choke her, she manages to pull her lightsaber to her and she kills the trooper at the last moment. Ahsoka and Elsbeth meanwhile fight their way up the stairs to the temple platform. And now Thrawn can finally launch his Star Destroyer. Because. Sabine urges Ezra to jump, even though the distance to the hangar bay is too far, no one can make that jump. But Sabine, who unlocked her Jedi powers one minute ago, is now convinced she can push Ezra for the extra momentum he needs. So Ezra jumps and Sabine indeed manages to force push Ezra the extra way and he barely makes it onto the ship. Ahsoka and Elsbeth are still fighting and Sabine seemingly follows Ahsoka's orders and the audience believes for a few seconds that Sabine is jumping too, with Ezra then force pulling her. Spoiler: Sabine does not jump of course and stays behind to help Ahsoka.

The Stormtroopers all attended the Dr Evil School of Henchmen

Ahsoka and Elsbeth are still dueling, only now on the temple platform. The zombie Stormtroopers also arrive and what do they do? They form a polite circle around the two and watch the spectacle, instead of shooting Ahsoka from all sides at once. Makes perfect sense if you want to pay hommage to Austin Powers or those old Bruce Lee movies. Villains politely taking turns fighting the hero does have a long tradition in movies after all.

Good bye, Morgan, we hardly knew you

Morgan manages to destroy the shorter of Ahsoka's lightsabers but things turn around when Sabine appears out of nowhere and starts killing Stormtroopers left and right. Ahsoka then manages to slice Morgan's stomach and that's the end of her. What a waste of a character and actress. Morgan had little to do all season, she only existed for the final boss fight and for Ahsoka to kill her.

So the Star Destroyer has functional weapons after all

Thrawn still tries to kill Ahsoka and finally decides that maybe he should fire his lasers after all. And he pulverizes the ancient temple. The remaining troopers all die. But Ahsoka and Sabine survive, they jump off the platform and happen to land on the fuselage of the Jedi shuttle piloted by Huyang. Now imagine Huyang had taken 5 seconds longer to repair the ship, imagine the horror! But Dave Filoni is a big fan of convenient timing and so of course all is well. How Ahsoka even knew the shuttle is waiting is another mystery, let's not dwell on it. The horse is always waiting for the hero in the right spot when he jumps down some wall. We get it. Ahsoka and co pursue the ship into space and Thrawn even initiates a polite chat with them over radio, instead of, you know, firing his bazillion space lasers at them. The Star Destroyer makes the jump then and leaves Ahsoka and Sabine behind.

Shin of Arabia

If you are still reading this you may wonder... hey, what about Baylan and Shin? Only the two most interesting characters on the show? Didn't Baylan have some kind of secret agenda and some plan? What about that? That is super interesting! Well, Dave Filoni believes in cliffhangers. We get twenty seconds of screentime for Shin, who rides her space wolf horse to the not Tusken raiders, there she stops on a hill overlooking their camp, raises her lightsaber and ignites it. That's it. Are we to assume she becomes their warrior queen now? Why? For what purpose? Why would Shin go to them? Whatever. Shin wins the MTV Award for Most Wasted Character Ever with how Filoni wrote her.        

Baylan goes to Mordor

Baylan literally goes to Mordor. Maybe he will even find the One Ring. No, what we see in his twenty seconds of screentime is how he literally goes to Mordor and on the horizon a beacon is glimmering in the mountains, you know, like in a video game when Ubisoft wants you to know there is a point of interest all the way back on the horizon, so you'd better walk there to find the loot chest! Baylan, like Shin, gets zero dialogue. What a waste of Ray Stevenson who sadly died earlier this year and will not reprise his role. But with that ending they would have to recast Baylan, if Ahsoka gets a second season (very likely).

Thrawn arrives at Dathomir

Thrawn meanwhile makes it back and he arrives at Dathomir with his mystery caskets in the cargo hold. What's in them? Dave Filoni has you guessing, we learn nothing. Chances are high those may be either soon to be zombified dead Nightsisters or maybe Nightsisters in some kind of suspended animation.

Ezra is home

Dave Filoni is not finished with us yet and at least we learn what happens to Ezra, who was, last we saw him, in the hangar bay of the Star Destroyer all alone, after killing two Stormtroopers. We see how an Imperial shuttle is escorted by two A-Wings as it approaches the New Republic fleet. The shuttle lands and a stormtrooper steps out. Everyone is ready to shoot him, only Chopper beeps and boops and rolls to the trooper who is of course none other than Ezra who only then removes his helmet for dramatic effect!
Question 1: how did Ezra manage to steal a shuttle and get away from the Star Destroyer? Why was he not found in the first place?
Question 2: why didn't he bother contacting either the A Wings or the fleet over radio to inform them of his identity, so they don't shoot him accidentally?
Question 3: how did Ezra know where Hera is to begin with?
Question 4: why did Ezra not remove his Stormtrooper helmet before he disembarked, you know, to avoid any potential confusion?
The simple solution to most of these issues... have Ezra drop out of hyperspace near the fleet in a badly damaged shuttle, even better, show us how he manages to escape from the Star Destroyer to begin with and how he shoots down several TIEs which pursue him. Anyway, to have your surprise scene on the hangar bay of Hera's ship have Ezra try to contact them, but his ship is too damaged and his radio busted... the shuttle crashlands into the hangar, tumbling a bit... a stunned Ezra, still with helmet on, crawls or tumbles out of the landing bay... Hera or Chopper or so approach him, take off his helmet, happy reunion. Whatever, ANYTHING would have made more sense than whatever it is Filoni cooked up here. The scene with Ezra makes zero sense at all.

Hayden Christensen wishes Lucasfilm had not forgotten about him when they made the sequels

And it's still not over, this feels like The Return of the King now: Sabine and Ahsoka (with Huyang) are now with the Space Jiminy Crickets, getting ready to have a very lonely life on some desolate planet. Sabine feels something... but then shakes off that feeling and says it's nothing, but then we cut to Anakin's force ghost watching the two in the camp. My question: why on earth would Sabine feel something and NOT Anakin's padawan? Whatever, at least it's over now.

On the absolute plus side the scene with Hera and Ezra reuniting at least worked on an emotional level. And seeing Anakin smiling as he watches over Ahsoka and Sabine also gives you that tingling feeling in the chest. So on an emotional level the last few moments of the show were satisfying, but only if you once again switch off your brain, because especially Ezra's scene would have been even more powerful if any of the things happening made any actual sense.

As you can tell I do not like this episode all that much once again, like last week. And like last week the season finale is perfectly fine and super entertaining when all you want is pew pew, lightsaber duels, lots and lots and lots of action and just "fun". However, I am of the opinion that there should also be this thing called "a plot" and that the plot should also make sense. And it doesn't, for the most part.

From Dr Evil villains and henchmen (really now) to very convenient timings and coincidences this episode is a showcase for bad and lousy writing. Also, let's talk about wasted potential. Does Lucasfilm or Filoni really expect people to wait for two years or so now to MAYBE find out what Baylan's plan is? Not to resolve basically anything is an insult to the viewer and overall Ahsoka season 1 is a waste of time, this could have easily been a two hour special event movie. We learn very little, we learn literally nothing about what Thrawn's real plan is, we learn nothing about what Baylan's real plan is and we do not learn what the heck it is Shin is attempting by joining the not Tusken raiders. Well, at least Ezra is back! Only we switched places, because now Ahsoka and Sabine are stranded in that other galaxy. It's almost funny. Of course all of that will eventually be resolved, this is not the point, the point is that most of the things we saw this season feel like a giant waste of time.

Baylan and Shin were, like Morgan Elsbeth, mostly wasted this season. We still know very little about them. A flashback to Baylan and how he finds and trains Shin would have been helpful, to show us where Baylan's new mindset comes from, which is only partially explained, but also to show us where Shin comes from and who she is.

Getting Ezra back was fine, the actor is a great fit for the role too. But overall the season wasted the opportunity to reunite the crew properly, and WHY did they waste a Zeb cameo in The Mandalorian and then hardly ever mention him here? He was as much part of the crew as anyone else.

Sadly, Ahsoka was the weakest link in her own series, ever since her not death she is somewhat improved, but still mostly a bot, but at least she is smiling again, and while it is easy to see what Filoni was going for here it just didn't work. Sabine was ok, Natasha Bordizzo is a great fit for the role, but she is not necessarily the best actress out there, but it's ok. That the series made this big thing about Sabine wanting Ezra back and then hardly doing anything with it is another wasted opportunity, doesn't mean the two need to marry on the spot, but Ahsoka is yet another aromantic, boring grey nothingburger in the romance department. Ok, no romance may be better than whatever it is Kylo and Rey had, but they could at least try, Solo showed us they can at least write star-crossed lovers.

My ultimate verdict is that Dave Filoni may be an ideas mean, I think some of his ideas for the show are really great... but the man cannot write a good script if his life depended on it. He relies on ancient tropes, there are plot contrivances left and right, super convenient timing is his #1 plot device, he also watched too many Austin Powers movies and the issue is that all of the people in the series must be incredibly dumb and borderline retarded for any of the plot to work. I cannot take Thrawn seriously here who had all the opportunity in the world to blast Ahsoka and the others into the next dimension. But no, he just inconveniences her so she can reach the top of the temple just as he is about to launch and barely out of reach. While this may look exciting on the surface it just showcases how Filoni uses "very convenient timing" all the time. And how he wrote the Ezra scene arriving on the hangar of Hera's ship is just nonsensical.

I deeply worry about any movie Filoni will write. In my opinion Filoni may be a lore master, a man with many good (and sometimes not so good) ideas but much, much more than George Lucas ever Filoni needs a competent person who knows how to write scripts, good dialogue and believable plots and who merely uses Filoni's ideas to craft a script that makes actual sense and does not insult your intelligence or requires you to switch off your brain if you want to enjoy Star Wars. It shouldn't be like this. Star Wars does not need to be Shakespeare, but if you must abandon all logic and common sense and put your brain to sleep so you can enjoy everything on the surface level then things are horribly wrong, this is not the way.

A final word about how the show was shot: I have come to hate the Volume, an overused crutch that cannot ever replace on location shooting or actual sets. If you have watched old movies from the 1940s and 50s you certainly remember what rear projection is. The actors were basically shot against a screen where a film projector rear projected footage shot on location, to give the impression the actors are not in a studio, but in that location. Of course it always looked super fake. And while the Volume has improved on the technicalities it still looks fake if you know the telltale signs. Shows using the volume too much feel fake, more like theater plays, not like movies or tv shows with actual sets. Again, Andor shows us that they can still shoot without the volume and Andor looked so real and tangible for a reason. I wish Lucasfilm would heavily reduce the time they spend in the Volume.

So, was Ahsoka season 1 worth it? If you can enjoy mindless action that makes little sense: absolutely, you can have a lot of fun after the first three very mediocre episodes. If you want your show to make at least some sense and for villains and henchmen not to be James Bond parodies, then there is a good chance you did not enjoy things all that much. Regarding the season finale it is symptomatic of the season as a whole: fun and quite entertaining if you do not think about anything, I would say a solid 7/10. If your brain failed to fall asleep though and you begin to think about it all it all falls apart and then the episode is a 3/10 - at best.

No season 2 of Ahsoka has been officially greenlit yet, but I would be extremely surprised if the show was cancelled. If that happened then Filoni's movie would be history too. Now some of you may say "that would be for the better". And based on Filoni's skills as writer and showrunner of his first live action series ever I would not even fault you for thinking this. I still hope the entire thing can be saved. But Filoni absolutely needs a competent writer by his side and someone who has veto power when things get too silly or dumb. Maybe that someone is Jon Favreau. Or maybe they can convince Tony Gilroy to stick around for a bit longer. Someone, anyone, with actual writing skills and some common sense. Because Ahsoka was painfully dumb too many times. Also, for the love of everything, get rid of the horrible contact lenses! They ruin the characters and make them look fake. And do something about the cheap looking face paint. And tell Mary Elizabeth Winstead to try to emulate Vanessa Marshall at least a little bit. And I hate to say this because I love the character of Ahsoka, I love Sabine, Hera and Ezra and I very much looked forward to Ahsoka. And then all I got was "Austin Powers - A Star Wars Parody". We all deserve better. We should demand better.