EPISODE 827: YAHSSS—SOKA
The new Star Wars show Ahsoka is a must see.
POP CULTURE SPIRIT WOW
I’ve been working on an interview with a cartoonist that I can’t wait to share with you all. I thought I’d give you part today and part next week, but it’s taking me a little longer to finish. So instead, I’m dropping a Wow, dedicated to this great new Star Wars show Ahsoka.
EPISODE I: WAIT, WHAT? WHO IS AHSOKA TANO?
If you don’t know who Ahsoka Tano is ( it’s pronounced Ah-SO-ka TAN-o), you’re not alone. At this point there are really three Star Wars audiences. There are the mainstream fans, who know the movies and the TV shows. There are the hardcore fans, who have been reading all the books for a very long time and can give you a history of the Star Wars universe that includes Han and Leia’s twins, the Knights of the Old Republic video games, and villains that normal fans have never heard about (all of which has been rebranded as the “Legendary” Star Wars universe and is no longer considere canon).
Then there are the Clone Wars heads, who despite the disaster that was Attack of the Clones decided they were all in for an animated series about the Clone Wars, and then stuck around as well for the animated Star Wars: Rebels, which followed a different set of characters in the years prior to A New Hope.
Rebels is a great show; I highly recommend it. Clone Wars is A LOT. There’s a ton of seasons and a ton of characters. Sometimes the storytelling is great. Sometimes it is not. But what made the show so special, and so important now, is that it introduced a young Padawan named Ahsoka Tano who was trained by Anakin Skywalker in the years before he went dark.
EPISODE II: EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT AHSOKA TANO
There are really three things you need to know about Ahsoka Tano. First, she’s maybe the best Jedi character that has ever been introduced. And by that I mean kind of the ideal Jedi: she got great skills, she works well with everyone (including the Clone troopers, who end up being a big part of the show), she’s got an enormous amount of empathy. She starts as basically your favorite kid sister and becomes just the best character on the show, period.
Second, yes, she was trained by Anakin Skywalker. And unlike other mentor relationships in Star Wars, over the course of the show she becomes his one real Jedi friend. Every other Jedi in the show has some kind of authority over him. Obi-Wan was his master. Yoda, Mace Windu and others we meet are all members of the Jedi Council or are a lot older than him. And he doesn’t seem to have any peers. Ahsoka is really the one person that he can just be himself without any possible threat or reproof or reprisal. Over time she becomes the one person other than Padmé that he can really lean on for emotional support, too. And unlike Padmé, Ahsoka is with Anakin in some pretty difficult situations. She’s almost like a sister to him by the end. She really really cares about him.
Lastly, she actually left the Jedi Order. As I talk about in this article I did for Popverse, Ahsoka gets accused of killing a bunch of Jedi and civilians, which is insane. But the Jedi Council still decides to expel her from the order. When it turns out she was set up, they try to turn the whole thing into a positive and say this was her big test to become a Jedi Master and she passed, she says basically fuck you and leaves the order. Ever since, she’s been operating completely on her own, helping people. She had a big role in intelligence during the Rebellion and has a major role over the course of Rebels. It’s since been revealed that she knew Luke after Return of the Jedi. In fact those two are the only two characters other than Padmé who never give up on Anakin.
And now here she is!
As I wrote for Popverse last week, I think Ahsoka represents both everything that was wrong with the Jedi, and potentially a new way of being Jedi that is a lot less crappy. And the most recent episode of her show is so all about that! But let me give one other little introduction.
EPISODE III: REBELS IS THE REAL PREQUEL TO STAR WARS
Although Ahsoka was just a supporting character on Rebels, it’s worth taking a minute to talk about it, because it’s a huge part of this new show.
Rebels was about a crew of five people and a droid who who worked together to fight the Empire in various ways. One of them, Sabine Wren, was from Mandalore and loved to paint helmets in wild colors; another, Kanan Jarrus, was actually a Jedi Knight who survived the purge by the Empire. And another was a kid named Ezra Bridger, who it turned out was force sensitive, and became Kanan’s padawan.
By the end of the series Kanan is dead; captain of the crew Hera—who in the TV show is being played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead, is pregnant with his baby; and Ezra has disappeared as part of a mission to stop the series arch-villain Supreme Commander Thrawn once and for all. There’s this species of space whales called Purrgil—which we also see in Ahsoka 103!—who “swim” through hyperspace. They seize all of Thrawn’s craft and teleport them some infinite distance away (and Ezra with them).
Sabine and Ahsoka had committed themselves at the end of Rebels to finding Ezra, but clearly never did. And now all this talk of the return of Thrawn suggests a way of maybe finding Ezra as well.
EPISODE IV: A NEW HOPE, PART 2
A big twist of these first episodes of Ahsoka is the reveal that she was actually training Sabine to be a Jedi for a while. That was not at all a thing on Rebels. But it’s turning out to be pretty great, precisely because it allows us to explore Ahsoka’s take on being a Jedi.
And this week’s episode has some really big stuff in it that’s worth exploring. Right at the top, Sabine is training with Huyang, who is this robot mentioned in two episodes of Clone Wars who has stored within him all of the data on all of the lightsabers ever made in the whole history of the Jedi, along with a lot of other stuff about the Jedi Order. It’s fine. Your typical novice working with swords moment.
Then we get Ahsoka stepping in, and she sets up basically the same training technique that Ben used on Luke a long long time ago on the Millenium Falcon. Sabine is made to wear a helmet with the blast shield down and told to reach out and feel with the Force. It goes slightly less bad than it did with Luke, but only because Ahsoka is not a mini-death star shooting at Sabine with lasers. It’s basically the same story.
Now, one reaction might be, man those Jedi really love a blast helmet training scenario. But I think that is there intentionally as a representation of the old ways of being Jedi. How do you train someone? You blind them and then attack them. We even that this droid from the old school giving all these instructions on how to do things and telling Sabine she’s not Jedi material. (And gee, look, he’s got a man’s voice.)
The Star Wars saga loves a callback. But when it refers to its own mythology like this, the whole point is to show change. What we’re getting here is an indication that the old Jedi approaches don’t work. Sabine maybe has moments where she swings correctly, but there’s no “deep connection to the Force” happening here.
The other thing about this scene is that Ahsoka is so Zen, so classic Star Wars “wise elder.” That’s really not her character in the cartoons. She’s much more dynamic and creative. She’s decades older here, but still, it doesn’t quite feel right.
Soon after all this, Ahsoka’s ship is attacked by a bunch of baddies, including Baby Sith. (This is as compared to Sith Daddy.)
Say his name and he shall appear, hopefully forever.
The two of them have to work together to try and fight off these ships. And it does not go well at first. When Ahsoka brushes off Huyang’s snide comments as material for later conversation, he says, “The way you’re both acting, there won’t be a later.”
And Rosario Dawson has Ahsoka give this little moment of recognition. And then for the first time she starts asking Sabine what Sabine needs her to do. She cedes her position of authority, basically. They become teammates, talking to each other, working together. And with that they’re able to fight off most of the bad guys.
This is some subtle stuff. There is no big moment of epiphany. That facial expression is really all they give us. But it’s a complete game changer. And you can see Ahsoka loosen up once she makes that choice. There’s a wonderful moment near the end where she’s floating by their ship after taking on the remaining fighters from the wing of the ship. “Did you fix the ship yet?” she is. It’s hilarious and classic Star Wars.
Also Ahsoka fighting ships from outside is just amazing. (This show has great fight sequences.)
EPISODE V: A WAY BETTER ATTACK OF CLONES?
We’ll have to see where all this goes. Clearly all our good guys and bad guys are going to leap across the universe to another galaxy to find Thrawn (and hopefully Ezra). Given the fact that Disney has already announced an eventual Mandalorian movie that will bring together threads from Ahsoka, Mandalorian, Book of Boba Fett and other shows, I suspect Thrawn is going to be the big bad that everything builds toward. (Maybe the film ends with the big battle that finally ends the Empire completely over the planet Rey will eventually live on).
But one other element that I’m excited to see play out on Ahsoka is the relationship between Sith Daddy and Baby Sith, aka Baylan Skoll and Shin Hati. Here, too, we’ve got a mentor/student relationship. But while their swords are blood red, neither of them is currently claiming Sith status. In fact, Skoll, too, was a Jedi, and is still fond enough of them to express sadness at the idea of killing Ahsoka.
He also doesn’t treat Shin with the same kind of contempt and menace that the Emperor served his apprentices. If anything she seems like the wild, Sith-y one.
So like Ahsoka and Sabine, this is a very different relationship than others we’ve seen. And I think it’ll be fascinating to see where it all goes.
(Fun fact: in Norse mythology Skoll and Hati were giant wolves who chased the gods who represented the sun and the moon. It’s understood that the end of the world begins when they eventually catch those gods and eat them….)
If you haven’t checked Ahsoka out yet, I highly recommend it. I’m sure I’ll be writing about it again soon, too.
If you want to support my work and/or Star Wars addiction, my paypal is paypal.me/jimmcdsj. My Venmo is:
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I won’t be posting anything over the long weekend, but I will be back next week with…Eric Orner! Have a Happy Labor Day!
Amen!
I'm glad it didn't feel like I spoiled anything! Yeah, it's really a great show, I think. I'm stunned at how well they've translated the animated into live action.