Star Wars: Ahsoka

For casual audiences, Ahsoka may prove to be a series they wait to binge-watch after they fill in the blanks with the animated series (or the aid of Wookieepedia, if they don’t have time for such a big commitment). Still, even with its issues, Ahsoka’s premiere is quite fun and sets up some promising pay-off potential.

Even lightsaber duels can’t match the fierce glow of Rosario Dawson as the ex-Jedi knight with the funky headgear who leads her sisterhood—glory to Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Natasha Liu Bordizzo—In battle against the Empire’s fading patriarchy. Now that’s worth celebrating.

The storytelling is patient, and the scenes are carried by Kevin Kiner’s luscious score, which swells and calms at just the right moments. When that’s on pause, there’s architect droid Huyang (a scene-stealing David Tennant) on hand to offer wry and logical truth bombs and adding some welcome levity to proceedings. 

For those who have never been intrigued by “Star Wars,” the master versus apprentice theme at the core of “Ahsoka” likely won’t be enough to push them to explore such an intensive world. However, for lifelong fans who understood the significance of “Rebels” and fell in love with one of the most iconic female characters of the franchise, learning more about her story and what happened to Thrawn and Ezra will likely be a transcendent experience.

Nothing in Ahsoka matches the level of technical proficiency we got to lap up in Andor. Nevertheless, it is a must-watch for true Star Wars stans. It’s not just that Dave Filoni has finally brought his most beloved animated characters to life; he is potentially rewriting the rules of the Star Wars universe with them.

The job of any “Star Wars” product is the competent execution of formula, and “Ahsoka” hits its marks. .... Ahsoka may be humorless, but Dawson’s performance isn’t. And at the same time it evokes, in a clever way, the two-dimensional character of the cartoons. It’s also helpful that, working with the fight coordinator Ming Qiu, the stunt coordinator J.J. Dashnaw and her stunt double, Michelle Lee, Dawson gives her battle scenes a visceral credibility.

It’s a space opera full of bite and brawn – one that promises to go some way towards restoring the damage inflicted by The Mandalorian’s downward spiral. Thankfully, Dawson has enough muscular charisma to carry it.

With a strong connection to Rebels, rich characters, and the ingredients for a solid story, Ahsoka is loaded with potential. However, the series stumbles a bit out the gate. The relationship between Ahsoka and Sabine is strained, but we’re not given enough backstory for it to feel genuine.

Fans of Clone Wars and Rebels will appreciate this live-action continuation of Dave Filoni’s saga, while newcomers should dig its promise of a different kind of Force clash.

The dark web of collusion bubbling in the back of ‘Ahsoka’ is definitely fascinating, making the series feel like something of a mystery, and the ‘Search For Ezra’ is essentially the story ride-or-die ‘Rebels’ fans have wanted to see for years. Not all of it is graceful, but nothing borders on the “hey there!” fan service that many fans worried about.

Plenty of fun action sequences in "Ahsoka" let us watch Dawson's character wield her two white lightsabers with purpose, speed, and precision. Will that be enough to power a full series? It’s unclear from the first two episodes, but the myth of the character and Dawson’s performance gives enough reason to tune in.

Disney+’s new live action series Ahsoka has the potential to explore the more cosmic and mystical aspects of the Star Wars universe, but the first two episodes feel flat at times as characters have to spend too much time catching up viewers who didn’t watch Star Wars Rebels.

A “Star Wars” series built around a trio of female heroes offers a welcome change and there’s hope that future episodes will pick up the pace. “Andor” started slowly too and turned into a masterpiece. That may be too much to hope for from “Ahsoka” but I’m willing to stick with it for now.

No matter how hard it strives for widespread accessibility, it’s a sequel that will be of primary interest to established fans.

In Ahsoka, while the most basic basics do come through, none of the character stories connect on the emotional level wanted without prior engagement with the depths of their lore. On a production level, Ahsoka is well-made Star Wars content, with solid lightsaber battles and space fighter hijinks and enough interest in how ordinary people adapt to the extraordinary circumstances of galactic conflict to inspire favorable comparisons to Andor.

It’s in many ways the anti-“Andor”: They both have slow builds, yet while the Emmy-nominated “Rogue One” spinoff focused on building up new characters, themes and corners of the galaxy, “Ahsoka” falls back on cherry-picking from its past. (Though for folks who just watch the movies, at least the "Rebels" folks will feel somewhat fresh.)

Much of the action is still being kept under lock and key. All in all, it's a promising start for Ahsoka, and it'll be interesting to see how the series ramps things up from here on out. If it avoids traps that The Mandalorian fell into, we could be into a stellar new addition to the Star Wars roster.

Awkwardly bringing the animated character to life in her own series, “Ahsoka” gets so much right about the look and action of “Star Wars” that its shortcomings – an overall stiffness slowed by long, pregnant pauses – feel more pronounced. There’s still hope for this showcase featuring Rosario Dawson as Anakin Skywalker’s all-grown-up Padawan, but the first two episodes don’t possess as much Force as they should.

Unless you’re immensely invested in the relationships between Ahsoka, Sabine, and Hera, or the search for Imperial Grand Admiral Thrawn and young Jedi Ezra Bridger, or a forgettable villain who was in one episode of The Mandalorian years ago, then there’s really nothing here to connect to. That could change, and I think that’s why Disney wisely decided to release two episodes at once, but as it stands the villains are boring and the heroes are all way too insistent on being stubbornly stoic about everything—which is also boring! [The score is the average of the grades for the first two episodes.]

There’s a chance that when some of the people everybody keeps talking about finally make appearances in Ahsoka, the entire show will gain the immediacy that’s currently lacking. Even Andor, which not every Star Wars show needs to be, started slow, but it was never bland.

All of this gives “Ahsoka” a fresh feel. It would be fresher, though, if “Star Wars” could just find new themes to explore, and do so in ways that don’t require so much standing around talking.

Despite dwindling returns from previous entries (“Mandalorian” of late and “Boba Fett” from the beginning), “Ahsoka” follows a similar template with shared setbacks: thin storylines, stock action scenes, and massive special effects serving sequences absent any emotional heft.

In a show where, when a scene needs to establish a thing, the characters often stand there directly, drily discussing that thing – “show don’t tell” being another writing rule that hasn’t survived the trip across the cosmos – Tennant is often left trying to say unfunny lines in a funny voice. Like everything in Ahsoka, he could be so much better if he were allowed to cut loose and entertain us.