Jedi genocide, unanswered questions, callbacks to the past. All this – in the fourth episode and in our latest recap of the series 'Ahsoka'.
Previous recaps:
Warning: Spoilers for the 4th episode of 'Ahsoka' follow below
Ahsoka (still Rosario Dawson), Sabine (Natasha Liu Bordizzo), and Huyang (David Tennant) ended up somewhere in a forest at the end of the last episode, where they are being hunted by mercenaries of the dark Jedi Baylan (Ray Stevenson). While the droid Huyang repairs the ship, Ahsoka and Sabine discuss a serious moral problem: since together with Ezra in another galaxy, where all the heroes want to go, Grand Admiral Thrawn is imprisoned, Ahsoka believes the map leading to them should be destroyed. This potentially dooms Ezra to death (though whether he's alive is a mystery anyway), but the galaxy can rest easy. Naturally, Sabine is not okay with this.
The heavy conversation, as often happens, is interrupted by sounds of struggle: Huyang is attacked by his colleague (a droid), followed by other Imperial soldiers. Sabine and Ahsoka quickly dispatch the enemies, and even Huyang cheerfully cosplays General Grievous.
The girls set off to find Baylan and, accordingly, the map, whose fate they haven't agreed upon, and Huyang tells them to stay together. Is it worth mentioning that in the very next scene they split up? Probably not.
In short, they split up as soon as Baylan's apprentices approached – Shin, a hipster-looking girl with crazy eyes, and an unknown young man in a mask, full armor, and an Inquisitor's lightsaber. Ahsoka dispatched the latter without much trouble, while Sabine took on Shin. This is the second duel between the girls, and it's clear that the Mandalorian has become better at wielding not only her weapon but also herself: she's still no match for a well-trained fencer, but she held off her opponent quite deftly.
Inquisitors are Force-sensitive dark side adepts who served the Sith during the Empire, the main antagonists in the 'Rebels' series, and also appeared in 'Kenobi.' Many of them were former Jedi, and their main professional task was precisely to find and exterminate the remaining Jedi. For this, they used special double-bladed lightsabers, which sometimes turned into a crazy propeller-like contraption (don't ask).
Ahsoka, having defeated the would-be Inquisitor (incidentally, in a scene similar to one from 'Rebels'), ran to the coast to stop the map data from being uploaded to the Eye of Sion ship, which was already fully prepared for a jump. There, Baylan awaited her, deciding to start their acquaintance with a lecture: about how Ahsoka's teacher (Anakin Skywalker) betrayed everyone, how destructive the Jedi path turned out to be, and ultimately, how his, Baylan's, life didn't work out, and he's trying to do something about it.
Baylan here appears not so much a villain as a tragic figure – the monumental stature of actor Stevenson contrasts with his sad eyes and speeches dedicated not so much to villainous plans as to his own unsettledness. He seems to see the same unsettledness on a galactic scale, and that's why he helps the Imperials.
In any case, the duel is inevitable: in the best traditions of the original trilogy, the heroes dramatically discard their cloaks and spend a long time sizing up their combat stances before moving on to what we're all here for. The duel between the imposing yet unexpectedly agile Baylan and the surprisingly elegant Ahsoka is, overall, very well done. This is primarily due to the decent choreography, excellent sets, and the combination of the realism of the original trilogy's duels with the acrobatics of the prequels.
At a critical moment, Ahsoka is distracted by retrieving the holocron with the map from the transmission point (thereby interrupting the upload of coordinates to the Eye of Sion), and this maneuver costs her the victory. She can no longer hold her blade with her left hand (incidentally, the scene with the sphere and the burned palm is from 'The Lord of the Rings'), and Baylan presses the Jedi.
At that moment, Shin runs up, and Ahsoka, thinking Sabine died in battle, throws her back in a very un-Jedi-like manner, which again costs her concentration. The next minute, Sabine herself runs up, the Jedi shouts at her to destroy the map (so that no one can follow Thrawn and Ezra), and falls off a cliff (generally reminiscent of this scene). Baylan, meanwhile, convinces the girl, honestly cosplaying Lucius Malfoy, to go to another galaxy with them and give him the map. Sabine (unlike Harry Potter) agrees.
An important moment for the future is that Baylan discusses with Sabine the death of her family on Mandalore. This can only mean one thing: Clan Wren perished during the Imperial genocide of the Mandalorians (which was widely discussed, for example, in 'The Mandalorian').
Parallel to this, New Republic ships appear above the planet: Hera Syndulla (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) brought several fighters, despite the ban. She was accompanied, incidentally, by our old friend from 'The Mandalorian' series, Captain Carson Teva (Paul Sun-Hyung Lee) – clear evidence that new recognizable secondary characters are gradually appearing.
True, they arrived, in general, in vain, as they ended up in the epicenter of the Eye of Sion's hyperspace jump. Syndulla, Teva, and a few other fighters survived, but not without losses. And on the ground, in a sad scene, Huyang calls out for Ahsoka and Sabine, who, of course, do not answer.
And while Sabine doesn't answer due to her own foolishness, Ahsoka has a valid reason: she is in the world between worlds, known to us from 'Rebels.' Those who are neither alive nor dead end up there, especially those for whom Dave Filoni hasn't yet figured out the conclusion of their storyline. There, she is greeted by – shock content – Anakin Skywalker, played by (dear to the heart) actor Hayden Christensen.
Impressions
Overall, everything is fine; this is the best episode so far, but the plot cuts off mid-sentence, so there's not much to say. If we evaluate formally: the main problem is the script. Fine, the dialogues are sometimes AI-generated, but in the scene with Sabine's temptation, for example, there is simply no suspense – it's immediately clear that she will give up the map. At the same time, there's no sense of doom either: it's, to put it mildly, not an ancient tragedy; she'll give it and give it, completely indifferent. In short, this part is sagging.
That said, it's shot very nicely, especially the lightsaber duels (generally wonderful), but sometimes it feels a bit derivative – there are far more references than necessary. Lucas, for example, for all his geek nature, created his own myths, rather than repeating others'. Three or four scenes from 'The Lord of the Rings' (!) are repeated shot for shot; that's still overkill. And, essentially, the entire plot with the forest battles is pure 'Rashomon' (visually), but that's hardly a flaw. On a personal note: I didn't expect it from myself, but I flinched when Anakin appeared.
Everyone, by the way, seems to have written that this episode is very good. Even 'Star Wars' fans agree, although no one hates 'Star Wars' more than them. I never understood this phenomenon, but watching 'Ahsoka,' I suddenly understood: fans see the lives of their beloved characters, see that the happy ending of the original trilogy was a phantom victory – and the New Republic will repeat the fate of the old one – just as the prequels also destroyed certain dreams. It seemed that the story of Darth Vader's rise and the Clone Wars should have been grand, but it all boiled down to chronicles of corruption, decay, and arrogance.
It seems to me, though the digression is already too long, that the fans' complaints are not about the quality of the Disney series (honestly: 'Kenobi' is drawn out, but whatever; 'Boba Fett' is cute; 'Ahsoka' is decent; 'The Mandalorian' and 'Andor' are excellent, and those writing these comments are hardly connoisseurs of early Bergman), but rather that the lives of their beloved characters have gone wrong, that there is no happiness, that time is passing, that these fans have grown up, and now 'Star Wars' is being made not so much for them as for their children.
In short, each branch of angry comments is a little drama of unsettledness and disappointment, an inability to come to terms with the idea that even such wonderful people as Ahsoka might have their lives not work out, and such dashing heroes as Boba Fett might have a boring old age.
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