Ahsoka Series Premiere Review: This Is The Star Wars You’ve Been Looking For
AHSOKA SERIES PREMIERE REVIEW SCORE
I swear I am not a Disney Star Wars hater. I’ve enjoyed most of the post-acquisition films to varying degrees and would say the same of the live-action Disney+ series. And yet, within the first 15 minutes or so of the two episode Ahsoka series premiere, I was overcome with a sense that I can only describe as “Oh, so this is Star Wars.”
Part of that impression is no doubt because the Ahsoka premiere feels much more like a movie than the beginning of a TV series, right down to the opening crawl that will bring any fans back to those formative nights in the theater.
The Ahsoka premiere immediately pulls you back into the world of Star Wars while managing to feel new and old at the same time.
Director and series creator Dave Filoni evokes both A New Hope and The Phantom Menace with his opening scene: Baylan Skroll (Ray Stevenson) and his apprentice Shin Hati (Ivanna Sakhno) infiltrating a New Republic ship to rescue the imprisoned Morgan Elsbeth (Diana Lee Inosanto).
Like The Phantom Menace, we get two force users initially welcomed aboard a ship only to then be treated as hostile. Like A New Hope, we see the bad guys tearing through a good guy ship and killing everyone in sight.
From there, the Ahsoka premiere gives us the titular hero doing a bit of an Indiana Jones impersonation to retrieve an orb we later learn is the key to locating her target: Grand Admiral Thrawn (Lars Mikkelsen). Like Indy and Star-Lord before her, Ahsoka finds bad guys waiting for her — assassin droids in her case — as soon as she retrieves the artifact and so we get to see Anakin Skywalker’s former padawan showing off her skills right away.
If you’re worried that you don’t have the animated series background to enjoy the series, rest assured the Ahsoka premiere gives you all the backstory you need without too much weighty exposition.
The Ahsoka premiere immediately pulls you back into the world of Star Wars while managing to feel new and old at the same time. The visual effects are gorgeous and will wow you almost immediately–particularly in the immediate aftermath of Ahsoka’s battle with the assassin droids. Likewise, the score is different from anything we’ve heard in the other Disney+ series, managing to be more eclectic and upbeat.
Among the other highlights of the Ahsoka premiere is the late Ray Stevenson’s performance as Baylan Skoll.
The Ahsoka premiere really dials things up a notch musically when it introduces the live-action Sabine Wren (Natasha Liu Bordizzo) with the punk-tinged “Igyah Kah” as she joyfully evades New Republic pilots. According to Decider, the alien-tongued song features vocals by Illuminati Hotties singer Sarah Tudzin. The scene, particularly the music, helps to give Ahsoka a unique feel in the canon, while at the same time fitting perfectly.
If you’re worried that you don’t have the animated series background to enjoy the series, rest assured the Ahsoka premiere gives you all the backstory you need without too much weighty exposition. In fact, this review is coming to you from someone who could not get past the second season of The Clone Wars and has never watched any of the other Star Wars animated series–not Rebels, not The Bad Batch, nothing.
I don’t want to spoil too much, but Morgan Elsbeth proves much more crucial in the Ahsoka premiere than she may have seemed when she made her debut in The Mandalorian. Through her, we learn that the scale of Ahsoka promises to be grander than anything we’ve seen in the franchise to date.
Among the other highlights of the Ahsoka premiere is the late Ray Stevenson’s performance as Baylan Skoll. Skoll and his apprentice remain mysterious figures by the end of two episode premiere — particularly in terms of their motivations — but Stevenson’s villain already seems like one of the more interesting and layered Sith-esque bad guys in the franchise.
Besides the origins of Skoll and Shin Hati, another mystery introduced in the Ahsoka premiere is the identity of a masked man working for Skoll called Marrok. Armed with what appears to be an Inquisitor lightsaber, Marrok has a fierce duel with Ahsoka in episode 2.
While no one for sure knows who he is, fans are already starting to circulate the heartbreaking theory that he could be a resurrected Ezra Bridger.
Perhaps I’m the only viewer who cares, but while watching the Ahsoka premiere I found it refreshing to get a Star Wars Disney+ series in which the hero isn’t some kind of fugitive, criminal, or someone who permanently lives in a legal gray zone.
The heroes of Andor and Obi-Wan Kenobi are in hiding, The Book of Boba Fett turns the titular bounty hunter into a crime lord, and while what the hero of The Mandalorian does may usually be legal, he’s clearly not a fan of being “pulled over” by New Republic pilots.
Meanwhile, Ahsoka and Hera (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) seem perfectly happy working with the New Republic. That not only potentially gives us a chance to see more inside the New Republic than we have in other series, but it’s just nice to change things up a little.
If the quality of Ahsoka doesn’t drop after the premiere, we may very well be in for the best live-action Star Wars series so far. You can watch the first two episodes now on Disney+.
