2x05 Chapter 13: The Jedi

[7.3/10] Let’s get the big thing out of the way first. This Ahsoka takes some getting used to, at least for folks who’ve seen her for ten seasons in various other television shows. She looks right. She moves right. She even does some traditionally awesome Ahsoka things.

But she doesn’t sound the same. Her mannerisms are different. And the result is that, for longtime fans at least, she doesn’t feel right. That’s on me, not on the show. Dave Filoni both wrote and directed this episode, so it’s not as though this is coming from an artist who doesn’t know the spirit of the character. Likewise, there’s differences in vocal tones and speech patterns between tons of characters in live action versus in animation, so this should be no different. But for me at least, it made it hard to connect with a familiar character in an unfamiliar guise. I imagine if we continued with Ahsoka in some form or fashion, that would dissipate as we get used to her in the role, but for now, it’s a little jarring.

That said, I like how Filoni and company use her here. For one thing, they make her a total badass. The sequences where she goes against the Magistrate’s various troops are pretty fantastic. In the opening sequence, she almost feels like a supernatural attacker in a horror film, emerging from the shadows to take out unsuspecting victims. Likewise, when she returns to lay siege to the compound, the way she darts in and out of view, taking out baddies, just like the loth-cat she uses as a distraction, makes her seem scary good at what she does.

In the same way, I liked the Lady Snowblood-esque duel between her and the Magistrate. The combination of Ahsoka’s white lightsabers vs. Morgan’s beskar spear in a temple-like setting was quite cool and artsy. My one complaint is that, as cool as the Wild West standoff between Mando and the Magistrate’s lieutenant was, particularly with the twist, they cut back and forth between the two scenes too often for my tastes. The editing interrupted the rhythm flow of the saber fight, which weakened what could have been an even cooler standoff.

That said, I do like how the show threads the needle on one of the trickier questions here which is, how do you not feel like the series is just stalling forever until Mando finds a Jedi versus come up with a good reason why the Jedi wouldn’t just take Baby Yoda from Mando and remove one half of the major draw for the show?

The answer, at least here, is intuitive. Baby Yoda has attachment, specifically to Mando as a surrogate father. Ahsoka herself has seen what strong force-sensitive individuals with attachments can become, “even the best of us,” so it makes sense that she would fear what The Child might become if she were to start training him now. She feels a lot like Yoda on Dagobah arguing with Obi Wan over whether to train Luke, which feels right.

I also like the scenes where she tests him. I’ve said before that one of my favorite modes on this show is just Mando as the dad to a curious toddler. There’s something very sweet about the way Ahsoka can’t get The Child to move the stone, but that Mando’s developed a connection and understanding with him, as father and son, to where he can get the li’l tridactyl to take the throttle knob from him. It’s even cuter how enthused and proud of the kid he clearly is after Baby Yoda does it. Ahsoka’s rejection of the training opportunity works as a subtle affirmation of the bond Din and Grogu have formed, and that’s really heartening, with hints that Ahsoka thinks being in Mando’s loving care is really what’s best for The Child and maybe even something she senses as what the kid really wants.

That’s the other thing -- there’s a lot of lore and teases in this episode! We learn Baby Yoda’s real name! (Grogu? Really?) We learn that he was trained in the Jedi temple, spirited away after the Clone Wars, and that he has a spate of darkness in his memory after that. We find out that Ahsoka is hunting Grand Admiral Thrawn. We see Morai the owl! We get a hint as to another Jedi temple to visit in the hopes of giving Grogu a spirit vision akin to Ezra’s! There’s a lot of added details here, some of which are intriguing or cool, some of which make me raise an eyebrow, but all of which are at least significant.

I also like the design of Corvus and the compound. There’s a plain sense of have and have nots, with oppression in between, without anyone having to say it. The family-friendly crucifixions along the way are a nice design touch that conveys the cruelty of the magistrate. And even just having Michael Biehn’s second-in-command mercenary guy in play helps add flavor to this one.

Overall, this episode failed to live up to my expectations for seeing Ahsoka in live action and for having one of, if not the, greatest character in all of Star Wars interacting with Mando. But the truth is that those expectations were likely impossibly high, and what we got here was still plenty good.

For a week now I was staring at the title for this episode and I was bursting with anticipation. But somehow I don't feel as satisfied as I thought I would.
I may be a minority here but I think Dawson was not the best casting choice. I don't know if they ever considered Eckstein, after all she's mostly a voice actor, but I don't feel Ahsoka from Dawson. I further think it was a mistake to open with her as you pretty much spend your powder right there. The story was predictable and not much to go on. Would this episode not have been the premiere of live action Ahsoka I'd say the ratings were lower.
I still like the background story as we finaly learn about kiddo's past (now we can put a lot of internet theories to rest) and how strong and emotional the bond between him and Mando really is. And of course the next bombshell. Thrawn ! Although only mentioned in name. But it gives a hint about what Ahsoka was doing in the past I say. Now it's safe to assume that this character will also make his debut in the show.
Even with the personal negatives I have, this in no way diminishes the whole. I am still amazed what they do with the story and how they bring everything together. And it feels totally natural how everything falls into place. As if there could have never been another way to do this.
Now I'm looking forward to meet Thrawn.

The episode had some great visuals, with the dark and evil city looking really atmospheric and the forest where the characters meet resembling Mirkwood under the dominion of Sauron (sans spiders which were in another episode). It was visually stunning and in spite of the fact that there was a battle in the episode, it was more introspective and focused on the baby.

The Ahsoka person whom the Star Wars fans talked so much on the forums appears in the episode, and she is an interesting character, rather likeable, courageous but also seems to have some maternal feelings towards the baby. It looks like she is a very skilled Jedi person, though I am not an expert since I am not well-versed in Star Wars, since she could defeat so many people including the big baddie woman who terrorised the whole town and apparently had an empire-related history.

The scenes when Ahsoka tries to train the baby are very enjoyable, it turns out they can both converse in thought and the baby tells her his life history. We also learn his name which is Grogu but I will continue to call him the baby. It turns out that he grew up in a Jedi temple but had to hide his abilities for years to escape capture. Communication in thought is good and well, but I wonder whether the baby would ever be able to use normal human language (even with Yodas' syntax problems) or would he continue to use baby's sounds? Is this something psychological in him because he had suffered some trauma? Ahsoka concludes that the baby has too much fear, anger and attachment to Mando in himself that she would not train him, even after Mando completes a side quest for her (she gives him the beskar spear though).
It looked a bit over-the-top as far as even Star Wars level realism goes for Mando and Ahsoka to duo the evil city with its small army of guards and the principal evil woman, especially as I was wondering during the fight whether Mando is still hiding the baby in his pocketses. He explains that he left the baby on the spaceship but I had some fears that maybe the Moff guy had caught up with them and kidnapped the baby since Mando leaves the ship open and they had installed the tracker (later when I was thinking about the previous episode, I remembered how they re-used the idea of a tracker in the Obi wan Kenobi show, it was a bit of lazy writing using the same plot device in two Star Wars shows) but they reunite happily, and Ahsoka repeats her decision not to train the baby, but invents a test the baby can take to check his Jedi abilities and find other Jedi as well). I found her quite likeable (is it only me or was she almost flirting with Mando in some scenes?) but on the whole it is good that she declined the training as Mando and the baby can stay together (and Mando was very sad when he though he was going to part with the baby very soon), I hope until the end of the seasons or better yet for all seasons to come (I've read that the third season is in store in the future?).