Dave Filoni finally gets to fulfill his dream and bring his animated universe to live-action in full force. FIloni has slowly been integrating his expanded Star Wars universe from The Clone Wars and Rebels into live-action with small references and character appearances like Ahsoka Tano, Cobb Vanth, and Bo Katan in The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett. With Ahsoka, FIloni finally gets a show focused on characters from his animates shows and gets to directly continue plot points from Rebels.
The story centers around Ahsoka Tano after her most recent appearance in The Book of Boba Fett, still looking for Grand Admiral Thrawn in a New Republic era. She realizes she can’t complete the mission on her own after a new discovery, and returns to recruit some old friends for her mission. This is where Sabine Wren and Hyra Syndulla get added in to the mix as she tries to convince them to help her. The series does well to honor the relationship dynamics setup in Rebels as Ahsoka has to rebuild her relationship with Sabine. What’s great about this exploration of the two’s relationship is that it’s done in a way where both old and new fans can understand and enjoy their relationship. The plot lines set up in Rebels don’t constrain the show, as Filoni finds a way to explore those relationships without having to re-explain them.
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Other than the returning characters we have 2 new players in Ray Stevenson’s Baylan Skoll, and Ivanna Sakhno’s Shin Hati who act as the initial villains for the series. They are also looking for Thrawn along with Morgan Elsbeth last seen in the episode of The Mandalorian where Ahsoka made her live-action debut. Ray Stevenson is awesome as the villain and brings class, skill, and wisdom to the character. Both Shin and Baylan are strong and interesting enough foes to pose a genuine threat to Ahsoka and her partners. This provides for some great light saber action across the first 2 episodes with multiple force users involved.
The series’ first episode starts of strong with a thrilling action sequence that also sets up the ultimate focus of the series, finding Grand Admiral Thrawn. Even across some of the weaker Star Wars DIsney+ entries Thrawn’s threat has been expertly portrayed to be huge, and here we get the best explanation of who the character is. The pacing stumbles afterwards as the series slows down, however, by the end of the episode all the characters have been effectively setup and we’re back to exciting lightsaber action. Episode 2 carries this momentum forward with much better pacing and finishes off with a lot to look forward to for the next few episodes.
Star Wars’ AHSOKA hits Disney+ August 22!