Star Wars: Ahsoka phones in its biggest moments in “Far, Far Away”

After spending most of its season building up the return of Grand Admiral Thrawn, the next big bad of Star Wars finally made his debut this week on Ahsoka. And his wasn’t the only familiar face from Star Wars Rebels to crop up.

However, despite having carefully set up these introductions, Ahsoka doesn’t seem to know what to do with them. Strap in for a rant of a review. And as always, beware SPOILERS ahead.

Star Trek: Ahsoka Episode 6 review: “Far, Far Away”

After a trippy vision quest duel with Anakin Skywalker last week, Ahsoka Tano (Rosario Dawson) is back for more in “Far, Far Away.” Well, kind of. The Jedi outcast spends the majority of the episode offscreen, appearing only at the beginning where we see her and her droid companion Huyang (David Tennant) traveling through hyperspace inside a star whale. The whales remain magnificent, and Huyang dropping the iconic “a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away” line was cute.

Most of the episode centers around Sabine Wren (Natasha Liu Bordizzo) and the bad guys, who arrive at the planet the Witches of Dathomir once made their home. It’s here the bad guys hope to find Thrawn and Sabine to find the missing Jedi Ezra Bridger. This is what the entire season has built toward. Unfortunately, it feels like Ahsoka really had no idea what to do once it arrived.

“Far, Far Away” goes through great pains to make it feel like our characters are arriving in some strange other galaxy; the music is different, the landscape is eerie, and the Witches of Dathomir are creepy. But a lot of that power is quickly drained away; Morgan Elsbeth (Diana Lee Inosanto) knows everything there is to know about this planet, and Sabine is able to communicate so immediately with both her wolf mount and the hermit crab people she encounters that it really doesn’t feel very different than any other Star Wars planet.

Star Trek: Ahsoka Episode 6 lacks imagination

Issues with the setting aside, this episode features a lot of characters acting in nonsensical ways, as well as plot contrivances which clearly exist just to push things forward. There is no search for Thrawn; he’s just there when Morgan and her group arrive, ready to greet them. Before Thrawn shows up, Sabine spends the episode demanding people tell her where Ezra is, even though there’s no reason to think that Morgan or Baylan Skoll (Ray Stevenson) has any idea. Once Thrawn does conveniently release Sabine to go search for her friend, she stumbles from one encounter to the next, which leads directly to Ezra. There’s no backtracking, no set backs. Just deus ex machina to the max.

At the end of the episode, Ezra Bridger (Eman Esfandi) finally makes his debut. This is something the show has been building toward, and obviously fans of Star Wars Rebels will love it. But as someone who only saw Rebels for the first time recently and doesn’t have the same years-long nostalgia for it, I was shocked at how tiredly Ahsoka handled his introduction. Ezra has just been hanging out with a group of linen-wearing hermit crab people a day’s wolf ride away from Thrawn’s hideout, and no one’s found him yet? I guess Thrawn didn’t look very hard.

Sabine and Ezra’s big reunion ultimately falls flat. The writing is awkward, as are the performances from Bordizzo and Esfandi. This is such an enormous missed opportunity that it’s honestly shaken my faith in the series as a whole. I can only hope the show’s penultimate episode does more.

On the bright side, Lars Mikkelson is utterly chilling as Thrawn (though his wig is distractingly bad), and the idea that he has a group of elite Storm Troopers weathering exile alongside him is interesting. Thrawn is definitely the highlight of the episode, even if his space witches also serve as another very convenient deus ex machina to let him know Ahsoka is on the way.

Is Ahsoka falling into the same Sarlacc trap that ate Boba Fett’s show?

One creeping fear which has refused to leave me since watching “Far, Far Away” is that Ahsoka is committing the same crime as The Book of Boba Fett. That show is named for the famous bounty hunter, but it tried really hard to be about literally anything other than Boba Fett, leaving the title character off screen for almost the entire second half of the season.

Ahsoka leaving Ahsoka Tano offscreen for this one episode isn’t as bad, but the way the show has functioned as a Rebels sequel is. Ahsoka Tano is a character steeped in the mythos and history of Star Wars, yet “Shadow Warrior” provided the only real glimpse into Ahsoka’s psyche we’ve gotten. Ahsoka is far more concerned with the ensemble Rebels cast. It’s hardly scratched the surface of its lead character.

Ahsoka has left out a ton of important details about the character and seemingly has no interest in exploring them for people who haven’t seen Rebels and The Clone Wars. Did you know that the reason Ahsoka Tano left the Jedi Order was because another Jedi framed her for bombing the Jedi Temple, and Ahsoka’s trial was botched so badly that she decided to walk away from the Order altogether? Or how about that she, not Obi-Wan Kenobi, was the person who ultimately killed Darth Maul when she was still only a teenager? Or that she and Anakin had one final showdown after he transformed into Darth Vader, and she would have been dead had Ezra Bridger not used some time-travel shenanigans to save her at the last minute?

There are just so many things about the character which would be fascinating to explore in the TV show, but Ahsoka seems determined to spend time on anything but Ahsoka herself. It almost feels like the show was called Ahsoka just as a way to rope in the massive fanbase the character has, rather than because the show was going to be about Ahsoka Tano.

Or maybe I’m overreacting. I suppose it’ll become clearer in the final two episodes. But for now, the fear remains.

Ahsoka Bullet Points

• Ray Stevenson and Ivanna Sakhno had a solid episode as Baylan Skoll and Shin Hati. These two have been consistently compelling, and it was intriguing to get more clues about Baylan’s ultimate goals.
• The fight between Sabine and the raiders was a highlight of the episode, and some of Natasha Liu Bordizzo’s best lightsaber work yet.
• Diana Lee Inosanto was born to scowl and hang out with witches. She’s doing an amazing job chewing up lines in the role of Morgan Elsbeth.
• I’m still struggling to see how there’s anything redeemable about Sabine reuniting with Ezra. Yes, she’s reuniting with her friend, but she’s also very clearly putting the entire galaxy in danger to do it. Loyalty is a big theme in Star Wars, but Sabine’s actions come off as supremely selfish.

Verdict

“Far, Far Away” has some good fan service and performances, most notably Lars Mikkelson as Thrawn. But on the whole, this episode feels like the show ran out of steam at the finish line and has no idea how to make the most of the long-running reveals it had set up all season. It relies more on vibes and nostalgia than a compelling story. It makes me sad to say it, but this might be the weakest episode of the show so far.

Episode grade: C

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