The Fantasy Review‘s Review of Ahsoka, Season 1, Episodes 1 and 2.
With episodes 1 and 2 of Ahsoka out on Disney+, we finally get to see this highly anticipated series begin! We get a cool introduction to some villains right from the start. The late Ray Stevenson gives us a great, imposing performance of Baylan Skoll, and his apprentice Shin Hati (Ivanna Sakhno) is already an interesting character, even if much of what she is thinking can only be guessed by watching her facial expressions carefully.
We have a very slow burn introduction to Ahsoka and the brilliant Huyang, the master lightsaber builder previously seen in The Clone Wars. Rosario Dawson’s performance is fantastic, giving us a very stoic Ahsoka. She has a great action scene with a fight against five HL-87 droids to show she is powerful too, as a comparison to Baylan and Shin’s formidable introduction.
The slow pace is seen throughout the two episodes, with us being gradually introduced to many of the moving parts of the narrative. It will be exciting to see all these threads intertwine as the series progresses, but hopefully it won’t stagnate with some filler episodes.
Fans of The Clone Wars and Rebels will be excited to see live-action versions of their favourite characters, but even those who have not seen these animated series will get a good idea of who these people are after the first couple of episodes.
I really enjoyed the tension between Ahsoka and Sabine throughout, with a nice mini-arc giving us a taste of character development to come.
The lightsaber duel between Sabine and Shin, the two apprentices, was very well choreographed and an interesting scene. Compared to Ahsoka’s fight scenes in these two episodes, especially the fantastic duel with former Inquisitor Marrok, you can see these two are beginners in comparison, with some light fumbling of complex manoeuvres and quite basic stances. To show their unsophistication in this subtle way was a great choice.
Despite Ahsoka’s stoic disposition, we find ourselves watching something a little lighter than The Mandalorian or any of the other live-action Star Wars TV series. It feels like a continuation of what we got in The Clone Wars and Rebels, but I think we might see the tone and atmosphere get darker as the story unfolds.
With so many great characters and performances, and several exciting promises made by the plot, I hope Ahsoka continues to prove how fantastic it is and can be.
