"Star Wars: Ahsoka" Mid-Season Review

How does one show appease long-time fans and keep up with a rapidly expanding lore while drawing in a newer, more casual audience?

That is the question that many of the newer live-action “Star Wars” shows have been trying to answer with none challenged as much as the saga’s latest installment.

“Ahsoka” premiered on Disney Plus with its first two episodes on Aug. 22. It has now released four of its eight episodes for this season.

It is a spiritual successor to the animated series “Star Wars: Rebels” which aired for four seasons on Disney XD from 2014-2018.

The series’ epilogue featured former Jedi Ahsoka Tano and Mandalorian Sabine Wren embarking on a search for their lost friend and Jedi Ezra Bridger.

This premise is already wild and confusing for those who have not seen the animation, but “Ahsoka” begins chronologically just before this epilogue to help catch these viewers up.

The second episode of the two-part premiere ends with a satisfying recreation of the final scene in “Star Wars: Rebels,” but is it enough to satisfy the dedicated Star Wars fan?

While catching up with familiar characters like Sabine (Natasha Liu Bordizzo) and Ahsoka (Rosario Dawson) is nice, it’s hard for dedicated fans to swallow that 25 percent of this season has been spent catching “casuals” up.

That may be a bit too harsh as the first two episodes titled “Master and Apprentice” and “Toil and Trouble” do offer a lot of enticing content.

For one, the opening episodes introduce us to some of the most intriguing villains we have seen in some time.

Baylan Skoll, played by the late Ray Stevenson (the first episode and series is dedicated to him), and his apprentice Shin Hati, played by Ivanna Sakhno, are fantastic foils to the main characters.

Baylan and Ahsoka are both fallen Jedi, but they are not Sith, they are something in between. Baylan’s character has the connection of knowing about Ahsoka’s past in the Jedi order and the destiny of her former master.

He is able to get the best of Ahsoka by guilting her over Anakin’s downfall to the dark side as a result of her leaving him and the order.

Episode three, “Time to Fly,” fittingly has a thrilling space battle and provides some interesting details about Sabine’s past as Ahsoka’s apprentice.

Sabine does not have the same capabilities to wield the force as the likes of Luke Skywalker or Ezra Bridger could and that is explored in this episode.

The first three episodes were fine but were overtly cautious in getting into some of the animated lore that many thought would be the foundation of this show. The character of Ahsoka was in fact made for animation in the first place.

Episode four, “Fallen Jedi,” flips everything on its head.

Primarily, the lightsaber duels are slow, majestic and well-choreographed.

Ahsoka’s style represents an older, wiser version of herself that the audience would expect and mimics the samurai-style fighting that originally inspired George Lucas’ vision of the Jedi.

Other highlights from this episode include an exciting appearance from the main starship in “Rebels,” the Ghost, some flashes of the dark side from Ahsoka and the villains finally embarking on their journey to find the standout Star Wars villain, Grand Admiral Thrawn.

Hopefully, viewers will be able to see Thrawn, played by voice actor Lars Mikkelsen, when episode five airs on Tuesday.

However, the real highlight of episode four and the entire first half of the season was seeing the titular character enter the “world between worlds,” as seen in “Rebels,” a place where Jedi seek knowledge in visions of the future and the past.

The final scene of the episode leaves the viewer with Ahsoka seeing a vision of none other than her former master Anakin Skywalker, played by Hayden Christensen, greeting her as he did in the “Clone Wars” animated series.

This is a first-half finish that can get all Star Wars fans excited for what’s to come in the following episodes.

Rating: 4/5 stars

Maclain Young is a fourth-year majoring in broadcast journalism. To contact him, email macyoung21@gmail.com.