I usually don't write a series review if not all episodes are released yet, but with Ahsoka, I feel like I have to. So, just as a warning, this review gets a little ranty.
I keep seeing these amazing reviews of people praising this show to be some masterpiece and I honestly don't get it.
I have been a fan of Ahsoka's character since I was a child. I grew up with her and I am so nostalgic about her, especially because she is practically what introduced me to Star Wars, and I appreciate Filoni's handling of her character in Clone Wars and Rebels as much as anyone else. She began as an immature student and grew to be a very wise and independent person. I was thrilled when they announced her live-action show. The cherry on top was that Thrawn would be the antagonist. That being said, I do know her character and liked her from moment one.
And now, with this show, I feel incredibly gaslit by fans who claim this show (especially episodes 4 and 5) is Christ's second coming and praise Filoni for his genius. But I also feel gaslit by Filoni and the show itself. I am certainly confronted with a character I know nothing about whatsoever. Sabine is a different character; Hera is a different character. I get that animation and live-action are different, but naming this difference as an excuse for stale and emotionless characters is just a cheap ploy. All of these strong female characters that were written so well in the animated shows are now blank, emotionless slates with a history Filoni keeps hinting at but never fully explains and it honestly annoys me so much.
With the live-action show, Filoni's lack of writing skill on a line-level becomes painfully apparent, and to distract from that he keeps jangling shiny keys in front of the viewer with these callbacks and nostalgic moments like the Clone Wars or Anakin wanting to teach her one last lesson, which I still don't know what that was supposed to be. When I watched some YouTube videos of fans breaking the episode down and theorising what the lesson could be, I found myself painfully laughing at myself (in a sad way). How come the writing in this show is so bad and opaque that they have to rely on the fans to pull at loose strings and tie them together and hope that everyone then ends up thinking that this was what Filoni had intended from day one? When I tried to think of a possible explanation of what Anakin's lesson was supposed to be about, I couldn't think of any answer that matched what other people were thinking. It is not only that, but I feel like everybody has different answers and not in a way where a writer writes didactically to leave it for free interpretation but in a way where the writer had no idea what they even wanted the lesson to be.
So far, in this show, I have only seen bad writing, bad dialogue, stale acting, characters that are intriguing (Skoll and Shin) but are left so vague for so long that by the end I don't even care where they came from. You can't leave the mystery open for so long and then explain it at the end of the season (if their character will even be explained at all). If there is nothing for me to get emotionally attached to at a certain point, I will not care for the rest of it, even if it does end up being explained. The same is true with the history between Sabine and Ahsoka. What is it? Why aren't we seeing it? Why are the characters just talking about it like it is general knowledge the viewer already knows? (Again, if it is supposed to be written to keep it open for interpretation, it has sorely failed.) There are only two more episodes left and if it does end up being explained in the LAST TWO EPISODES the pacing will be off so freaking bad!! Why wait so long?
The issue I have is the writing. And the writing in a show is everything, so I have an issue with the show. And with everyone pretending this is "the best Star Wars since..." If this is the best Star Wars since the Disney area, then it's pretty bad to begin with.
I don't want to tell anyone that they are supposed to dislike this show. If you enjoy it, great. But I feel so sorely misrepresented in my opinion of this show. It seems like everyone keeps falling for these cheap callbacks and nostalgia bait moments and cheap execution of some character arc I wasn't even sure Ahsoka was on, because, again, nothing about the writing has led me to think that! I get that a lot of things about a story are supposed to be shrouded in mystery to keep the viewers' interest, but at one point, when everything is just plain vague and so unsatisfyingly touched upon and then poorly executed, I really have to ask myself if anyone working on this show had any idea about what they wanted this show to be!
I hope the last two episodes will prove me wrong, but I doubt it. You can't rely on the last two episodes to remedy an entire season of bad writing.
