Summary: Mando arrives on Corvus where the planet has been desolated. A village has been taken over by Morgan, a Magistrate who is opposed by Ahsoka. Ahsoka decrees that she will come back to kill her and free the village. Mando is offered a Beskar spear from the Magistrate to kill Ahsoka. Mando finds Ahsoka and introduces Baby Yoda to her. Ahsoka learns his name is Grogu and that he was trained in the Jedi Temple before it fell. Ahsoka trains Grogu a bit but after seeing his attachment to Mando, she refuses to train him. Mando agrees to help Ahsoka save the village in exchange for her training. Together they take down the village and Ahsoka defeats the Magistrate, demanding Thrawn's whereabouts from her. Ahsoka still refuses to train Grogu and tells Mando to take him to Tython where he could potentially connect with another Jedi using the force.
The Good: Some context before I start this review. I haven't watched "Rebels" but I have been filled in by a friend on key characters and storylines in the show so I am familiar with things like what Ahsoka has been up to and with the identity of Thrawn. That being said, I thought that Ahsoka's return in this episode was near perfect. Rosario Dawson did a tremendous job of capturing the essence of the character and bringing her mannerisms, personality and charisma to a live action TV show. Never did I feel like I was watching an imitation of the character, and that's due to some very impressive work by everyone working on this episode, but especially Rosario Dawson herself. This was truly an inspired bit of casting. The opening scene of the episode was terrific and allowed for the return of lightsaber action in a tremendously enjoyable way. Seeing Ahsoka dual wielding was a treat and the entire action sequence was wonderfully shot, memorable and brilliantly choreographed. The same can be said about the climax of the episode which was very entertaining. It was a fun action setpiece with lots of superb shots and well directed action. This is certainly an episode that will please just about every Star Wars fan out there. I really liked the Japanese theme to this episode. We've seen "The Mandalorian" parallel western films before, but now we get to see it try its hand at a samurai film, complete with the imperial rulers, the samurai playing both sides, and the showdown between Ahsoka and the Magistrate towards the end of the episode. On top of that, this episode did something really unique by intersplicing a samurai-inspired duel with a western-inspired showdown between Mando and Lang. It was a unique clash of styles that offered up something I had never seen before. The standout scenes of the episode were definitely the ones with Ahsoka and Grogu. This is the most information we have got on Grogu and it was all very fascinating to learn. The biggest of course being that he has a name! It will be tough to get out of the habit of calling him Baby Yoda, but giving him a name does give Grogu a greater sense of identity as a character which I really like. I thought that his backstory was very intriguing and raised some interesting questions (see: The Unknown). I especially enjoyed the brief bit of force training that Ahsoka did with Grogu and seeing Mando excitedly helping him unlock his powers was a wonderful character moment. There were a couple other details that I really liked. I enjoyed seeing Ahsoka fighting in a style similar to "The Clone Wars" showing that this show does care about the little details in lightsaber fighting styles. I also quite liked the reference to Anakin's fate, with Ahsoka refusing to train Grogu because of what happened to him, which makes sense following her encounter with Darth Vader in "Rebels". Ahsoka has learned from her past experiences, even if it leads her to make the same biased decisions that the Jedi council made back in the prequel trilogy to not train somebody out of fear of what they could do. This is in contrast to the lessons learned by Luke in the sequel trilogy, which is a fascinating bit of deep storytelling. Lastly, I liked the nod to Grand Admiral Thrawn, who it seems will be returning in this show. The Bad: While I had just praised this episode's creativity for paying homage to samurai films and western films at the same time, I wasn't entirely happy with it. The episode ended up feeling a bit phony and inorganic because of how both of these references were thrown at us towards the end with such little subtlety. I think the episode actually lost a great deal of emotional engagement and suspense by trying too hard and being too cute with the homages. I've seen a lot of people praising this episode as near perfect and I honestly do not agree. I enjoyed much of this, but I had issues with it as well. For one, the world of Corvus was a complete disappointment. I was excited to travel to a new planet in this episode but we have pretty much no world-building done here at all. We're not given any information on this village or how it works, and we're given less information on why the Magistrate is here on this planet. Apparently she is here to just cause destruction because that's all that burning the trees is going to do. Furthermore, we also have no idea why Ahsoka is on Corvus and how Bo Katan knows this, which is a question that should have been answered. If she was simply tracking the Magistrate, would she really have stayed on Corvus for as long as she does? This episode feels very familiar. Even though a lot more happened in this episode, it still follows the same basic formula of Mando arriving on a new planet, meeting some characters, getting a quest, finishing the quest, and then leaving. This is not new content at all and it's starting to become old since the characters aren't being explored very much during these adventures. Much of what we saw in this episode was familiar stuff. The action sequences lacked tension completely and relied heavily on the gorgeous cinematography to be good. Luckily for them, they were very well done, but there's only so much I can get out of good looking visuals. Furthermore, the homages in this episode were mostly already done. The western homages are starting to get old, and the slashes homages that were present here had already been explored back in "The Prisoner" from last season. Additionally, Ahsoka's current story feels like a carbon copy of Bo Katan's. Both characters have gone to a specific planet to complete a specific mission while on the hunt to find a character that they want to fight. Both storylines are very similar, and they don't have enough storytelling potential to interest me in seeing the same idea explored twice. Looking at things like that, a lot of things in this episode were recycled and while that doesn't make this a bad episode, it blocks it from being anything truly special since I feel like I've already seen a lot of what this episode has to offer. And that is the problem I have with "Star Wars" as a whole in its current state. "The Last Jedi" was a mixed movie to say the least, but it's the only "Star Wars" product that has come out since Disney acquired the license to have a unique vision and try something new. As much fun as "The Mandalorian" is, it plays it completely safe and relies far too much on fanservice and "giving the fans what they want" to tell its story. But in doing so, the show feels rather hollow and lifeless, as if it is only focused on pleasing the fans and nothing else. The show has forgotten to tell a story that's worth watching. There is nothing underneath the surface, no emotion, no complexity, no substance. The show feels empty in spite of all that it is doing right, and this is one of the biggest reasons that I just can't view this episode as any more than good. Shouldn't Moff Gideon have found Ahsoka through the tracker he planted on the Razor Crest? The pacing feels strange since the last episode ended with such a big cliffhanger and reveal but none of that was important in this episode. While I typically like standalone episodes like the ones this series is specializing in, I feel that this show could be paced better to service the overarching story. The Unknown: Who took Grogu from the temple? How did he manage to get away in the chaos? Why was Grogu prioritized to be taken out of the temple? Has Mando led Moff Gideon to Ahsoka? Where is Thrawn? Why is Ahsoka hunting him down? What has he been doing since he was sent to the unknown regions in "Rebels"? What will Mando find on Tython? Will a Jedi respond to Grogu when he gets there? Best Moment: Mando reacting to Grogu successfully using the force. It's the closest this episode got to genuine character investment. Character of the Episode: Ahsoka. Conclusion: I liked this episode. There is a lot to love with how Ahsoka's return was handled, and there was plenty of interesting lore and mythology revealed in this episode to keep things interesting. However, this was by no means a classic episode of television. It's excellent "Star Wars" content, but unfortunately the repetitive, shallow and unsatisfying nature of "Star Wars" following the failure of "The Last Jedi" means that excellent "Star Wars" content doesn't translate to excellent television. This is merely good. Score: 63
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Aaron DhillonJust a university student who loves to watch TV. And analyze it way too much. Archives
March 2024
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