Ahsoka: Shadow Warrior

September 13, 2023 2:03 AM - Season 1, Episode 5

Ahsoka confronts her past, while Hera and her allies undertake a rescue mission.
posted by EndsOfInvention (42 comments total)

I will say, that was Hayden Christensen’s best ever version of Anakin Skywalker.

Which admittedly isn’t saying much, but still…
posted by Kattullus at 5:17 AM on September 13, 2023 [6 favorites]

Okay, I will say another thing… whoever thought it would be a good visual to have the squidwhales travel between galaxies by farting into hyperspace needs an editor.
posted by Kattullus at 5:20 AM on September 13, 2023 [3 favorites]

It does show that he can act the part and there's been some combination of he's grown as an actor and the original scripts were just that awful (which they totally were).

I loved seeing Ahsoka age from her first battle with Anakin to the Siege of Mandalore (complete with Anakin's I don't recognize this because he was off becoming #2 Sith). They were both child warriors (i think he was only 5 years older than her) with all the PTSD that comes with 3 years of battlegrounds and betrayals.
posted by kokaku at 5:21 AM on September 13, 2023 [8 favorites]

Also a pitch for the last 4 eps of Clone Wars s7. Those episodes are so beautifully put together and capture something the 3rd prequel mostly failed to. There's a long silent sequence with Ahsoka in the 2nd or 3rd episode of that series that's just heartbreaking.
posted by kokaku at 5:24 AM on September 13, 2023 [9 favorites]

Hayden is a beast with the lightsabers. I honestly think he could have a future doing fight choreography.

This episode was fine I guess. It must have been bewildering for anyone who didn't watch The Clone Wars or Rebels. It's funny how people complained about needing to do homework to keep with Marvel films/shows, now it's Star Wars's turn I guess.

I also feel like I was cheated out of Rex. At least Temuera was there in voice if nothing else.

Hopefully next week will focus on the real stars of this show, Baylan and Shin. Their absence was deeply felt.
posted by orrnyereg at 5:24 AM on September 13, 2023 [4 favorites]

Really enjoyed the Clone Wars flashbacks and the Ahsoka/Anakin interactions. And kid-Ahsoka was great. I think they could have shortened the episode somewhat by cutting out a lot of the other (non-force-dimension) stuff where not much happened until the end.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 6:15 AM on September 13, 2023 [2 favorites]

It must have been bewildering for anyone who didn't watch The Clone Wars or Rebels.

I haven't watched either and I don't think this was bewildering. This story is...not that complicated at all?

My issues with this show are the absolutely glacial pacing and the flatness in the direction and editing. Every line of dialogue feels like it has multiple seconds of silent padding, and it seems like outside of the fight scenes the actors were asked to move and react as little as possible. Imagine a scene in Andor with Rosario Dawson, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, and Genevieve O'Reilly arguing over stealing ships and going rogue—this stuff could be absolutely electric.

The Anakin/Ahsoka stuff did look good but I think this show is just not made for me. It does delight me how much Mallory Rubin on House of R is getting out of it; her weekly excitement and analysis are keeping my interest from waning completely.
posted by bcwinters at 7:02 AM on September 13, 2023 [7 favorites]

You guys there are only three episodes left on the season and I feel like about six hours of story to tell to get anywhere satisfying at their current pace. Like, don't get me wrong, I'm not not enjoying all this. But where the hell is it headed and what's it going to have time to do when it gets there??

I'm confused about what lesson Ahsoka learned from Anakin in the long sequence in the middle. I think what he was trying to tell her was "we are both complex people who are products of fucked-up circumstances, and you shouldn't hate or blame yourself or your teacher for the education you had to be given," which I suppose I agree with but which could have been said more clearly and succinctly. Ahsoka definitely heard whatever it was loud and clear and had a new spring in her step afterwards, but I as a member of the audience was pretty confused and kiiinda just felt there were some scenes Dave Filoni wanted to render in live action and built all this plot scaffolding as an excuse to do that. I mean that's a very "Disney of 2023" mindset so well done there but it was frustrating to watch.

I'll definitely give Hayden Christensen credit for getting a lot better at acting since his initial turn as Anakin.

And man, live action Young Ahsoka does hit super different. She's SO little to be a soldier at all, let alone a commanding officer! Animation lets you look past that; live action just won't. That was the real emotional gut punch of the episode and I'm glad they found someone appropriately baby-faced to sell it.
posted by potrzebie at 7:19 AM on September 13, 2023 [14 favorites]

Like, don't get me wrong, I'm not not enjoying all this.

Ha!

But where the hell is it headed and what's it going to have time to do when it gets there??

As I understand it, the Filoni Extended Universe is supposed to wrap all this up with several shows and a movie. Maybe a second Ahsoka series was already planned?
posted by orrnyereg at 7:32 AM on September 13, 2023 [1 favorite]

And man, live action Young Ahsoka does hit super different. She's SO little to be a soldier at all, let alone a commanding officer! Animation lets you look past that; live action just won't. That was the real emotional gut punch of the episode and I'm glad they found someone appropriately baby-faced to sell it.

If she seemed familiar to anyone else, the actress playing teenage Ahsoka was Ariana Greenblatt. She also played young Gamora in the flashbacks in Avengers: Infinity War, as well as America Ferrera's daughter in the Barbie movie.
posted by Strange Interlude at 7:39 AM on September 13, 2023 [9 favorites]

I'm expecting all this is not going to resolve much and is setting up a big final something between Thrawn, Ahsoka, Sabine, Ezra, Baylan, and Shin that leaves us wanting whatever follows. I kind of hope they're setting something up that says "the sequel trilogy? didn't happen... here's an alternative future where Thrawn and Ahsoka are main players".
posted by kokaku at 8:07 AM on September 13, 2023 [3 favorites]

Ahsoka wearing a white cloak after returning from the afterlife was too heavy-handed, IMHO.
posted by 1970s Antihero at 8:27 AM on September 13, 2023 [5 favorites]

I'm loving this series! Ariana Greenblatt was fantastic as Young Ahsoka. Liked the Clone Wars flashbacks, the pared-down one-on-one lightsaber fights, the space whales.

I think this series feels like very pure Star Wars which is why it divides opinions. "The Mandalorian" was a Western set in the Star Wars Universe, "Andor" was a spy thriller set in the Star Wars Universe, but this is just Star Wars.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 8:48 AM on September 13, 2023 [7 favorites]

My priors: loved Andor and The Last Jedi; liked The Force Awakens and Mando S1 and S2; am happy for those who liked the rest.

This show does feel like pure Star Wars to me in terms of the surface aesthetics, but it's missing the real-world resonance that for better or worse, has always been at the heart of Star Wars. From the Vietnam allegory of the original trilogy and the Bush-era Manicheanism of the prequels to the sequel trilogy's millennials living in the shadow of their failed Boomer heroes, Star Wars has always filtered real-world dynamics through a fantasy lens. I mean, Kylo Ren is probably the first school-shooter villain in a blockbuster IP.

So, like potrzebie, I don't know what lesson was learned here. I thought the intention of that whole Clone Wars sequence was muddled and the writers chose the least interesting conflict possible: would Ahsoka choose life, or choose death? Not much of a choice, and besides: what does reliving two previous Filoniverse scenes have to do with moving her to make that choice?

I kept waiting for Ahsoka to look around the battlefield and realize, "Anakin, wait a second, this isn't real. And even when it was happening, this entire war was engineered by the Sith to destroy the Jedi, and then you went and joined the Sith. I'm not playing along with whatever this is." Without bursting the bubble around that lie and confronting Anakin's culpability, the war becomes a kind of blameless shared tragedy that they can bond over and put behind them, emerging lighter and happier after some laser sword action. But it leaves the lie of the war hanging over their heads.

I think the writers let themselves off the hook in the exact same way that the US refused to hold its leaders responsible for lying our way into the Iraq War. That's a real-world resonance that does a disservice to the characters and the story.
posted by reclusive_thousandaire at 10:10 AM on September 13, 2023 [12 favorites]

I got such Empire Strikes Back vibes from those final scenes it gave me shivers. I have never seen Clone Wars or Rebels but this episode just worked for me and kept me engaged without knowing the backstory.
posted by Molesome at 11:37 AM on September 13, 2023 [1 favorite]

reclusive_thousandaire, that's such a great read and great points but - does Ahsoka even know the war was a fake war engineered by the Sith to destroy the Jedi? How would she know that for sure? I think Maul at least implied as much (if not outright told her) but does she have it on good authority from anyone she trusts? She very clearly thought Maul was just throwing whatever he could at the wall to get her to let him go.

Because, damn, Anakin had an opening to have That Conversation in the hour we just watched and I'm not sure why he didn't. I think it would have been a lot more satisfying than what we got. I want to know how Anakin feels about how he was manipulated.

I'm wondering if Filoni is laying the groundwork for Anakin to ascend into a Bendu-type light/dark/both/neither Force demigod, fielding a much stronger argument for Anakin to be said to have "brought balance to the Force" than this franchise has ever really bothered to do before. Having written fanfiction where he was playing that exact role lol I'm all for it and it definitely tracks with the kind of crap Filoni likes to do.
posted by potrzebie at 12:54 PM on September 13, 2023 [6 favorites]

I want to know how Anakin feels about how he was manipulated.

That raises a good question, as far as the extent to which Anakin was even consciously aware of Palpatine's plan to overthrow the Republic and the extent to which he was used. I imagine that he might understand that ol' Sheev swindled him on keeping Padme from dying, and that maybe that there were other Sith apprentices (including the Separatist military leadership) before he got taken in, but I wonder if he understands that the war was a wholly manufactured crisis.

Either way, I don't know if the "Anakin" we saw here was really Anakin's Force ghost or just Ahsoka's projection of Anakin based on her memories of him.

I'm wondering if Filoni is laying the groundwork for Anakin to ascend into a Bendu-type light/dark/both/neither Force demigod

This seems like the implication of the Mortis arc from Clone Wars: The anthropomorphic embodiment of balance between dark and light literally invited Anakin to take his place and Anakin rejected the call. Perhaps at some point, Anakin's spirit will return to Mortis to do this and it will have some effect on the larger galaxy.

We also have the fact that Ahsoka was briefly killed on Mortis during this same arc and got revived by the Daughter's life force. Maybe she's on track to ascend as the embodiment of the light. In which case who in the Filoniverse (if not the larger SW galaxy) would replace the Son?
posted by Strange Interlude at 1:51 PM on September 13, 2023 [2 favorites]

In which case who in the Filoniverse (if not the larger SW galaxy) would replace the Son?

On Filoni's current form, it would have to be Maul.

So, like potrzebie, I don't know what lesson was learned here.
Me also. I think it was that.. living isn't just existing? Maybe? You have to.. do something with it?
I got this from a bit near the end, as their ship settles into the mouth of the spacewhale, where there's a bit between Soka and 11:
Ahsoka: "We'll just see where it goes"
11: "it Could go anywhere!"
Soka: "I know. But it's better than going nowhere"
..and she sits back all smug and smiling.
posted by coriolisdave at 2:30 PM on September 13, 2023 [3 favorites]

This was an episode that left fans of the prequel trilogy and Clone Wars especially well fed. I think it bordered along the line of indulging versus necessity, but I'm not one to complain. I honestly need to watch the episode a second time to really grasp everything as clearly as I would like, but with a flu addled brain, here are some of my immediate reactions.

I was surprised that we didn't touch upon Baylan and company in the least, but it definitely runs with the idea that this is not a story in a rush with itself. Instead, we got plenty of Force Ghost (?) Anakin engaging in one last lesson to his former padawan. I am generally a big fan of Dave Filoni, who wrote and directed this episode, but I'll admit, that lesson was somewhat buried under symbology and abstraction. The question, "Do you want to live or die?" was one of the more direct statements, but it belied a condition that has been fermenting in the background of Ahsoka's character. And really, the best I can parse it is close to what coriolisdave suggests above.

Ahsoka has been stuck trying to figure out who she is after the end of the Clone Wars, after the rebellion against the Empire, essentially, what is a soldier without a war? Her focus on Thrawn became her case for being because it was the promise of another war, where she had true purpose, but Anakin wanted her to know that viewing her value and existence in this frame was not how one lives. He taught her to survive in war, not exist only within it. Additionally, she carries a guilt for those who died because of her decisions and leadership. This inability to focus on a broader purpose limited her ability as a mentor to Sabine and well, her own happiness. Thus when she accepts this realization, she is basically born again, a la baptism and all, freed from the weight that had grown increasingly heavier over time. Yes, she's now clothed in white, and well, this is what happens when your writer is a big time fan of one JRR Tolkien and a wizard of his.

One might ask, why didn't this moment bring up Vader in a sense more than the pre-Lava/Kenobi duel? Because, to Filoni's credit, he didn't revisit one of the most incredible moments in Star Wars animation, "Twilight of the Apprentice" from Season 2 of Rebels, when Ahsoka Tano confronts Vader and confirms that he was Anakin Skywalker. For reference, it was similar to Kenobi's confrontation with Vader in Kenobi but well, even more powerful. Also, it would make the story focused more on Anakin versus Ahsoka, so it was a good choice in the end.
posted by Atreides at 3:35 PM on September 13, 2023 [6 favorites]

This show does feel like pure Star Wars to me in terms of the surface aesthetics, but it's missing the real-world resonance that for better or worse, has always been at the heart of Star Wars. From the Vietnam allegory of the original trilogy and the Bush-era Manicheanism of the prequels to the sequel trilogy's millennials living in the shadow of their failed Boomer heroes, Star Wars has always filtered real-world dynamics through a fantasy lens.

For what it's worth, this episode seemed to entirely revolve in part around the idea of a child soldier, or even, what happens when young men and women are drawn into war and exposed to its most horrific consequences. In Rebels, the show confronted PTSD in Clone Troopers, and it would not be surprising that Filoni also sees Ahsoka Tano equally scarred from her experience in the Clone Wars.
posted by Atreides at 3:37 PM on September 13, 2023 [4 favorites]

I agree that a lot was buried under symbology and abstraction, and it's totally possible that Ahsoka has been lost and looking for a purpose, and it wouldn't be surprising to see that she's been scarred from her wartime experiences. But the trouble is, we don't find Ahsoka lost and looking for a purpose in the beginning of the series; she's on a mission. So the show isn't dramatizing any of that. It's just kinda-sorta gesturing vaguely at ideas – like the idea of a child soldier, or the idea that maybe Ahsoka is scarred - without dramatizing them. Instead, the writers are counting on a friendly audience to fill in the gaps. The show refuses to commit to an actual point of view.

I'm not a Clone Wars / Rebels completist, so I can't say whether Ahsoka or Anakin knew that the Clone Wars were orchestrated by Palpatine, but the more interesting question to me is: which scenario gives the writers more dramatic juice –– having the characters be ignorant, or knowledgeable? Which scenario gives the characters a richer conflict and more emotional layers for the actors to play? Which one gives the story more thematic resonance, potentially imbuing the flat dialogue about "legacy" with a real perspective and stakes?

I think Star Wars is at its best when it fuses spectacular action with emotional stakes. By not exposing the lie of the Clone Wars, or exploring Ahsoka's or Anakin's perspective on them, the show squanders a chance to have a moral conflict at its center, based on two beloved characters' conflicting values and different points of view. And that's a shame, for as I learned at an impressionable age, many of the truths we cling to depend upon a certain point of view.
posted by reclusive_thousandaire at 4:18 PM on September 13, 2023 [3 favorites]

Ahsoka's on a mission, yes - but it's unclear what's driving her. I really like Atreides' read that what all the force sensitives around Ahsoka are reacting to is that she doesn't know who or what she is without a war to fight, and she's been messily casting about for meaning and clearly hoping to find it in Thrawn, either starting a war with him or at least being able to make a credible claim to end the next one before it gets hot. Baylan basically told her the same thing last week too, that her lineage is violent and they don't really know how to be just normal-ass Jedi who chill and meditate at the temple and teach the next generation and get called in to do negotiations and magic gardening and psychedelic light shows and ceremonial ribbon-cuttings and whatever the hell else the Jedi were into before the war. This would also explain why she tried to train Sabine but it went nowhere. It just doesn't jibe with the conception she has of what she's intended to be doing with her life. Like it or not, understand it or not, Ahsoka is hooked on war.

It's an interesting parallel with the clones, who really were bred for war. Ahsoka wasn't made for it, but she was certainly molded into someone who wasn't sure how to walk away and do something else with her life.

I agree though that you have to bring in a lot of extratextual knowledge to be able to get any of this out of what's actually in the damn show though. And if this is the intended read, it's pretty silly that Anakin decided the way to snap her out of it was to challenge her to a duel to the death? Dude, you are part of the problem. Maybe a Force-enhanced bake-off or something next time? A little friendly one-on-one basketball, a footrace? Because you really just reinforced to Ahsoka that the way she can communicate and actually get through to the people that matter to her is in fact through combat, after all.

I really, really love Anakin as a character and SO want to know what's going through his head at this stage, and it bums me out that that enigmatic muddle of a performance is probably the last we'll see of him this season.
posted by potrzebie at 4:56 PM on September 13, 2023 [5 favorites]

Potrzebie, great point about reinforcing communication through combat. At the risk of abusing the thread’s attention, here’s one example of how committing to a single dramatic choice in the Anakin-Ahsoka sequence could play out any number of exciting ways.

For each of our two characters, draw the same 2x2 matrix. The X axis values run from Ignorance to Certainty. The Y axis values run from Denial to Acceptance. As the sequence unfolds, find an interesting way to introduce the idea: The Clone Wars were orchestrated by Palpatine. What’s the most dramatic way for this to play out?

Maybe Ahsoka says, “But Anakin, the Clone Wars were a lie,” anchoring her in the Certainty / Acceptance quadrant.

“That’s not true,” says Anakin. “That’s impossible!” So he’s firmly on the Denial end of the spectrum––but maybe Filoni wants Christensen to play Denial/Ignorance and Christensen thinks Denial/Certainty is the more layered choice.

So, with characters anchored in different, conflicting points of view, the dramatic question becomes, “Will Ahsoka be able to break through her old master’s denial?” Or, “Confronted with the central lie of his life, will Anakin finally accept the truth?”

You can produce different conflicts, dramatic questions, and all kinds of character revelations by mix-and-matching those matrices to find the most plausible, on-character, thematically resonant version of the scene. You could even stage the scene to leave both characters anchored firmly in Ignorance and instead give the big revelation to the audience: OMG, they don't know the Clone Wars were orchestrated by Palpatine! Will they ever find out? What happens when they do? Dialogue and action beats push and pull our characters from one quadrant to another, letting the actors play all the subtleties in between as the characters change due to meaningful conflict and choices––not vague allusions and symbology. The only uninteresting choice is refusing to commit to a choice.
posted by reclusive_thousandaire at 5:12 PM on September 13, 2023 [2 favorites]

Maybe a Force-enhanced bake-off or something next time? A little friendly one-on-one basketball, a footrace?

A rap battle, if we must keep the war theme.
posted by orrnyereg at 5:28 AM on September 14, 2023

or perhaps a "yo mama" fight
posted by potrzebie at 6:39 AM on September 14, 2023

whoever thought it would be a good visual to have the squidwhales travel between galaxies by farting into hyperspace needs an editor.

I assume "ferocious cackling" wasn't the audience response they were going for in this scene, but that's what they got. I've found the visuals of the show very good so far, so this seemed very weird.

They did well with casting young Ahsoka, though. Very effective, so have an actor who can do "so young and so serious" so convincingly.
posted by EvaDestruction at 11:10 AM on September 14, 2023 [2 favorites]

I just finished a re-watch and I thought about the line by Anakin, "So this is what all of this is about." In the lead up to that point, and after, we have flashes of Vader, or Vader's mechanical breathing. I think part of Ahsoka's journey into the World Between Worlds also encapsulates this fear that Anakin imbued upon her something that lead him to become Vader. That his instruction on how to fight, to survive, may lead her to become that agent of destruction and death that her master personified. As potrzebie mentioned, Baylan referenced her legacy of destruction.

But this all leads into their final duel with Ahsoka fighting Anakin as Vader and she ends up holding him at lightsaber point, HIS red lightsaber point, before casting it aside. I think(?) this was in a way intended to remind Ahsoka that she should not fear that something of Vader is within her a la her master. This frees her conscience and allows her, also, the freedom to go forward knowing she is not going to pass down Anakin's dark legacy, the Vader legacy.

(side bar: potrzebie, if you aren't a fan of the High Republic Adventures comics, you'll have a wonderful surprise ahead for you!)
posted by Atreides at 2:02 PM on September 14, 2023 [1 favorite]

I was pretty dissatisfied with the interaction between Anakin and Ahsoka in limbo. Ahsoka seemed to start out appropriately wary of the apparition of "Anakin", but pretty soon seemed to go along with the idea that (a) that's really Anakin, (b) he was her master and worthy of respect, and (c) he still had something to teach her. Even though he basically said, "I have one last lesson to teach you," then attacked, which seems less than friendly.

• Does Ahsoka have any experience with Force ghosts? Does she have any reason to think there'd even be a coherent Anakin-spirit she could have a conversation with? Does she have any reason to think that's who she's talking to?
• Why would Ahsoka treat Anakin as her master? She left that behind when she left the Order, and their last encounter was him trying to murder her as Darth Vader. Does Ahsoka know about his last-minute "redemption"? Does she buy it?
• What does a dead man who spent half his life as the mass-murdering tool of a mass-murdering dictator have to teach Ahsoka, who set out on her own unique path more than two decades before? If there's any wisdom to be imparted, I'd expect it to be from Ahsoka to the man who's still assuming his youthful form, which implies he's still clinging to the nonsense idea that Anakin Skywalker died young when Darth Vader "killed" him. What's the point of his "redemption" if he doesn't accept that he was Anakin all along?

posted by The Tensor at 2:03 PM on September 14, 2023 [2 favorites]

Does Ahsoka have any experience with Force ghosts? Does she have any reason to think there'd even be a coherent Anakin-spirit she could have a conversation with?

I can’t remember if Ashoka has personally interacted with a force ghost, but she was present for the Mortis arc in Clone Wars where Qui-Gon appeared to both Anakin and Obi Wan. Presumably she’d be aware of force ghosts.
posted by nathan_teske at 4:05 PM on September 14, 2023

But becoming a Force ghost was a big secret known only to Yoda, which he taught to Obi-Wan. And somehow Anakin learned it before his death, I guess it's implied because Qui-Gon visited him and taught him how to do it? Which doesn't really make sense because he was evil until like 10 minutes before he died, but, you know, the prequels weren't really about pedestrian things like "making sense" or "being consistent".
posted by The Tensor at 4:30 PM on September 14, 2023

Quick note, but at the end of the episode, Ahsoka tells Hera she will rescue Sabine and Ezra, not stop Thrawn. The Ahsoka who was willing to sacrifice Ezra in Fallen Jedi is gone.
posted by Atreides at 6:01 PM on September 14, 2023 [2 favorites]

I didn't necessarily buy that "Anakin" was force-ghost Anakin, but maybe it was "the force" or Ahsoka's subconscious, in the same way Luke met "Vader" on Dagobah.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 6:30 AM on September 15, 2023 [1 favorite]

1 million words are going to be written about the "what" of Anakin, and in a few months, Filoni will be like, "X. He's X." It'll be the most straightforward answer possible.
posted by Atreides at 12:44 PM on September 15, 2023 [1 favorite]

Filoni will be like, "He's the new Father. You see, once upon a time, in a pocket universe that existed out of time, there were three Force entities: the Father, the Son, and the Daughter. And, see..." And the general audience will be like "What. The. FUCK. Are you talking about?"
posted by The Tensor at 12:51 PM on September 15, 2023 [5 favorites]

Outstanding episode! I loved all of it.

Also, poor Huyang. Jedi never listen.
posted by BeeDo at 1:05 PM on September 15, 2023 [2 favorites]

Finally got around to watching this today; as someone who’s seen about 15% of Clone Wars and 0% of Rebels, I still understood it just fine. I suspect there is more subtext I might have noticed if I were a completist, but it was not a struggle or anything.

I am also highly impressed with Ariana Greenblatt. As I understand the chronology, there are several years between the two pseudo-flashbacks to the Clone Wars era; Greenblatt did such a stellar job of capturing a more mature Ahsoka in the later one that I thought for a moment it was a different actor. Seriously, watch her first moments in the second interlude; she has Rosario Dawson’s gait down perfectly.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 8:03 PM on September 21, 2023 [4 favorites]

If Ahsoka is everything Anakin is, I wanted her to confront him about his legacy as Vader. While the effects signalled this, the dialog didn't, and that felt like a missed opportunity.

I was entertained by the discussion about Ahsoka's master with Carson: clearly not a lot of people know Anakin was Ahsoka's master. And I'm not sure if this is before or after the novel Bloodlines, in which the identity of Leia's father destroys her political career.
posted by suelac at 10:21 PM on September 24, 2023 [1 favorite]

FWIW, this is before Bloodline. That takes place a few years before The Force Awakens. I think a lot of us would've liked to have seen Anakin and Ahsoka have that conversation, but at the same time, I think it would have shifted the emphasis in the story to Anakin from Ahsoka. So just not the right time for it.
posted by Atreides at 6:32 AM on September 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

have the squidwhales travel between galaxies by farting into hyperspace needs an editor.

So Mr. Nat has taken to calling this show “Star Wars Episode IV: The One With the Whales.” I quite like the whales, but I have some serious questions about their digestive system. Like, given that they are pretty clearly baleen whales who filter feed, WTF kind of sky plankton does this planet support such that they can hyperspace jump to another damn galaxy?

Galaxies are 100k or so light years across, but even the nearest one is 2.5 million light years away. That’s some pretty special sky plankton.
posted by nat at 1:41 AM on September 26, 2023 [1 favorite]

Wookieepedia:

In order to breathe, purrgil needed to inhale stores of a green gas, Clouzon-36. When they were not provided with enough of the gas, their skin turned to a gray to brownish color. Once sufficiently provided with the Clouzon-36, they metabolized it into hypermatter fuel and therefore were able to jump into hyperspace, an alternate dimension that allowed traveling at lightspeed, by creating simu-tunnels.

posted by TheophileEscargot at 2:03 AM on September 26, 2023 [2 favorites]

Incidentally, the purrgil were introduced in a Rebels episode involving the Mining Guild going after said gas, I think. The only fun thing about the Mining Guild is they paint their TIEs yellow. That episode was famously derided as "filler" when it happened, then the series finale occurred and welp, turned out the purrgil weren't just a fun time sink with space whales.
posted by Atreides at 6:44 AM on September 26, 2023 [2 favorites]

So, not so much space plankton as Spice Clouzon-36. Ok then. (Some of the ships looked pretty Dune-esque to me too, fwiw) (the first Dune movie, the one with the pug)
posted by nat at 11:23 PM on September 26, 2023 [2 favorites]