I recently wrote about how I feel that the people behind all new Star Wars material seem to have an objective to ruin all the fond memories long-time fans like myself have of it. The 3 Disney movies were atrocious to most old-school fans and the reviews online reflect this. It was also a rigged review scale where the "professional critics" differed dramatically from regular people like you and I. Some sites changed the way that they allow reviews right around the time that these films were getting what they called "review bombed." It was just so typical of the industry: Anytime that something was getting bad reviews that were big players in the industry, big sites like IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes would call it "review bombing" rather than it being the opinion of the people watching it. They chalked it up to something silly like white supremacy or something along those lines but the fact of the matter was that those films were not very good.
I recently expressed my disdain for how they started out wonderfully with The Mandalorian but in season 3 they reversed course and it almost seems like they can't help themselves as they turned the series into the Womandalorian and all of a sudden the character that the entire series was meant to be based around, was taking a back seat to several female characters. I don't have a problem with a strong female character, but when you hijack a series that was otherwise good in order to push some sort of social justice narrative, I'm not going to like it. That aside, the story just started to not be very good anymore as well. It's as though they were kind of out of ideas and were just throwing whatever at us.
Disdain rant over: I've already said enough about this in my previous rant so I'll leave that alone for now and instead focus on the latest addition to the Star Wars Universe that was just released called Ahsoka.
Ahsoka
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While I am not enough of a SW nerd to know the true backstory of Ahsoka, I do know that we see her a few times in The Mandalorian and she is an interesting character particularly in the way that she has two light sabers and fights in an almost samurai type of way. I did find out that her master was Anakin Skywalker or as we know him, Darth Vader, yet she didn't complete her training with him.
Even though so far the series kind of borders on "The Force is Female" that Kathleen Kennedy is pushing so much for, I was hoping that they could keep this series eventful and interesting regardless. Make no mistake, thus far the series is very "girl power" oriented, but unfortunately I have just come to accept that this is what Disney is going to do and we have to accept it and move on.
So far the show is decent and I have really enjoyed the way that they have kind of gone old school with the appearance of the technology in the show as well as they way that they transition from one scene to another in the traditional "original Star Wars" fashion. This brings back the nostalgia in me so I get a kick out of that and think other old-school Star Wars fans will as well.
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I don't consider this to be a spoiler since it is spelled out quite early in the show, but the Empire is dead yet there is an Empire leader out there named "Thrawn" and some jedi-like mercenaries are targeting a new type (for me) of character that is a prisoner who holds the key to finding Thrawn who I presume is a man but this being Disney, you never know.
The evil jedi duo are pretty friggin awesome and the series starts out with a bang when these two invade the ship that is carrying the prisoner named Lady Morgan Elsbeth. This is all spelled out in the beginning of the very first episode in traditional text-on-screen way that is so reminiscent of the original Star Wars trilogy.
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Baylan Skoll and his apprentice Shin Hati (pictured above) are absolute badasses and I think that most fans are going to love the way that they are presented almost immediately. They embody the evil of the Empire perfectly even though they claim to just be bounty-hunters who are unconcerned with the politics of the galaxy but merely their own personal gain. This leaves room in the future for them to have a change of heart and I predict that is exactly what we are going to end up seeing.
The first episode is simply amazing and they lay down the building blocks of helping us understand what is going on in this series very well..... and then things kind of drop off. I am already having the sensation that this series, which is slated for 8, 1-hour episodes, doesn't have enough material to justify this many episodes. I say this because there were parts of the latter parts of episode 1 and especially episode 2 where I found myself getting very bored and even dozed off at one point. To be fair to the show it was late and I was in my very comfy bed while watching it so the blame might lie on me a bit here.
Should I watch it?
If you are a Star Wars fan I think you would probably end up watching this anyway but if you haven't seen it or were unaware that it existed I think, at least so far, that you should probably check it out. Old-school fans will probably notice the throwbacks to earlier Star Wars films that take place regularly.
My opinion of this series will likely evolve as they are released but for the moment, I think it is worth checking out. Even though I like it up to this point it is still made by Disney so I am quite certain they will find a way to screw it up.
The only way to legally obtain this is to be a Disney+ subscriber but you can always go sailing if you want to get it by some other means