I gave episodes 1 & 2 a B- primarily for pacing issues.
Episode 3 resolved my pacing concerns (dialogue seemed to move at a better pace), and the characterization of Hera (the bit we got of her) seemed more consistent with my expectations.
Most importantly, this episode was fun. I enjoyed the interactions between Ahsoka, Sabine, and Huyang. The dynamics of the three are interesting, and Huyang’s pessimism in regards to Sabine’s training gives Ahsoka a chance to be more optimistic than we saw in her interactions with Hera. It’s a good dynamic, and I look forward to seeing it play out further.
Less play with Baylan than I would have liked, but overall I think episode 3 exceeded the expectations I had coming out of the first two episodes.
Between Sabines training montage with a “blast shield down” helmet, and firing off anticipatory shots from a swivel gun, this episode was a love letter to A New Hope and I am totally here for it. Filoni manage to make the movies better every single time he touches the material.
The training scene in particular was a choreographical masterpiece when you consider the last time we saw something similar in live action - a young Luke able to instinctually repel training droid blaster shots as a mere novice. The scene with Sabine helps to show just how unlikely and exceptional that is. I also love the implication that Mandalorians in general have trouble surrendering to the will of the Force, as a warrior people it makes perfect sense that they would generally rail against anything else controlling or manipulating them.
Even little things like powering the ship and droid down to avoid detectoon, much like 3PO and the Falcon in Episode 5, just help to reinforce this idea that people do shit for reasons in this universe and I LOVE it. They even found time to give Ahsoka a stupid Anakin badass moment cutting a freaking starship in half with a lightsaber. I have had a giddy grin on my face for every episode of Ahsoka and hope they keep on with it.
Agreed on all accounts. I’d not thought of the powering down in those terms, but it certainly makes sense.
I loved the training scene. I think it does such a good job of highlighting the difference between a skilled fighter and a force adept individual.
Shin has crazy eyes and I love it.
This episode has Rebels vibes, where they are constantly in space dog fights. Unfortunately not a whole lot of story, but I suppose not every episode needs to be a lore drop.
Somehow I didn’t know that Mon Mothma becomes the Chancellor of the New Republic.
Hera is already over the New Republic’s incompetent.
I didn’t like it Ahsoka deflecting fire from a spaceship, don’t feel like she, or any Jedi, could do it, space battle was the low point for me
Rule of cool, my friend, rule of cool. That scene was very cool.
(Also I see no reason a Jedi couldn’t deflect starship fire the same way they do blaster fire.)
This kind of thing is all over the place in the comics, and we’ve very specifically seen Anakin/Vader do much more between the Clone Wars series and comics.
Haven’t read the comics, I watched Clone Wars and don’t recall nothing like that (don’t say didn’t happened)
Closest thing I can recall is Luke on Endor deflecting the lasers from the speederbikes.
In any case I didn’t like it, lasers from ships are way more powerful than the ones from a rifle blaster and I can imagine a Jedi deflecting one shot, but not two waves of three space ships
I’m mostly fine with it. They were small fighters, it’s not like she’s blocking a turbolaser
This episode isn’t going to help the paving concerns. Felt like the episode crawled along and tbh felt like there was way too much time spent on training Sabine. After 3-4 minutes it started to drag on and I found myself really not interested.
I’m still not sold on Rosario Dawson as Ashoka. There’s nothing particularly wrong with it, just that her voice doesn’t match up and it’s jarring every time I hear it.
Very much my least favorite of the 3 so far. Hopefully it gets better, but I’m getting a suspicion this show will entirely bomb with the general public. If you didn’t watch rebels you’ll be beyond lost.
Has there been any explanation why in rebels nobody mentioned Sabine being force sensitive and suddenly, Ahsoka had her as an apprentice and has her as an apprentice again?
I remember Kanan and Ezra teaching her to wield the dark saber, for example, but no mention of force sensitivity.
It would also seem strange to pick up Ezra as an apprentice having been with Sabine for as long as kanan had.
I think they’ve sufficiently alluded that Ahsoka thinks it’s worth training those with the discipline required but who may lack the talent.
The Jedi Order took those with the talent and tried to teach them discipline. Ahsoka wants to take someone with discipline and teach her to hear and wield the Force.
Theoretically it should be possible. Everyone has the Force, it suffuses all life in the galaxy. But not everyone has the inborn talent that the Jedi sought out.
If you’ve read the Wheel of Time series, think of this as training women who wouldn’t channel on their own but could still learn.
The issue I see here is that the jedi’s perception of the Force is fundamentally a paradigm. The reason Luke was too old, the reason the Jedi Order never took in adults for training was because it’s hard to instill that paradigm into people who already have an established paradigm of their own. It’s very likely the same mental discipline necessary to wield the Force is the very reason that Mandalorian Jedi are so rare. (coupled, of course, with just how hard it would be to steal mandalorian babies to brain wash them…)
according the Jedi dogma… the Force flows through everything, but not everything is aware of it. The rigid discipline of the mandalorians… if there is a Force Tradition there, then their perceptions are different. the Jedi putting everyone and everything on a spectrum (jedi=light, sith=dark. Other bastards=dark, stuff we tolerate = gray) assumes everyone is perceiving the Force in the same way- or is asking the same questions about the Force.
Important to note, Ahsoka does specifically say she isn’t training her to be a Jedi, but to be herself. I doubt any Force skills she gains will be particularly powerful, but I suspect they’ll be useful combined with what she knows already.
Not as of yet. As far as I can tell, everything regarding her training is a “between the series” thing. I do appreciate that they’re making very clear that she isn’t adept or particularly sensitive. I’m interested in seeing if they give us a “why” to Ahsoka training her.
They did have a toss-away line about “since [the old republic] it’s hard to find anyone [strong enough to traine]”…. Said to Hera…. Whose son is probably force sensitive…
TikTok post with the clip where Kanan explaining to Hera. Episode 3 Ashoka even uses the same wording as Kanan.
Ah! Thank you! I’d forgotten all about this.
@LifeInOregon Awesome
