Even before we pressed play, the running time told us a lot.
No, the specifics of Ahsoka’s finale weren’t clear from that one number: 48 minutes, counting corporate logos, “previously on” scenes, and credits. But the episode length spelled out the broad strokes of what was—and just as importantly, what wasn’t—in store. As that line from the Death Star run (and, perhaps, some unprotected sexual encounters) goes: “At that speed, will you be able to pull out in time?” At that length, the eighth and last episode of Ahsoka’s first season wouldn’t have time to wrap up every plot line, show us every crucial character interaction, or resolve every mystery. Nor was there any real reason to expect it to, considering Ahsoka is part of a larger ongoing arc. To judge its eighth episode is to appraise a pause in one part of an interconnected narrative. What should a show that’s part of a franchise’s storytelling trellis accomplish in the last installment of its season, aside from enticing us to tune in again? And how did Ahsoka’s finale fare when judged against that expectation?
Disney+ audiences have confronted this question before. Disney’s live-action Star Wars and MCU series are numerous, but each entry in those tapestries tends to be concise, by streaming standards. A few episodes have been listed at slightly longer than an hour—the finales of The Book of Boba Fett and Hawkeye, and the penultimate episode of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier—but all of those easily dipped under the hour mark after subtracting six to nine minutes of intros, recaps, and credits. Only Andor—which set out to tell a largely self-contained, two-season story—has gone beyond nine episodes in a season, and six-to-eight is standard. We could commend Disney on its commitment to resisting the bloat that sometimes sets in with shows that aren’t bound by time slots, but the downside of compressing stories about existential threats into such compact packages is that the ends of these seasons—and in some cases, these series—often feel unfulfilling.
There’s certainly some of that going on in Ahsoka’s finale, “The Jedi, the Witch, and the Warlord” (the latest of several playful, unusually-referential-for–Star Wars–TV titles this season). It’s fitting that the book that title invokes is the first to be published in a seven-part series, because Ahsoka’s Season 1 finale seems like the start of an interesting story more so than the end of one. However, while the initial Narnia novel was the first step into a larger literary world, it has a happy ending, one that winds up the strands of its story while preserving the promise of future tales. Unlike The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the finale of Ahsoka is mostly setup. Yes, it supplies plenty of action, removes Sabine’s blockage from the Force, and gets Grand Admiral Thrawn and Ezra home. It wisely leans into the mystical side of the series, has heartwarming moments, and boasts a stirring Kevin Kiner score. (Kiner killed it all season.) But its plot strains belief, its payoffs are predictable, and its character work is weirdly free of friction and depth. It also sidelines the series’ most compelling personalities, Baylan Skoll and Shin Hati, limiting the two to a total of one minute of wordless screen time.
Remember when Baylan tells Shin, “I trained you to be something more”? That’s how I feel about the finale of Ahsoka. It’s far from the weakest Disney+ finale, but it doesn’t do much to improve the perception that Disney’s series tend to bite off more than they can chew—or, rather, that they’re content to swallow without much mastication, because the meal must go on.
The Ringer’s Streaming Guide
There’s a lot of TV out there. We want to help: Every week, we’ll tell you the best and most urgent shows to stream so you can stay on top of the ever-expanding heap of Peak TV.
At the end of Episode 7, there was one impediment preventing Grand Admiral Thrawn’s departure from Peridea: the mysterious cargo from the Great Mothers’ fortress, which was still being transferred to Thrawn’s ship. The first line of Episode 8 does away with that obstacle: “Grand Admiral, the cargo transfer is complete.” You might imagine Thrawn’s response: Great: Gas up the Chimaera and let’s blow this thing and go home. Yet the leaving lasts long enough for the ship to pick up a Force-sensitive stowaway—the same one who caused its trip to Peridea. From Thrawn’s perspective, the episode plays out a little like a dream wherein no matter what you do, you can’t escape a pursuer or stop something scary from happening. The Jedi just keep coming, and not even Thrawn can pierce the plot armor that protects them.
Not that Thrawn is having his best day for decision-making. Look, I’m not a grand admiral, and I don’t love being a “Why didn’t they just … ?” guy. If I’m nitpicking plot points in a Star Wars series, it’s probably a sign that my emotions aren’t engaged enough to forgive a few far-fetched developments. But you have to help me out here: Why does the Chimaera have to stay on the surface, a Force leap from the fortress, while it waits for the Eye of Sion to (excruciatingly slowly) attach? The threat to Thrawn is on the ground, so why would the Eye come to the Chimaera instead of the other way around? Granted, although the partially repaired ship is spaceworthy, its main engines still appear to be borked, and it may be bound to the planet. But back in Episode 6, we saw it move under its own power and lower itself onto the fortress. If it can’t fly just a teeny bit higher, out of range of a Jedi propelled by a push from an apprentice who harnessed her Force powers five minutes before, maybe someone could have said so. As it is, Thrawn looks like the guard who gets run over by a steamroller in Austin Powers. If you’re worried about what’s coming, move away!
Then there’s the call to send all of two fighters to attack Ahsoka’s shuttle. “I’ve watched many an Imperial officer make the same assumptions about the Rebellion,” Thrawn says when Morgan utters some famous last words about the Jedi being unable to stop them. “Even I fell victim to the heroics of a single Jedi. Never again.” I appreciate this stance: Thrawn was unnerved by Bendu’s words in Rebels about a defeat that Thrawn couldn’t foresee, which soon arrived at Ezra’s hands (and purrgil’s tentacles). He’s learned his lesson, and so he’s not taking any chances: He’s sending … two TIE fighters. (Hobbie Klivian voice: “Two fighters against a shuttle?”) What is he hoarding his TIEs for, now that he’s about to be back at his old haunt in another galaxy? Does the fate of the Empire rest on his not losing more than two TIEs on Peridea? If you don’t want Ahsoka to stop you, shoot her … or something! And if the TIEs are just a stalling tactic, can’t he simply leave?
At least Thrawn’s last line of defense levels up. “You shall be rewarded,” the Great Mothers tell Morgan—and by the end of the episode, Morgan goes to her reward. But first she gets new tattoos, the Nightsisters’ spooky echo effect, and a new, lightsaber-resistant sword—the same one Darth Maul’s mama, Mother Talzin, conjures to fight Mace Windu in The Clone Wars. (“As soon as they gave her complicated makeup, I knew she was done for,” a friend texted me.)
Morgan is an imperious, self-possessed power poser when she’s on her own or giving orders to her mercenaries, but around Thrawn, she’s deferential and slightly stooped as a sign of subservience and respect. Diana Lee Inosanto’s vibe shift in the presence of her idol does a lot to sell Thrawn’s command cred, as does his troops’ absolute loyalty to him even though they’ve been stranded for a dozen years. (Which, The Wager would suggest, tends not to inspire faith in one’s leaders.) I just wish we could see him demonstrate more of the qualities that inspire such fealty from his soldiers and fear from his enemies, but that will have to wait for whichever series we see Thrawn in next.
Back at the shuttle, Ahsoka and Co. aren’t showing much urgency, considering the last flight out of this galaxy is about to depart. They’re traveling at a snail’s pace—or several snail-crabs’ pace—as they provide cover for the caravan of Noti. At least they’re putting the time to good use by rearming themselves, having heart-to-hearts, and giving viewers some long-withheld backstory. Evidently Ezra decided he could use a saber, despite saying last week that the Force was all he needed. (Perhaps he was just being polite by declining to take his old saber back from Sabine.) Fortunately, he happens to be traveling with the foremost lightsaber builder in any galaxy, who has a workshop full of spare parts. “I have been teaching younglings how to construct lightsabers longer than you’ve been alive,” Huyang says, which is something of an understatement given that the droid has previously claimed to have instructed younglings for “over a thousand generations.” He hasn’t been training many younglings while Ezra’s been alive: Ezra was born on the day the clones executed Order 66. (Happy birthday, bud!)
One of the younglings Huyang worked with was Caleb Dume, a.k.a. Kanan Jarrus, who would go on to train Ezra. Huyang even has an emitter that matches the one that Caleb chose, which Ezra uses to put the finishing touch on his new, blue blade. (Ezra goes through a lot to get his first kyber crystal; here he presumably bums one from Huyang’s or Ahsoka’s stash or a spare saber, though one would think he wouldn’t bond with a hand-me-down the way a Jedi does when they secure a crystal of their own.) It’s a bittersweet exchange and a nice acknowledgement of Kanan, though like a lot of this episode’s most poignant moments, it basically boils down to Rebels nostalgia. Rebels rules, so I thank Dave Filoni for his fan service, but there’s not much emotional meat on this bone for people who haven’t seen Rebels or for those who were hoping Ahsoka would do more than trade on the staying power of its predecessor’s relationships.
In the same scene, Huyang dispenses some exposition we’ve awaited since the premiere—in almost laughably underwhelming fashion. “Ahsoka became afraid that Sabine was training as a Jedi for the wrong reasons after what happened on Mandalore,” Huyang explains to Ezra, adding, “At the time, Ahsoka felt that if Sabine unlocked her potential, she would become dangerous.” In Episode 4, Baylan told Sabine, “Your family died on Mandalore because your master didn’t trust you.” That’s tough to square with Huyang’s version of events, which makes it sounds like Ahsoka lost faith in Sabine because of the Purge. One way or another, why is this fundamental bit of backstory surfacing in the finale, without Ahsoka or Sabine on screen? Why don’t we see them unpack their baggage and settle this difference themselves? If someone else was going to drop these deets so casually, it would have been nice to get up to speed sooner. It’s kind of incredible how little Ahsoka briefed its audience on what its characters have been doing for a decade-plus. (The better to keep cranking out spinoffs, sequels, and prequels, my dear.)
Even more astonishing is another yada yada’d interaction: We never see Sabine tell Ezra how she got to Peridea. (Hell, we don’t even hear about it from Huyang.) I can’t think of a conversation that was more crucial to show. The past two episodes established Sabine’s reluctance to come clean, setting the stage for a confession that must have taken place off screen, unless Sabine continued to clam up and Ezra dropped the subject. (Which would also be baffling.) If they did hash this out, was Ezra flattered that Sabine regarded rescuing him as more important than protecting the galaxy from Thrawn? Was he upset that she undercut his selfless heroism in Rebels by throwing Thrawn a lifeline? Did it make him more determined not to let Thrawn escape? We don’t know, even though this is one of the series’ central tensions. I guess he forgave her! For a show about friends going to great lengths to find each other, and the questionable steps they take to do so, the reunions themselves—and the subsequent reckonings—are too often undercooked.
Ahsoka and Sabine do discuss their latest schism, over whether to give Baylan the map of the Pathway to Peridea. (Personally, I still blame Ahsoka for not trying to take the purrgil express much sooner.) Having learned to accept and embrace Anakin again when she revisited her past in the World Between Worlds, Ahsoka realizes that she wants to emulate her master in some respects, despite the minor matter of that Sith lord thing. “Over the years, I’ve made my share of difficult choices,” she says, possibly thinking of when she was expelled from—and subsequently decided to stay out of—the Jedi order. “Often, no one understood my reasons, except my master. He always stood by me, even when no one else did. That’s why no matter what happens next, I’m going to be there for you.” It’s not a subtly stated sentiment, but it does show growth. Plus, Sabine gets a good line or two in, riffing on Yoda’s “Do or do not” and correctly retorting, “It helps,” after Ahsoka says being a Jedi isn’t about wielding a lightsaber.
Any further introspection is disrupted by the arrival of those two TIEs, which strafe the shuttle and leave it teering over the Noti. Faced with a stationary, nearly helpless target, the pilots repeat the same mistake Shin and her wingmen made in Episode 3, when Ahsoka’s shuttle was powered down and drafting through space near the Eye of Sion. I’m no more a pilot than I am a grand admiral, but folks, you don’t have to keep making quick, high-speed passes at a ship that’s neither moving nor returning fire. Nor do you have to fly close enough that the ship—or, in Episode 3, someone standing on the ship—can shear off your wings. You can hover and fire from a safe distance! When you’ve done the hard part, it shouldn’t be this difficult to finish the job!
Not only do the fighters both bite it, but Ahsoka’s shuttle isn’t even totaled. (Can’t Filoni let one of Thrawn’s plans pay off perfectly?) The good news about the shuttle being disabled but not destroyed is that it keeps Huyang out of harm’s way during the climactic battle. (I was worried about him.) Mercifully, the Noti also survived, though I’m disappointed that they didn’t get their Ewok on and take the fight to Thrawn. Crab battle!
Back at Empire HQ, Thrawn gets the good news that the shuttle is out of commission. “Assuming the Jedi ship is downed, their options to prevent our departure are now severely limited, if not impossible,” he says. “Which is why we shall prepare for a ground assault immediately.” I guess this deduction is supposed to be brilliant, a product of Thrawn’s fine mind and his insight into Anakin, but to me it just seemed sorta obvious: If they can’t come by air, they have to come by ground. (Maybe it would’ve helped to have someone in Thrawn’s circle mistakenly assume that they wouldn’t come at all.) It’s probably difficult for a writer who isn’t a military tactical genius to make a character seem like a military tactical genius, but if Thrawn were so smart, wouldn’t he have dispatched another TIE or two to take out the trio while they were riding the howlers, completely unprotected? Not that it would’ve worked; this week, Thrawn could’ve vaporized Peridea with Starkiller Base and our heroes somehow would’ve survived.
They survive something close to that when they reach the Chimaera. “There’ll be no negotiating with the apprentice of Anakin Skywalker,” Thrawn says, ordering his gunners to “rain hellfire upon them.” It turns out to be a light misting of hellfire at worst, as far as its effect. In JFK, Kevin Costner’s Jim Garrison says to Tommy Lee Jones’s Clay Shaw, “People like you, they just walk between the raindrops.” Here, Ahsoka, Ezra, and Sabine ride between the turbolaser blasts. It’s not as if they thwarted Thrawn’s plans through some clever counter: He had them dead to rights, and they escaped unscathed, because the story said they had to. After their evasive riding, they use the Force to open the door to the fortress. “Sabine, help out!” Ahsoka says. We can’t tell whether this latest attempt at telekinesis works, but we won’t have to wonder about her Force-using status for long.
Inside the fortress, two more ambushes await. As expected, the Great Mothers are ready for resurrectin’. The only slight surprise about Thrawn’s zombie army is that the night troopers aren’t already dead; they’re volunteers who’ve donated their bodies to Nightsister science. “The blessing of the Great Mothers shall protect you in battle against the Jedi,” Morgan says, which is certainly one way to put it—if by “protect you,” you mean, “turn you into zombie Gregor Clegane after you become cannon fodder.” The Nightsister side of the Force is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural.
“All were honored to make the sacrifice for you,” Morgan says to Thrawn, who rejects the implication that he’s running a kind of cult. “It is for the Empire,” he says. “The security of our galaxy.” Is that how he actually feels, or is he simply paying lip service to the notion that he’s a humble public servant, as Darth Sidious once did? How Thrawn envisions his role as the heir to the empire, and whether he sees himself as a steward or another emperor in all but name, will be one of the mysteries for future Mandoverse releases to solve. (Spending a dozen years as the sole, beloved leader of the Empire’s Peridea outpost may have given him a god complex.)
The night troopers aren’t any better at shooting as shambling corpses than they were when they were alive, but once they’re undead, deflected blaster bolts don’t stop them, and they keep coming until they’re cut down. “Ezra? This ever happen before?” Ahsoka asks, which seems like Marrok erasure (even though these guys are, for inscrutable magickal reasons, less luminous beings than our misty ex-Inquisitor king). Ultimately, though, the night troopers have the same stopping power that Moff Gideon’s dark troopers did: not enough. The Jedi keep coming, which means it’s Morgan’s turn to make the ultimate sacrifice.
Thrawn is ice cold when he makes his tacit demand: “We require a little more time,” he says, letting Morgan decipher the subtext. This dude doesn’t say please, and he doesn’t say thank you. Morgan looks a bit shaken to find herself subbing in for the night troopers, but hey, she pledged her life and loyalty, even if she probably didn’t expect her oath to be put to the test so soon. This is one of the most revealing looks Ahsoka has offered at the Grand Admiral’s MO: There’s no room for sentiment in his strategic calculus (though he does have the decency to look slightly displeased when he later learns that Morgan’s dead). As the Chimaera belatedly lifts off toward the end of the episode, Thrawn stays true to form and orders the destruction of the fortress, even though some of his men—or, at least, troopers who were formerly men—are still there. (Here’s hoping Sabine’s howler found a back door, and that the one she’s riding at the end is her friend from before.) It’s not the first time he’s cruelly bombarded a target on the ground, though on Rebels his victims are civilians on Lothal.
What’s missing from Ahsoka so far is any indication of why everyone’s willing to throw themselves off cliffs for their blue leader. What makes Morgan so in thrall to Thrawn? Or, for that matter, to Dathomir—was she born into the Nightsisters, whom she has called her “ancestors,” or did they adopt or convert her? What history do they have, outside of collaborating on building up the Imperial Navy? We don’t know, and now, it seems, we never will, which saps some of the pathos from her last stand. We’ve seen what Thrawn expects from his forces, but it feels like we’re missing the other half of the equation: why they’re so willing to lay their lives down for him. (Maybe they just think they’d be dead without him, but the Thrawn novels make more time for how he wins friends and influences people.) Nor do we know how any members of the Shadow Council are keeping tabs on Thrawn: Did Morgan tip them off to Thrawn’s survival, or is Pellaeon purely bluffing? We’re also still guessing at what Thrawn really wants. Is he a higher-ranking version of Werner Herzog’s Client from The Mandalorian, a true believer who thinks the “order” the Empire brings is good for the galaxy? Or does he have other aims in mind?
There’s a moment or two in almost every fight scene in this series when the choreography seems slightly off—or the editing is awkward, as in Episode 8—but Morgan’s duel with Ahsoka, a rematch of their fight in The Mandalorian’s second season, is one of the best (and the longest) in the series. Talzin’s blade looks a little like a cheap parlor trick in live action, but it slices one of Ahsoka’s sabers and pushes the protagonist to the brink before Ahsoka’s skill wins out. Morgan, at least, is allowed to die for real, having achieved her objective of slowing down Ahsoka.
Although Sabine reminds Ahsoka of Huyang’s mantra that they’re supposed to stay together, they do divide and try to conquer. While Ahsoka has her hands full with the newly leveled-up Nightsister, Ezra and Sabine tangle with a pair of undead-death-trooper mini bosses. One of them gets the better of Sabine and begins to choke her out. “Your skill with a weapon comes from your Mandalorian upbringing,” Ahsoka said to her apprentice in Episode 3. “Those skills alone will not be enough to defeat our enemy.” Her non-Force skills have sufficed so far, but this is now-or-never time: Either Sabine will finally Force pull her saber, like Luke in the Hoth wampa’s cave, or she’ll get a game-over screen. Since the premiere, it’s been pretty apparent which way this will go. At last, Sabine succeeds, seizing the saber from afar and skewering the night trooper’s skull. Maybe all she needed to find focus was a face full of slavering zombie.
If this were the only time Sabine called upon the Force in the finale, the fact that the big moment came against a generic grunt would be a bit of a letdown. But this breakthrough is only a warm-up for the main event. On the Eye of Sion’s bridge, the droid navigator announces, “Our course is locked in.” Thrawn orders, “Take us out,” and the droid does—extremely slowly. So slowly that Sabine and Ezra have ample time to contemplate whether they can make the jump. Sabine suggests that Ezra make a leap of faith, and she’ll push him the rest of the way. (Shades of Maul helping Ezra cross a gap to retrieve the Sith holocron in Rebels.) Then they can reverse the process: She’ll jump, and Ezra will pull her on board.
It’s a bold strategy, considering Sabine has, to this point, successfully channeled the Force in this way one (1) time. But what are friends for, if not for propelling us through the air into ascending Star Destroyers? Ezra decides to put his life in her hands and hope his jump doesn’t turn into a trust fall. Sure enough, Sabine holds up her end of the bargain, giving Ezra a boost just as gravity gets its hooks into him. He makes it to the hangar bay and takes out one trooper just as Sabine snipes the other. Now it’s her turn.
I know size supposedly matters not, but it must matter a little, or Ahsoka, Ezra, and Sabine would just stretch out their hands and stop the Eye of Sion from taking off. So yes, it’s a large leap for Sabine to go from pulling a lightsaber a short distance to pushing a human man—about as large as Ezra’s literal leap. We’ve seen the likes of Luke and Rey power up rapidly, but Sabine has nowhere near the same affinity for the Force as a Skywalker, so I understand and sympathize with viewers who’ll find her escalating skill harder to believe than Kate Bishop mastering Clint’s cool coin trick in Hawkeye, or who’ll fret that portraying the Force as something anyone can wield is a slippery slope that breaks canon or devalues what should be a scarce sort of talent.
The best case for Sabine’s fateful Force tush push being plausible—you know, as plausible as moving objects through the air with one’s mind and midi-chlorians ever is—is that she’s been practicing this shit for years. But wait, you might ask: Isn’t it less plausible that she advances so quickly after making no progress for so long? Well, maybe. But another interpretation is that she’s gotten the training she needs: All she had to do was remove her mental block, and the Force would flow freely (or as freely as it could given her midi-chlorian constraints). If that’s not enough for you to feel that this was earned, maybe we can chalk it up to a Force-y spin on hysterical strength, the capacity people supposedly have to perform superhuman feats when a loved one’s life is in danger. (In this case, of course, I’m talking about a totally platonic, sisterly love and am in no way implying that Sabine may have traveled to a new galaxy and endangered her old one because she harbored a deep desire to jump her adopted brother’s bones, which may have been enhanced by how hot Ezra got while he was away. How dare you suggest such a thing.) Your mileage may vary, but in my mind, Sabine’s Force epiphany wasn’t the most improbable or least-supported plot point in this episode.
After Ezra is on board—which the Great Mothers, for some reason, don’t seem to sense—Filoni and director Rick Famuyiwa (a key creative colleague on The Mandalorian) fake us out. Although they make it look like Sabine intends to join Ezra, she doubles back to help Ahsoka, inspired by Ahsoka’s forgiveness and gratitude toward Anakin. For once, this master and apprentice are sticking together, in contrast to both Thrawn and Morgan, and Baylan and Shin. “The relationship between a master and an apprentice was as challenging as it was meaningful,” Huyang said near the start of the episode, and this scene makes the meaning clear.
With their powers combined, they make quick work of their adversaries: Ahsoka slashes Morgan, Sabine lays waste to some night troopers, and then they take a dual leap off the bombarded building, just as Huyang swoops by in Ahsoka’s non-Nightsister-reanimated shuttle. Before she takes this leap, Sabine stops to don her helmet, symbolizing both that she’s found the part of herself that was missing at the start of the series, and that she’s pulling off the ultimate franchise fantasy of becoming a Mandalorian Jedi. Tarre Vizsla (and Grogu) would be proud.
As the shuttle speeds after the Eye of Sion, Thrawn gets on the mic and addresses Ahsoka in a fruitless attempt to psych her out. “I know you because I knew your master,” he says. “I concluded your strategies would be similar. One wonders just how similar you might become. Perhaps this is where a ronin such as you belongs.” This monologue might have cut Ahsoka to the quick at the start of this season, but Thrawn is working with outdated intel: He can’t see what color her cloak is, and he doesn’t know that Ahsoka isn’t haunted by her demons, or the memory of her former master, anymore. That trash talk imparted, the Eye of Sion enters hyperspace, leaving Ahsoka, Sabine, and Huyang behind. And so the season winds down without Ahsoka saying one word to Thrawn, let alone meeting him—as good an indication as any that this episode was the setup, not the spike.
The final few moments give us glimpses of various scenes. Ahsoka and Sabine ride back to the Noti camp, where Ahsoka sees her spirit animal, Morai. Shin makes her way to the bandit camp and raises her saber, a display of dominance akin to claiming the camp as her own. Baylan stands on the outstretched arm of a massive statue of Mortis God the Father, flanked by a smaller statue of the Son and a destroyed statue of the Daughter. He gazes out over a Lord of the Rings–ian landscape and sees a flashing light atop a distant peak.
In another galaxy, Grand Admiral Thrawn and the Great Mothers arrive at Dathomir, the Chimaera’s hold full of literal mystery boxes. (Which may well be full of slumbering Nightsisters; “He woke up the witches,” Ezra said of Thrawn.) And Ezra, aboard Baylan’s shuttle—which landed on a Republic ship to free Morgan in the first scene of the series—somehow finds the Republic fleet and makes a grand entrance of his own on the flagship. Still wearing full night trooper regalia—which is either an extremely misguided fashion choice, or a prank by a grownup whose adolescent self collected and frequently disguised himself inside armor—he descends the shuttle’s ramp and faces a welcoming committee whose hands are holding blasters pointed his way. All except for Chopper, who trundles over and chatters with glee, greeting an old crewmate at the end of his journey like Argos, Odysseus’s dog. “Hi, Hera,” Ezra says, standing in front of the Ghost. “I’m home.” It’s the highlight of the finale, which says something because it has little to do with Ahsoka per se: This is pure (and lovely) wish fulfillment for Rebels heads. Yet in keeping with Ahsoka’s strangely stunted PDA, the scene cuts off before Ezra and Hera (who must suspect that Thrawn has returned too) can hug. Would a 49-minute finale have been a minute too many? Does Filoni think we won’t come back for a second season unless he holds back every reveal and cathartic encounter?
Back at the Noti camp, Ahsoka gazes at the purrgil graveyard through a clearing in the overcast sky. Sabine joins her and wonders aloud whether she made a mistake in bringing an end to Thrawn’s Elba-esque banishment. “Ezra is where he needs to be,” Ahsoka reassures her. “And so are we.” Sabine senses something she dismisses as “shadows in the starlight.” And unbeknownst to either master or apprentice, Anakin’s flickering Force ghost looks on and smiles, à la his appearance at the end of George Lucas’s rejiggered Return of the Jedi. The End. Or maybe, at most, The Middle.
One of the most upsetting aspects of the finale is no fault of Filoni’s: Ray Stevenson’s passing prevented him from seeing Skoll’s story through to its end—and means we won’t have the pleasure of seeing Stevenson continue Baylan’s journey. Baylan is the series’ most intriguing character, and his still-somewhat-nebulous quest was clearly intended to be a big part of the future of the franchise. Lucasfilm will likely have no choice but to recast the character, and whoever embodies Baylan next will have a high bar to clear. It’s possible that Baylan’s near absence from the finale was an editing decision made to smooth the transition to another actor, though it would be sad not to see any additional footage of Stevenson’s Skoll that may exist.
That Baylan’s goals aren’t explicitly spelled out is something of a letdown, though it’s now clear that he’s hunting for something pertaining to the Mortis Gods, a.k.a. the Ones, which were introduced in a three-episode arc of The Clone Wars Season 3. “What I seek is the beginning, so I may finally bring this cycle to an end,” he said in Episode 6. The Ones go back to the beginning, or as close as anything can come, and they appear to be tied to Peridea. (Maybe it’s not a coincidence that the Father’s voice echoes like the Nightsisters’.) What part will Ahsoka’s connection to the Daughter, whose life essence was transferred into her as a padawan—long story—play in upcoming events? Will Filoni actually reach into Legends to exhume Abeloth? “Slowly, over time, things will start to become more clear about Mortis,” Filoni said in a Clone Wars Season 3 featurette. “We aren’t done exploring the nature of the Force and the bigger mythical questions that we began to ask in the Mortis trilogy.” Perhaps he’s hardly started.
Porting the Mortis arc to live action seems like a complex undertaking, so it’s probably for the best that Ahsoka didn’t try to cram it into these eight episodes. (As Huyang says of lightsaber construction, “This is not something you can rush through haphazardly.”) But what Baylan wants is only one of many open questions. Will the story of Ahsoka, Sabine, Ezra, and Thrawn continue in a second season if Ahsoka’s ratings didn’t stay strong, or in other series and Filoni’s film? How long will it take Ezra to open up his purrgil rideshare app and star-swim to Ahsoka and Sabine’s rescue? How will Skeleton Crew, the next Mandoverse-era series, tie into this tale? How would a war with Thrawn (and the Nightsisters) fit into the timeline that inevitably leads to the sequel trilogy? (My proposal: Why fight over one galaxy when each side could have its own?) Will Zeb ever get more than a few seconds of screen time, now that Ahsoka, Hera, and Thrawn have broken new ground in nonhuman leads?
It’s fine not to know all those things now: This was, after all, the finale of the first season, not our last look at these characters. But not all of “The Jedi, the Witch, and the Warlord”’s omissions can be hand-waved away as compromises imposed by an interconnected narrative, because some of the finale’s most serious flaws were of its own making. Even for me, a fan of Filoni’s earlier work, this season’s overall quality sat no higher than the vicinity of The Mandalorian Season 3—above Obi-Wan Kenobi and The Book of Boba Fett, but closer to those series than to Andor or Mando’s first two seasons. Ahsoka had the bones of a show that could have been (and sometimes was) better than that, but the last episode cemented its so-so ceiling. “It’s time to move on,” Ahsoka tells Sabine. If only the end of this season hadn’t been in such a rush to.
