Note: This article contains spoilers for season 3 of The Mandalorian and Ahsoka.
In 2019, Star Wars was in a very tense place. The sequel trilogy, which consisted of The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi, and The Rise of Skywalker, had proven to be very divisive and unsatisfying. The two other movies that were released after Disney’s acquisition of Lucasfilm, Rogue One and Solo, received positive and mixed reception respectively, and were not enough to wash away the negative reputation of the sequel trilogy. In 2019, that changed. The first season of The Mandalorian was released on the streaming platform Disney+ to a very warm welcome. It told a story that was smaller in scope than what was usually seen at the movies. It wasn’t about trying to save the galaxy, it was just about a mercenary going on adventures while protecting a child from other mercenaries. Compared to the recent movies, this was a nice change of pace and a very promising start for the Disney+ era of Star Wars. The show was created and written by Jon Favreau, who helped start the Marvel Cinematic Universe by directing Iron Man, and Dave Filoni, who was beloved within the Star Wars fandom for his work in animation. Season 2 got more ambitious and introduced characters that had previously existed within the franchise and especially in the animated shows, such as Bo-Katan Kryze, Boba Fett, and Ahsoka Tano. Despite this, the focus was still firmly on the titular Mandalorian, Din Djarin, and his adopted child, Grogu. The response was so positive that after season 2 ended, an entire batch of upcoming shows were announced. The Book of Boba Fett and Ahsoka were spinoffs of The Mandalorian and would be made by the same creative team. Obi-Wan Kenobi, Andor, The Acolyte, and Lando were created by different people and were telling their own stories. It was a lot, but it was possible to pull these shows off. Given how accomplished Favreau and Filoni were, many were confident that their shows were in good hands. It has now been two years, and the results have been more mixed than anticipated. When The Book of Boba Fett turned out to be mediocre, I was hoping that it was just a one-off incident and that Disney+ would be back on track with Obi-Wan Kenobi. That did not happen.
Obi-Wan Kenobi takes place a decade after Revenge of the Sith and follows Obi-Wan Kenobi as he leaves the planet of Tatooine to protect a young Princess Leia from Inquisitors–people who are trained by the Empire to hunt down Force-sensitives and kill them. Along the way, he runs into Darth Vader a.k.a. Anakin Skywalker, his former apprentice who fell to the Dark Side. I think the idea was for Obi-Wan to learn to be more hopeful, but in practice, nothing about the show felt like it had anything to say. Obi-Wan doesn’t have any noticeable character growth, Leia doesn’t either, and the Inquisitors don’t feel very threatening. Out of all of the Star Wars shows released so far, Obi-Wan Kenobi is the one that I remember the least. Nothing about it held any weight whatsoever and didn’t tell us anything about Obi-Wan that we didn’t already know. It runs into the same problem as The Book of Boba Fett where it takes a beloved character and gives them a show just for the sake of it, instead of coming up with a good story first. Thankfully, when it came to Andor, the story was very carefully constructed.
Andor is a prequel to the 2016 movie Rogue One and is about one of the main characters from the film, Cassian Andor. It takes place about five years before Rogue One and shows how Cassian ended up fighting for the Rebellion. This show has a darker and grittier tone than any mainstream Star Wars story, and it works tremendously in its favor. What I really love about the show is how normal the characters are. They’re not Force-sensitive or experts in warfare. They’re just people trying to survive in an Empire that wants to take away their freedom. Along the way, they sometimes make decisions that put other people in danger. Along with Cassian’s story, the show also explores what it is like to be within the Empire’s inner circles in the capital of Coruscant. While there, it does a great job of capturing the paranoia that comes with trying to undermine the Empire while presenting a loyal face to it. By bringing the story of the Rebellion down to ground level, Andor presents a very refreshing take on the Rebels vs. Empire narrative. It doesn’t break any new ground from a storytelling perspective, but it is a very well-told story. Despite knowing what happens to Cassian in Rogue One, I’m still very excited to see what happens in season 2 of Andor. Unfortunately, I cannot say the same for season 4 of The Mandalorian, if it ever happens.
The third season of Disney+’s flagship show, The Mandalorian, also came out this year. At the end of the second season, Grogu, the child that Din Djarin had been protecting the entire show, left his side to train to be a Jedi with Luke Skywalker. In addition, Din was left in possession of the Darksaber, which gave him the right to rule the Mandalorian people. However, Din did not want that responsibility. The ending left us some setup for some introspection regarding Din’s identity as a Mandalorian and what that means for him. The two episodes of The Book of Boba Fett that focused on him added to this setup by exiling him from the Children of the Watch, the clan that he had lived in for his entire life. However, the third season takes the setup and throws it all away. By the second episode, Din already found the Mines of Mandalore and bathed in its waters, which was required to rejoin the Children of the Watch. With that out of the way, Din had no new directions to go towards and ended up stuck being a side character to Bo-Katan Kryze’s story. It is agreed that Bo-Katan should be the one to possess the Darksaber and reunite the Mandalorians, even though she has done nothing to deserve it. Moreover, most people watching have not seen the animated shows Star Wars: The Clone Wars or Star Wars: Rebels, so they are being asked to root for a character that they know next to nothing about. In addition, the season shows Din reunited with Grogu and trusts that the viewer watched The Book of Boba Fett to understand how it happened instead of actually explaining why. The third episode also takes a break from the main plot to look at a minor character’s experiences in the New Republic government. Considering that the character never shows up again, it’s unclear as to why that episode was included. It’s clear that the showrunners wanted to use The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett to create a grand narrative in the vein of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but it doesn’t feel organic. It would be like if the first Iron Man movie suddenly stopped focusing on Tony Stark and cut to Captain America waking up in the 21st century. The attempts at buildup not only felt forced, but actively got in the way of the story. To make matters worse, there are references that are supposed to be important, but would make no sense to someone who hasn’t watched the animated shows. To the casual viewer, hearing one of the Imperial officers talk about Grand Admiral Thrawn’s return would be confusing at best. To them, Thrawn is just “some guy.” I may know why his return is such a big deal, but they won’t. There are also instances of very careless writing. During the finale, the Darksaber, the most important weapon in Mandalorian culture, is destroyed in the middle of combat. After the battle, nobody cares to mention it, which makes no sense given how significant it is. Season 3 of The Mandalorian is not unwatchable, but it is extremely frustrating. Nothing that the characters do seems to have any meaning, and the plot seems like it wants to be somewhere else. It makes me worry that future seasons of the show will just be connecting tissue for other shows, especially considering that Favreau said he wanted to continue it for as long as possible. Unfortunately, given how aimless this season felt, I can’t help but feel like it has outlived its premise. The show that came afterwards, Ahsoka, may have had a more active protagonist than Din, but its story suffered from trying to strike a balance between casual and diehard fans.
Ahsoka was written by Dave Filoni and follows Ahsoka Tano, a Jedi who was the apprentice of Anakin Skywalker and participated in the Rebel Alliance after the Jedi Order fell. A couple of years after the war ended, Ahsoka now has a new goal: to investigate the return of Grand Admiral Thrawn, a terrifyingly brilliant Imperial strategist and commander, and hopefully find a lost friend in the process. Ahsoka’s backstory is explained in the animated shows, and the show itself picks up a plot thread from the series finale of Star Wars: Rebels. At the end of Rebels, one of the main characters, a Jedi named Ezra Bridger, seemingly sacrificed himself to save his home planet of Lothal from the Empire. To do this, he summoned a group of space whales known as “purrgil” to whisk both him and Grand Admiral Thrawn away to an unknown location. During the epilogue, Sabine Wren, a Mandalorian who formed a sibling-like bond with him during the course of the show, suspected that he was still alive, and went with Ahsoka to find him. This is also explained in Ahsoka, but despite the effort to get fans caught up, something feels off. It’s not the transition from animation to live-action–the actors do a great job of playing their characters. The main problem with the show is that eight episodes isn’t enough time to get to know the characters, especially for someone who isn’t already familiar with them. Sabine Wren is the character who is hurt by this the most. In Rebels, it is established that she is an artist. It explains why her armor is so colorful, and it makes her contrast with the monotony of the Empire. It is one of the most unique aspects of her character, and it isn’t shown in Ahsoka at all. In addition, it is mentioned that Sabine’s entire family was killed in the Purge of Mandalore, but we never get to see how it affected her. Her learning to use the Force was handled very clumsily as well–she goes from not being able to use it at all to being able to push Ezra onto a starship with no moments of revelation in between. Another problem with Ahsoka is that it doesn’t do a great job of showing the viewer why a character is significant. For example, Ezra is the protagonist with the most focus in Star Wars: Rebels, but in Ahsoka, he merely comes across as “some guy.” He’s very likable, but reuniting with him didn’t carry the weight that it should have. The antagonist of Ahsoka, Grand Admiral Thrawn, is supposed to be one of the most brilliant strategic minds that the Empire has ever come across. In both Star Wars: Rebels and the canon novels, he is shown to be someone who can look at his opponents’ backstory or culture and immediately predict how they will act. In Ahsoka, when he learns about Ahsoka Tano, he immediately decides that Ahsoka is too unpredictable to negotiate with. While it does make sense in-universe, it also means that it is harder to take him seriously as a villain. He isn’t given other opportunities to demonstrate this skill successfully, so he only comes off as clever, but not brilliant. In addition, it is never explained why he wants to bring the Empire back and wage war on the New Republic. It comes across like Filoni read the non-canon Heir to the Empire trilogy where Thrawn originated, and decided to adapt that story with the characters he created. However, the smaller details that make everything make sense in a story were glossed over. The only character who isn’t hampered by the lack of runtime is Ahsoka Tano. There is an entire episode dedicated to flashbacks through her time in the Clone Wars, her inner conflict about what being a Jedi means, and confronting the ghost of her fallen master, Anakin Skywalker. It is easily the best episode in the series, and it is the only one that goes in-depth into who Ahsoka, or anyone in the cast, is. If the show was longer, then other characters could have had similar moments, but because Ahsoka is so desperate to get from plot point to plot point, it never fully develops an emotional core. If the show was only meant to appeal to the diehard fans, then the lack of context and detail would have been less egregious. However, there would be no reason to switch from animation to live-action if they weren’t trying to appeal to casual fans. Unfortunately, Ahsoka does not give the casual fans a reason to care about the story or the characters, which makes this less than a mediocre show–it’s a failure.
With the exception of Andor, there is one word that I would use to describe the recent batch of Star Wars television, and that is “utilitarian.” The shows are so focused on making things happen that they forget to make the viewers care about what they’re watching. When I watched Obi-Wan Kenobi, I felt like I was consuming empty calories. When I watched season 3 of The Mandalorian and Ahsoka, I felt like I was doing homework. I didn’t feel like I was watching them to enjoy a story; instead, I was watching them so that I could get context for another story that would hopefully be enjoyable. I didn’t have this problem with Andor because while it is a more contained story, it can also be enjoyed without any Star Wars knowledge. This was because there were more writers who could look at the script and add to it. They were also able to make the show more accessible to people who weren’t fans of Star Wars. In fact, Andor’s showrunner, Tony Gilroy, specifically asked the writer’s room to put aside their nostalgia so that this could happen. In contrast, season 3 of The Mandalorian was mostly written by Jon Favreau, and Ahsoka was written entirely by Dave Filoni. There’s no doubt that Favreau and Filoni are very good at conceptualizing ideas and knowing what makes Star Wars work. However, there seems to be little to no additional input into the story, whether from other writers or from higher-ups at Lucasfilm. Both of the animated shows have several writers outside of Dave Filoni, which makes this decision very strange. Filoni may have created Ahsoka, Sabine, and Ezra, but he wasn’t solely responsible for their character arcs. Having other writers on Ahsoka could have helped introduce the characters to a larger audience and make them care about their journeys. They could have also helped The Mandalorian by giving Din Djarin and Grogu a new purpose and making the New Republic explorations fit in more seamlessly. The original Star Wars films succeeded not just because of George Lucas’s vision, but because there were other directors and writers helping him. Favreau and Filoni could stand to learn from this and let other people into their world.
Despite my numerous criticisms about the recent Star Wars shows, I am still very optimistic about their future. The Acolyte, like Andor, seems to be taking a similar approach to its writer’s room in that there are both fans and non-fans involved. This makes me very excited to see what it has to offer. The most exciting parts of Star Wars have been coming from people who, while clearly appreciative, do not feel overly beholden to the past or to what they think the fans want. The story being told in Favreau and Filoni’s material isn’t beyond redemption, but it has been let down too many times by a need to tie everything together and doing so in a clunky manner. The current plan is to conclude the stories of The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett, and Ahsoka in a movie that will be directed by Dave Filoni. If it does come out, I’ll probably watch it. That being said, if this pattern of quality continues, it will probably feel more like “finals week” than “movie night.”
The Roar 