She had to let go of her guilt about causing the deaths of so many clones during TCW.

Agree to disagree. He was great.

annoyed they referred to them as whales instead of just referring to them as purrgil.

have they been doing that all series (this is the only episode i have watched)..

It sounds like you might need a refresher on the final arc of TCW S7, tbh. Not only was she reluctant to kill the clones even after Order 66, but she felt a ton of guilt over releasing Maul and inadvertantly causing the deaths of everyone aboard that Destroyer that ends up crashing down to the surface. The last shot of her is at the crash site, having put up a mass grave for the clones.

So yes, I think that guilt has been a major reason for how her character has acted even back in Rebels, and up to now.

Admittedly, the "lesson" maybe isn't as clear as it could've been, and especially for anyone that hasn't seen the animated series. So I'll give you that.

TCTTS said:

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I guess I'll be the loner who thought last week's episode was better. Tonight's wasn't bad by any means, it just felt like 90% "Hey, here's this thing you'll know!" fan service filler, and 10% actual story. I also didn't totally understand Ashoka's arc. So she wants to live now? Did she want to die previously? I get needing to find her purpose/mojo again, but that didn't really come across here, with whatever "Anakin" was trying to teach her.

That said, I do agree that the final five minutes or so were pretty great. It felt like the end of the second the movie in a trilogy, in the best way, and I guess if you divide this season up into thirds, that's basically where we are now. With these last three episodes, I'm definitely ready to get to the meat of the story.

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My take was that she was either 'just existing' aka not really living or dying, and was putting up a front of austerity to hide how much guilt and betrayal she felt.
Then we have a series of flashbacks where she has to confront that and is basically told "snap the **** out out of it, this isnt who you are" type of scene.
Now she comes out of the water, seems more whimsical and is smiling and seemingly enjoying life after deciding 'to live'
I'm trying to do my best to just not treat all of it as 'fan service' or giving in to the thought that you have to know all of the backstory. I think its another episode where you really dont. Maybe the people that loved the cartoons and watched them all recognized more scenes, or felt a bit more seeing Anakin and her unite, I dunno.

And maybe even my take on it is missing some context, who knows

PatAg said:

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Feel like the Ezra stuff was a last straw scenario, where she just feels like everything she touches turns to dust. So why bother? I dunno

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She feels that she is Desperately Wanting and is not Good enough to be Better Than Ezra.

PatAg said:

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TCTTS said:

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I guess I'll be the loner who thought last week's episode was better. Tonight's wasn't bad by any means, it just felt like 90% "Hey, here's this thing you'll know!" fan service filler, and 10% actual story. I also didn't totally understand Ashoka's arc. So she wants to live now? Did she want to die previously? I get needing to find her purpose/mojo again, but that didn't really come across here, with whatever "Anakin" was trying to teach her.

That said, I do agree that the final five minutes or so were pretty great. It felt like the end of the second the movie in a trilogy, in the best way, and I guess if you divide this season up into thirds, that's basically where we are now. With these last three episodes, I'm definitely ready to get to the meat of the story.

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My take was that she was either 'just existing' aka not really living or dying, and was putting up a front of austerity to hide how much guilt and betrayal she felt.
Then we have a series of flashbacks where she has to confront that and is basically told "snap the **** out out of it, this isnt who you are" type of scene.
Now she comes out of the water, seems more whimsical and is smiling and seemingly enjoying life after deciding 'to live'
I'm trying to do my best to just not treat all of it as 'fan service' or giving in to the thought that you have to know all of the backstory. I think its another episode where you really dont. Maybe the people that loved the cartoons and watched them all recognized more scenes, or felt a bit more seeing Anakin and her unite, I dunno.

And maybe even my take on it is missing some context, who knows

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Honestly, this episode would have been a ten out of ten if in the World Between Worlds Anakin literally yelled, "Snap the f/ck out of it!"

Seriously, though, I do wish it was underlined a bit more as you're describing, but I get the gist now.

PatAg said:

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TCTTS said:

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I guess I'll be the loner who thought last week's episode was better. Tonight's wasn't bad by any means, it just felt like 90% "Hey, here's this thing you'll know!" fan service filler, and 10% actual story. I also didn't totally understand Ashoka's arc. So she wants to live now? Did she want to die previously? I get needing to find her purpose/mojo again, but that didn't really come across here, with whatever "Anakin" was trying to teach her.

That said, I do agree that the final five minutes or so were pretty great. It felt like the end of the second the movie in a trilogy, in the best way, and I guess if you divide this season up into thirds, that's basically where we are now. With these last three episodes, I'm definitely ready to get to the meat of the story.

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My take was that she was either 'just existing' aka not really living or dying, and was putting up a front of austerity to hide how much guilt and betrayal she felt.
Then we have a series of flashbacks where she has to confront that and is basically told "snap the **** out out of it, this isnt who you are" type of scene.
Now she comes out of the water, seems more whimsical and is smiling and seemingly enjoying life after deciding 'to live'
I'm trying to do my best to just not treat all of it as 'fan service' or giving in to the thought that you have to know all of the backstory. I think its another episode where you really dont. Maybe the people that loved the cartoons and watched them all recognized more scenes, or felt a bit more seeing Anakin and her unite, I dunno.

And maybe even my take on it is missing some context, who knows

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Ahsoka has been Ronin ever since the end of TCW. She now seems to have embraced a cause to fight for good again. That was my take.

+1 to TC's sentiment.

Good episode, but it didn't land quite as well as the previous week's with me.

Ahsoka hadn't struck me as someone lacking purpose or questioning their will to live, so Anikan's lesson being "I want to live" is a tad perplexing and lands flat.

The bigger nagging thought is this felt like a bit of a missed opportunity. I can 100% see a character arc where Ahsoka feels haunted by the fact that her mentor became darth vader, and she didn't see it coming and she couldn't save or stop him. And that would have led her to abandon Sabine's training, because she learned from a monster and she's full of doubt and maybe feels a little tainted. Bringing Anikan back for an episode that deals with THAT head fck would have been great. And it could have advanced her along her arc confident she can now train Sabine and be a good mentor.

So… while there were a lot of stunning visuals, fantastic sound design, and nostalgia-triggering callbacks, it still felt like they hit a triple when they should have hit a home run.

i did not see that place as the real World Between Worlds. I saw it more as a metaphor she created in her mind as she lay in the water after the fall .

The Anakin stuff was all in her head.

Aggie_Journalist said:

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+1 to TC's sentiment.

Good episode, but it didn't land quite as well as the previous week's with me.

Ahsoka hadn't struck me as someone lacking purpose or questioning their will to live, so Anikan's lesson being "I want to live" is a tad perplexing and lands flat.

The bigger nagging thought is this felt like a bit of a missed opportunity. I can 100% see a character arc where Ahsoka feels haunted by the fact that her mentor became darth vader, and she didn't see it coming and she couldn't save or stop him. And that would have led her to abandon Sabine's training, because she learned from a monster and she's full of doubt and maybe feels a little tainted. Bringing Anikan back for an episode that deals with THAT head fck would have been great. And it could have advanced her along her arc confident she can now train Sabine and be a good mentor.

So… while there were a lot of stunning visuals, fantastic sound design, and nostalgia-triggering callbacks, it still felt like they hit a triple when they should have hit a home run.

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So well said. Spot on.

As is, bird's-eye view, after it has to be explained, it tracks for the most part. The problem is, none of it really gels in the moment, or feels as motivated/coherent as it could be, when watching in real time.

This brings to mind the incredible second season of The Bear, where (for those who haven't seen it) there's a character who, in the first episode of season two, literally says, in so many words, "I don't know what my purpose is." Then, over the course of the next few episodes, we see exactly why this character is so aimless, and we understand their dilemma fully. Then, in episode seven, we finally see this character find their purpose, and it's the most glorious thing ever, and one of the best, most unanimously loved episodes of television of in years. But the reason it worked so well is because they did the work to hit us over the head as to exactly why the character was in the position they were in, and why they were feeling the way they did. There was zero ambiguity.

In other words, I just wish Filoni had done the work - in this series - to underline the "why" a bit more, so the final five minutes tonight could have landed more than they did.

TCTTS said:

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Brian Earl Spilner said:

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It sounds like you might need a refresher on the final arc of TCW S7, tbh. Not only was she reluctant to kill the clones even after Order 66, but she felt a ton of guilt over releasing Maul and inadvertantly causing the deaths of everyone aboard that Destroyer that ends up crashing down to the surface. The last shot of her is at the crash site, having put up a mass grave for the clones.

So yes, I think that guilt has been a major reason for how her character has acted even back in Rebels, and up to now.

Admittedly, the "lesson" maybe isn't as clear as it could've been, and especially for anyone that hasn't seen the animated series. So I'll give you that.

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That's fair enough, I do barely remember that TCW stuff. More than anything, what I'm trying to communicate is that I assumed that guilt would have been dealt with or addressed before now, considering how long it's been and everything that's happened to her since. Combined with the "lesson" not being clearer, or underlined better, I was just confused. Overall, though, I get it, and it definitely seems like something geared more toward TCW watchers, which is fine.

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The lesson learned was that Ahsoka comes to terms with the fact that Anakin wasn't a good master and had her convinced that her only way forward was the way of the warrior because that's what he was. All those flashbacks and the fights were her realizing that she doesn't have to use her lightsaber every time she faces a challenge and she doesn't have to be a soldier to her dying day, which is what Anakin was (albeit on the other side of things).

You see it from her earliest experience with the Force, when she's a toddler in Tales of the Jedi. All of her village people (yep, that's a pun) think they have to kill these giant saber-toothed animals for some rite of passage, but Ahsoka uses the Force to friend it instead. All the way through Clone Wars and Rebels and Tales of the Jedi, she's always struggling to help first, fight as a last resort. When she walks away from the Jedi in the last season of Clone Wars, she goes and helps those 2 sisters in the bowels of Coruscant because that's the kind of person she is, and is doing so again, working as a farmer in Tales of the Jedi, until the inquisitors force her hand, and even then, she has Bail Organa bring the ship to save lives, and goes to work not as a general or a warrior but as a spy, someone who can gather information.

When we catch up to her at the start of this series, she's lost Kanan, lost Ezra, lost Sabine, and you can see the pleasure on her face when she guts Marrok and fights Baylon - and that is pure Anakin, who never found a problem he couldn't fix by attacking and killing it.

I know some of the opponents were droids, but some were normal troops on Seatos .She killed a ton of them, gutted Marrok, and smashed Shin's head into a rock formation all in the name of the ends justifying the means. When she smiles despite having no idea where the purgils might take them, it's because she found the alternative to fighting and killing her way to the solution; she did things the way that Ahsoka Tano knows to be right - finding a way that doesn't involve death.

Baylan Skoll inadvertently saves her soul when he accuses her of being just like Anakin, full of death and destruction. So she's able to change. She stops fighting in the memories and she stops fighting the specter of Anakin because that's not who she is. She hero worshipped Anakin and was trying to live up this impossible standard she held for him, like we do for parents, never wanting to see their flaws.

Ultimately, she realizes that she has to be better than Anakin was. Or else she'll turn out just like him.

I wish Filoni could have conveyed, across five episodes, everything you just explained so well, in a single post. That all makes perfect sense, and makes for a fantastic arc, it just didn't quite land in the moment for me, someone who didn't have all that context. Context that, IMO, needed to be reiterated just a bit more, in this series.

TCTTS said:

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I wish Filoni could have conveyed, across five episodes, everything you just explained so well, in a single post. That all makes perfect sense, and makes for a fantastic arc, it just didn't quite land in the moment for me, someone who didn't have all that context. Context that, IMO, needed to be reiterated just a bit more, in this series.

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you know what I'm going to say.

Brian Earl Spilner said:

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She had to let go of her guilt about causing the deaths of so many clones during TCW.

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Yeah, I think it was more about letting go of the past in general. Guilt over losing soldiers and losing Anakin are a part of that, but she's basically stuck in the past at this point. She has nothing to move her forward in life as she's still in mourning over all that's happened to her. The "chose to live" was the lesson she had to learn. And it was taught in almost the exact same way Luke's final fight with Vader ended. Turning off the saber and refusing to take his life. Both led to a redemption. Pretty cool circle to close.

I felt this episode was very good, but fell short of being great.

The Luke/Ahsoka Book of Boba Fett scene almost seems at odds with this episode.



In that scene, Ahsoka tells Luke he reminds her of his father and that he should trust his instincts. The tonal implication to me was Ahsoka had made peace with Anakin. And her advice prompted Luke to allow Grogu the choice to become a Jedi or not. This version of Ahsoka already seemed at peace with her past and clearer on her desire to follow her instincts. But this episode seems to undercut that scene almost entirely.

I really like Porkchop's explanation of the episode and Ahsoka's motivations. I just wish the actual show had more of it shown and we saw more of the good in Anakin that it seems Ahsoka feels for him. But I agree they visually nailed the Anakin/Darth Vader scenes.

One thing I liked about this episode, is showing Jacen's connection to the living force and laying the ground work for Ahsoka to become his teacher.

I think it's entirely possible that she visits Luke after the events of Ahsoka given the time jump between seasons 2 and 2 of The Mandalorian. If she hadn't made her peace with Anakin, going to visit Luke doesn't seem like it would be very high on her list

So you're saying there's still time for her to use the WBW to kill the cyborg Vespa gang?

My favorite part is the hypocrisy of Luke telling Grogu he can't have attachments to friends and family