This review contains full spoilers for episode five of Ahsoka, now available to watch on Disney+.
Ahsoka fully delivers on its promise in Episode 5, “Shadow Warrior,” as Ahsoka Tano (Rosario Dawson) revisits the past to confront her complicated feelings about her former master. The episode is fueled by nostalgia as writer and director Dave Filoni beautifully brings Star Wars: The Clone Wars to live action, but it also understands the lesson from the original trilogy so often lost in more modern Star Wars stories: lightsaber battles are at their best as a physical manifestation of emotional turmoil between heavily connected characters.
The lampshading of Christensen’s de-aging doesn’t make up for the effect, but at least the movement in the episode keeps the uncanny valley from being too prominent. The duel between Ahsoka and Anakin quickly shows that Ahsoka has largely learned everything she needs to about fighting with lightsabers from her master, but this is really a lesson about her fight with herself.
All of the visuals in the World Between Worlds are gorgeous, creating the effect of fighting in a mystical planetarium. As Anakin cuts the ground out from under his former padawan, she tumbles back into the Clone Wars and her younger body, played by Ariana Greenblatt. Ahsoka has a tricky challenge in that the chemistry between Ahsoka and Anakin was built over years by voice actors Ashley Eckstein and Matt Lanter, and Christensen and Dawson are trying to channel it without actually being able to draw on the experience. Remarkably, Greenblatt and Christensen seem to click better.
Even though Ahsoka was always meant to be very young in the early episodes of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, seeing her played by an actual child makes the horror of the conflict even greater. The lightsaber swinging in the fog of war is less important than the resolution of the battle, with Ahsoka holding the hand of a dying clone trooper and mourning the phyric nature of their victory.
Hayden Christensen is in the midst of a redemption arc for his work in the Star Wars prequels, but that journey started with Filoni and Lanter bringing new depth to the character and his fall to the Dark Side. Anakin’s ribbing of Ahsoka about the difficulty of having a student gets to the heart of Ahsoka’s deep conflict about training Sabine and demonstrates the dark sense of humor that made Anakin work so well in Star Wars: The Clone Wars.
The flickering effect transitioning from Anakin in his Clone Wars costume and blue lightsaber to the silhouette of Darth Vader is appropriately ominous and builds to the real lesson Ahsoka needs to learn: that Anakin’s sins are not her own. In the final duel with Anakin’s red lightsaber, her choice of life isn’t so much about deciding not to drown but about finally confronting her fear that her master’s darkness is within her. She touches it, her eyes momentarily taking on the same red hue as Anakin, but comes away even more confident in her path.
There’s more than a bit of the transition between Gandalf the Gray and Gandalf the White in Ahsoka’s costume change, putting her closer to the avatar of the light side of the Force that she’s been connected to since meeting the Daughter in Clone Wars. Ahsoka’s also digging more into the non-combat applications of the Force from reading the impressions Sabine left on the map like John Smith in The Dead Zone to communing with the Purrgil in a gorgeous scene that calls back to both Star Wars Rebels and Ahsoka’s introduction in Star Wars: Tales of the Jedi.
Unfortunately, the excellent material involving Ahsoka and Anakin Skywalker is repeatedly interrupted by scenes with General Hera Syndulla (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) searching for Ahsoka and Sabine Wren (Natasha Liu Bordizzo) while trying to avoid getting into more trouble with the New Republic. Also, wouldn’t the term for having her rank permanently suspended just be “revoked”?
Hera’s plot throughout the season has consistently felt like exposition dumps punctuated by tie-ins to other shows. I think a better version of this episode wouldn’t have shown her after the heart-wrenching mournful speech from Huyang (David Tennant) until Ahsoka is rescued. Ships flying over the water has become a staple effect in Star Wars live-action shows and you don’t need multiple scenes of it just to remind viewers about the existence of Kanan Jarrus and make it clear that his and Hera’s son Jacen (Evan Whitten) shares his talent with the Force. Those diversions are frustrating because the scenes with Ahsoka and Anakin are so good.
Dawson also becomes less stiff in her portrayal of Ahsoka, whether it’s how stricken she appears when she learns of Sabine’s betrayal to joking around with Huyang as they venture off into the unknown. Having seen what became of her more emotionally free master, it’s understandable that Ahsoka felt the need to overcompensate by adhering to Jedi stoicism. Hopefully confronting the trauma of her past and learning to trust her judgment will allow her to strike a balance that will make the character feel more natural in the back half of the season.
After a gorgeous and wondrous portrayal of the purrgil swimming into hyperspace, we’ll presumably get back to Sabine next week and finally see what’s become of Grand Admiral Thrawn and Ezra Bridger. Ahsoka shares the problem of many Star Wars live-action series of wasting a bunch of time getting to the good stuff, but hopefully, next week can build on the momentum without feeling too rushed.
