There’s always a way to avoid a court-martial when you need one, eh?
Recap
Hera is at a disciplinary hearing with New Republic officials who are taking her to task for disobeying their orders. Hamato Xiono recommends that Hera be courtmartialed when C-3PO (Anthony Daniels) suddenly arrives on the scene. He has a message from Leia Organa, which states that she sanctioned Hera’s mission, not realizing that she was countermanding anyone else’s orders. She tells the group that all further issues should be directed toward her. Mon Mothma takes Hera aside, knowing that Leia did not sanction her mission and asking how serious she truly believes the threat to be. Hera tells her to prepare for the worst.
Ahsoka and Huyang emerge from hyperspace only to find the purrgil being buffeted by a minefield. They leave the purrgil’s mouth and the whales jump away before they’re all killed, leaving Ahsoka to pilot them into the debris field and hide. Thrawn asks the Great Mothers to pinpoint her location so that they can drive her out. Meanwhile, Ezra is getting information from Sabine on what’s changed since he’s been away and learns that Ahsoka took Sabine on as an apprentice.
Baylan and Shin catch up to the Noti caravan with the bandits, and Baylan tells his apprentice that she should capture Sabine and Ezra and take her place in the Empire—he has other plans here. Shin and the bandits proceed to round up the caravan, and Ezra and Sabine fight, though Ezra refuses to take back his lightsaber, insisting that it belongs to Sabine now.
Discovered by Thrawn’s forces, Ahsoka has Huyang drop her off close to Baylan and they have another duel, but this time Ahsoka merely steals his ride and heads to Sabine and Ezra. Thrawn notes that Baylan has veered off and decides that he doesn’t want to waste anymore time on capturing Jedi, seeing as their plan to leave is nearly completed. He withdraws his forces, leaving Shin alone. Ahsoka offers to help her, but she runs away. Ahsoka then has a proper reunion with Ezra and he says that it seems like he might finally get home.
Commentary
There’s a small extremely large gaping maw of a problem with rendering Grand Admiral Thrawn in live-action: No Star Wars scribe at present can write him as well as his creator, Timothy Zahn. And it shows in this episode because his dialogue doesn’t match what he’s doing at all—he makes comments about needing to manipulate the scenario so that no matter what choice Ahsoka makes, they’re always one step ahead, but that’s not what’s happening here. It would have been far more menacing if he’d made it sound like he was committing his forces to tracking her and taking her out, and then later let Elsbeth know that the whole point was to divert her.
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You know, just like Ahsoka does in her fight with Baylan? You’ve even got parallels working in your favor, this could’ve seemed so cool. Also it’s, uh, kind of a big deal that he didn’t know Ashoka was Anakin’s Padawan? Seems like a thing he would have heard about ages ago, but I digress. As mentioned, Thrawn knew Vader and didn’t much like the guy, so he’s probably got a lot of ideas about Ahsoka now—some useful, some not.
But getting back to the point, Thrawn believes the greatest weakness of his enemy is how much they all care for one another. His entire goal is getting back to his home galaxy, and all he seemingly needs in order to accomplish that goal is for Ahsoka Tano to be otherwise engaged. He shouldn’t be saying that they need to stay one step ahead—he already is. Thrawn, when he’s done right, should be pure competence porn, and we’re not getting that on this show. This was a problem on Rebels as well, but it was more easily explained by the rest of the Empire’s generalized mess getting in his way. They don’t have the excuse here, and it’s glaring.
Speaking of which… bets on whether or not the cargo he’s carrying is just Nightsisters in their stasis chambers that are totally not vampire coffins? I’m really hoping that’s the deal because their entire civilization’s dispatch in The Clone Wars series was a mistake that I’ve never forgiven. If Star Wars plans to give the Dathomiri back to us for the foreseeable future, we can ignore a multitude of errors.
Granted, I’m not sure how a small army of Nightsisters would help the Empire coalesce and return, but that’s the problem for future Grand Admiral Thrawn.
As for the New Republic, Hera’s hearing is promptly derailed by the appearance of one gorgeous golden droid, which is mostly fun because this was a gambit that turned up in Rebels as well. While a teenaged Leia Organa shows up on that show, Threepio and Artoo were accidentally responsible for the recruitment of Hera’s team when Artoo let the Ghost crew capture them during a covert mission and later relayed info on their activities to Bail Organa. Which is to say, Leia and her family have always had a vested interest in Hera Syndulla’s good work, and will continue to protect her wherever possible.
I am assuming they’re not making Anthony Daniels don that golden suit anymore—I sincerely hope so, he’s in his late seventies, he’s done his time in that curséd rig—but the person currently in it is doing some strange postural things that made my back ache just looking at them. Sure, Threepio is a little sway-backed compared to other protocol droids (because he’s that uptight), but there was some weird overcompensation happening there. Maybe the suit just didn’t fit right this time around? Also, Daniels’ voice is sounding a little different for the first time in his… gosh, forty-six years playing this character, and it made me far too aware of the fact that we won’t have him forever, and I am psychologically incapable of handling that.
Take care of him, Senator Organa.
We’re getting close enough ask the question of where this is all headed. We’ve only got one more episode, but we know that this series is supposed to dovetail into a set of films that Filoni is meant to direct that will tie up this particular era—being the Mando-pre-sequel-trilogy point following that OG trilogy. Obviously, this is not going to fully wrap up in the next episode. We’re at a “this is only the beginning” point in the narrative, which is simultaneously exciting and frustrating because… well, there’s a lot that we’re not really close to wrapping up yet.
One of the bigger questions is what the hell Baylan is going to hang around on Peridea for, and if this is ultimately just a way of writing him off, since Stevenson is gone. I’m hoping that there was a plan here instead of them having to handle this on the fly, but it’s a big gaping hole at the moment. Fingers crossed that they’ve got a good way of filling it. But I did need a lot more of him and Shin as a pair if he was just waiting to abandon his apprentice this whole time. Kid deserves much more prep than that.
Despite the usual roughness of the dialogue, Ezra and Sabine truly make this episode. (Well, them and Huyang. It’s always Huyang.) It’s strangely gratifying to see that even in his isolation, Ezra hasn’t changed so much as to become unrecognizable. He’s giving Sabine a hard time over her training. He’s trying to give bravado (“It’s not looking good for you”) and mostly giving in-over-his-head. He eschews his old lightsaber in favor of shoving stuff with the Force, and actually does a pretty stellar job of that.
Sorry, just the dynamic of “my big sister/BFF does the killing around here” is sending me. (Also that master-apprentice bond connection actually working out for them, good stuff, keep going with this please.) As is Auntie Ahsoka showing up to send Shin packing, though she and Sabine clearly aren’t done yet. You could see Ezra looking between the two of them and going sooo, this is a thing. Do you need nemesis advice? I’ve never actually had a proper one, so I’m probably the wrong person to ask…
Of course, now that Ezra’s said he’s definitely going home, I’m terrified that it’s never going to happen, so the episode could’ve just not ended on that.
Bits and Asides
- There’s some labeling within New Republic ranks that I’m not a fan of because it seems to be… entirely militarized? Even accounting for the fact that the war against the Empire is fresh in everyone’s minds, if your new government is labeling itself in terms of force, that’s not even a little stabilizing. The big thing that bugs me is the idea that maybe they want the audience to feel okay that all of this got blown to hell in The Force Awakens. Which is… not great.
- The way Chopper was about to throw hands at a disciplinary hearing over how Xiono talks about droids. Let him do it.
- What’s the deal with the title of this episode, it has literally no bearing on anything that’s happening in it?
- Not me crying over the idea of Ahsoka having a couple dozen recordings of Anakin that she kept on her person during the war to shore up and get a pep talk whenever they were on separate missions, and then forever afterward. Huyang’s surprise over the thoughtfulness of this kind of says everything. No other Jedi were doing this kind of thing for their students.
- Glad that the purrgil survived the minefield, at least. Really didn’t need to watch mass space-whale death.
- Okay, so Sabine finally explains to Ezra that Garazeb Orrelios is training New Republic recruits, which is… fine, I guess, but not nearly enough information. Particularly because it does nothing to explain why Zeb didn’t show up with the squad Hera took to Seatos; I guarantee he would have happily dropped everything for her, they just probably didn’t want to CGI animate an angry lasat at that disciplinary hearing. Also, per my last missive on the subject, Where. Is. Zeb’s. Husband?
- The section where Shin’s forces round up the Noti is straight out the Western Native-Americans-surrounding-the-circled-up-caravan trope, and while I’m glad that this iteration is showcasing less overt racism, it’s still weird watching them deploy that stuff. Filoni has a better track record than Favreau does with it, though, for my money. There seems to be just a tiny bit more thoughtfulness with his reuse.
- Huyang being like “ah good everyone’s back together like I wanted… I hope I live long enough to witness the results” is Peak Droid Moods. He’s basically doing Threepio’s usual worrying shtick, but giving exhausted proud uncle instead of neurotic wired gay uncle. There’s a droid uncle spectrum, if you will. Chopper is on the far end as likely-drunk bar-brawling anarchist uncle.
Next week is the end! Kinda! See you then!
