This is MJ. I'm an author, I'm an artist, I'm an analyzer. Welcome to my fully operational Star Wars analysis podcast.
I am moments away from having finished episode two, or part two, of Ahsoka, which is called Toiled in Trouble, which is an odd name.
Although I guess it's like a joke about Morgan Ellsworth being a witch, a Dathomir witch. Anyway, kind of funny, odd.
Yeah, more funny odd than funny ha ha. But anyway, here we go.
I don't quite understand all what's going on. I still think it's strange that Ellsworth doesn't look like a Nightsister at all.
But she is dressing like Mother Talzin, which I kind of think she was wearing that when Ahsoka fought her, but I don't remember 100 percent.
So, oh, whatever. I can see the utility in having some regression for...
What's her face? Sabine? In order for her to rise to this occasion.
However, if she has little aptitude with the Force and never had that much skill with the Force, perhaps after Ahsoka had abandoned her,
she could have been neutral, if not, you know, excited to join her and she could have lost to Shin because of that.
And is it Shin or Shin? I think it was Shin. Anyway, she could have lost to her because of that and then had the resolve to rededicate herself to her training
and become, you know, Ahsoka's padawan.
Now, again, it is odd that all of a sudden she's Force sensitive, even if she has very little aptitude.
I don't know how long Hu Yang has been active. I don't know if 500 years is the amount of time or if it's been like a thousand years.
I kind of thought it was like 10,000 years from the Clone Wars, but that's been years since I watched that episode.
But he said, 500 years ago, I saw a lightsaber like this, that being like Balen's.
I saw this one and then 500 years ago I saw one. So I know this is Balen. Basically what he said.
So, yeah, he's been around for a while. Minimum 500 and change.
So in all that time and all the Padawans that he's seen Sabine has the lowest aptitude or Force potential.
But like Luke said at the end of Mando, was it season two? Yeah, it was season two.
Talent without training is meaningless. Aptitude is not the absolute arbiter.
Aptitude is not the arbiter of performance, which is kind of just coming at the idea that talent without training is meaningless from a different way, from a different point of view.
Because just because she doesn't have a great Force potential doesn't mean she can't utilize the Force.
Doesn't mean she can't learn to wield the lightsaber well and other things like that.
And of course, this is me being willing to buy it because if I want to watch the rest of the show and enjoy the rest of the show, I can't let myself get hung up on.
But they never talked about it before. They didn't for whatever reason, probably because they hadn't thought of it at the time.
And now they want it to be the case. I think it's good that she has a low aptitude or a low potential with the Force, but that she is Force sensitive.
If she's going to be Force sensitive, then it should be limiting to her or it should be limited, I should say, not limiting.
It should enhance her abilities, though, which is probably why she can lightsaber fight and some of the other things she can do.
I think it's unnecessary for her to be Ahsoka's Padawan. I think it's silly to make that retcon.
And I think it's totally unnecessary for her to be Force sensitive because she's a Mandalorian.
She was being trained with the darksaber as a Mandalorian, so I can justify her using a lightsaber as a Mandalorian as well.
We've seen people use lightsabers who are not Force sensitive. It's OK.
Mandalorian weapons and armor were designed partly, according to the lore, to enable Mandalorians to fight with, defeat, and kill Jedi.
So if whoever is in charge decided to give Sabine Wren Force capabilities so that she could fight against Shin, Balin, whoever else, and fight alongside the Jedi Ahsoka,
I'm wondering what they're thinking, especially because they give her such limited ability, and what show they were watching.
Because nobody that I know of has had a problem with Sabine, has found Sabine to be an insufficient character because of her lack of Force ability.
In fact, as I said in the last episode, sometimes things that she did in Star Wars Rebels made it appear as if she had Force abilities when she was never said to have had them in the show.
And again, I said Faluna could say, well, those were hints all along that I was going to do this. I always knew she was a Force sensitive Mandalorian.
I don't believe that. I don't believe that. I think they just let her be hyper competent in certain areas because they took liberty and they thought it would be fun to do that with that character.
I say, why not just have her be a Mandalorian Jedi killer? I don't think we've seen in the canon, at least that I've paid attention to, a Mandalorian who is in fact a Jedi killer.
We've seen Grievous, apparently Cad Bane killed a few Jedi. So why not let Sabine Ren be a Mandalorian dark Jedi killer who is trained by a Jedi Padawan?
That totally makes sense to me. That seems feasible. That seems doable. That seems completely consistent with the Star Wars universe that we have.
And it seems completely congruous with who Sabine Ren has been shown to be throughout Star Wars Rebels, which is an utterly competent character.
So, I don't know, I kind of feel like making her a low energy Jedi, or low potential Jedi, low Force aptitude, Force sensitive person is kind of taking away from her in some ways.
And I just find it extremely odd. Extremely odd. Why was this choice made? What's the purpose? What's the argument? Why? What's the justification for doing this? Because I see none.
So, now that I've gotten that negativity out of the way, I'm going to say I really liked seeing the Rebels crew back together.
Hera and Chopper and Ahsoka and Sabine all working together in their own ways was really cool. It was nice to see that because she is a gear head and mechanically inclined as well as being artistic and a good fighter and all that stuff.
Which, by the way, if you don't know this about Sabine Ren, she developed some sort of super weapon for the Empire that I think got turned on the Mandalorians and killed the Wynch of her own people, and that's part of her dark history or whatever.
But she developed some sort of super weapon. So, she's everything. She's a renaissance woman. So, anyway. So, why give her the Force too?
But it was really cool to see her using that droid. It made it feel like she had the idea to utilize the droid, but Ahsoka is the one who went out and got the droid and brought its head back, hoping that she could pull, she being Sabine, could pull some sort of memory out of it.
So, that was kind of an odd choice. Like, look it, she's competent. She's good enough already. Quit throwing extra things at her. So, this is called Ahsoka, but I wonder if it should have just been called Sabine based on how much Filoni is favoring her and giving her like this extra attention and extra tenderness or whatever.
Seems kind of odd. You're gilding the lily, I think here. She was good enough. Just stop it.
But anyway, so I thought it was really cool, even though it was only hologram Hera to see the three of them back together and hanging out and talking and figuring out what to do and how to attack this problem.
I liked seeing Hera and Ahsoka on Corellia together and inspecting the shipyard and I love that that guy yelled, FOR THE EMPIRE! Cause I'm a Kotor fan and I, well, if you know Kotor then you know, FOR THE REPUBLIC from Trask. Trask Olgo.
Anyway, I'm Trask Olgo. I'm your bunkmate here on the Endarse Fire. No lie, my neighbor right now actually reminds me of Trask. And he's a very helpful older man who can kick some butt.
So, and I think he would fight for the Republic. So, anyway. Yeah, so that's, that was interesting. That was cool seeing them on Corellia. It was cool seeing Corellia like when you can actually see it.
So, getting to see the different aspects of the shipyard and that C1 protocol droid that they were dealing with and like this little corrupt nest of people who were just greedy and making money off of selling stuff to the Empire or whatever.
Except for the one guy who I think was legitimately a true believer. If he's yelling for the Empire, he dies. I don't know if he knew Ahsoka had lightsabers or not, but yeah, he should have known he was dead.
But anyway, and I couldn't quite tell. It looked like the lady who was with him was also loyal to the Empire, as Hera would say, but I think it was just regular old creed.
Like I think Ahsoka had said. So, I don't know. That's kind of interesting. It was cool to see and it was really interesting, like the political thing that, you know, how can we have these people in here who are loyal to the Empire or who, you know, basically the New Republic had to.
Had to. They chose to, out of convenience, utilize Imperial people, Imperial staffers, because they said, well, they're not going to be loyal to the Empire. They don't really care. They just want their paycheck. They just want their job and, you know, job security or whatever.
And this isn't going to affect us at all. And obviously that's not true. That sort of thing leads to corruption. I don't know how to solve the problem, but I like. And that's not the point. I like the fact that it is a problem and that it's causing harm and that it's having these negative effects.
And I like that it's giving a little bit of. It's giving a smidge like that guy who, you know, yelled for the Empire. He would have worked for the First Order if he was given the chance. So seeing that there are people like that, it kind of helps to legitimize the rise of the First Order.
But anyway, in and of itself, this was a cool episode. We got to see these pre-established characters from Star Wars doing the Star Wars-y things that we like to see them doing.
So, I think that explains what those droids were about. And I'm pretty sure if I went back to Mando season two and an episode with Ahsoka and Mando working together that I would see that the model of droid is the same.
It's similar. So those are they're all, you know, those are HK droids in this episode and the last episode.
And then there are HK droids protecting Morgan Elizabeth on that weird muddy planet where Ahsoka was doing her lone samurai thing. So that's interesting. That's cool.
I hadn't fully realized that that was just the designation HK-47, for example, from Kotor. He's become a template or a model for all these other HK droids. And they're just called that.
And they're, you know, hyper competent assassin droids, which I would say are probably more they look better. They look, well, they look cooler and they feel a little more competent than Grievous.
General Grievous is a Magna Guard, I think is what they were called. They're definitely cooler. So that's that's fun. But yeah, I mean, I'm not sure what more to say.
It was fun. I mean, I liked it. It felt really good. And like I said, I like specifically this interaction between Huying and Sabine, where she says, oh, I forget how annoying you are. And he says, not annoying, logical or something like that.
It's like, anyway, saying, yeah, you're not being logical. You're being emotional and dumb. And you don't like hearing my clear, concise, reasonable, logical arguments against you, because, you know, they make you lose your argument after reconsider what you're saying and doing.
They make you have to think about your actions and be reflective instead of reactive. And I think that's cool. I like that. And I like that he's a droid, but because he's a Jedi droid, he has this wisdom.
And because he's lived for so long, he's got this experience. And that's cool to see. So yeah, I like where this is going. I like the potential that I see. And
I don't know what else. I like this overall. I'm excited to see where it goes. This like Eye of Sion thing just makes me think of Darth Sion, but I think those are spelled differently.
But I don't know 100% for sure. And like the idea that they're traveling from the Star Wars galaxy to another galaxy is pretty exciting. I mean, I guess it makes sense that there would be something else in another galaxy.
Like you had the sea rook or the sea ruby threat from Trusa Bakura, one of the early EU books that takes place right after Return of the Jedi. Luke's still healing from being electrocuted by the emperor.
And anyway, those guys come from outside of the galaxy. The Yu Zhonggong come from outside the galaxy as well. Lucas had had plans, I got scraps for some reason, to show like an alien abduction or like a Yu Zhonggong ship coming into, like a scout ship coming in and causing some sort of trouble for a Clone Wars episode.
So, I mean, it makes sense that there's another galaxy, but like that's a big deal. Like it could take years, I would think, to travel to another galaxy. Although if you've got some sort of jerry-rigged, you know, hot rod transport thing with, I guess that's why that thing's called the Eye of Sion, because it's round like that, rather like an eye.
Anyway, if you got a bunch of hyper drives connected to it, it would make sense that you'd be able to get through hyperspace a little quicker, maybe, in order to make that trip. So, anyway, I'm excited for where this has the potential to go.
If we're going to be going outside of regular space into like, you know, remote planets and having cool lightsaber battles there while, you know, learning life lessons or whatever and learning not to trust governments because governments are made of people and people are corrupt.
Therefore, governments can by definition not be, cannot escape corruption because they're made up of people who are by definition flawed and corrupted or corruptible. Then that will be exciting to me. So, anyway, I like this overall.
I like it a lot more than episode one. I feel like a lot of what happened in this second episode gives a little more context to the stuff from episode one and makes it make more sense. I think they're going to have to kill Ray Stevenson by the end of this season because, you know, they're going to have to kill off his character.
And then they're going to have to kill off Baelin Skull because, you know, the actor died in real life and who knows when we'll get season two because this actor strike thing or Hollywood strike thing that's going on right now. And, anyway, hopefully they take time to make the next season written, you know, even better than this one.
So, so far, this one is interesting and it's got a lot of potential and I'm excited to see exactly where it goes. And I don't know, I've heard some spoilers about what's coming in the future and I'm very excited for that. So what did you think of this episode? What is the first episode? How are you feeling about Ahsoka so far? And yeah, how are you feeling about Ahsoka so far? Who do you like best? Who do you like least?
From this cast of characters that we're spending some time with. I want to know. Tell me. Anyway, until next time folks, take care. This is MJ signing out.
Well, this has been a story over everything production.