This is MJ, I'm an author, I'm an artist, I'm an analyzer. You can find all my work at MJMunoz.com.
Welcome to my fully operational Star Wars analysis. I am talking about Ahsoka Episode 3,
Make My Way Back Home and Learn to Fly! No, it's just Time to Fly, it's an episode. Anyway,
this was written by Steph, no, directed by Steph Green and written by Dave Filoni or Dave the Pony,
if you were an old, I was going to say Rebel Force radio, but it would have been the Force
cast, I think, at the time, listener. But, you know, whatever, you don't have to be. So anyway,
the episode was good. It was decent. I was going to say something about the cinematography and the
establishing shots, but if you listen to my six-part Road or Journey to Ahsoka streaming series,
available now on Disney+, you would have heard that already, and if you didn't, then I'll just
quickly recap it. This episode had cool establishing shots, which are a very Star
Wars-y thing, and a lot of the wide cinematic shots are very Star Wars-y. And I think in clips
that I've seen in Star Wars documentaries of the old serials, they had a similar vibe and a similar
look to them. But I don't see great establishing shots much other place than Star Wars, other than
I have noticed it as I'm watching Ultraman sometimes, which is Japan's greatest hero,
arguably. Even though Kamen Rider's better. Come on, you guys know Kamen Rider's better.
Anyway, so that has really great establishing shots, but they do establishing shots to show
off the base that the heroes occupy and things like that. But it's made in the same tradition
of those serials where you've got, you know, spaceships on wires and whiskers on kittens.
So yeah, I like those shots. But overall, I found this episode very enjoyable. It was very
interesting. I will say, though, one demerit of the episode, less the episode and more the series or
the story of this Ahsoka streaming series overall, which this is, you know, it's Rebels season or
it's like, you know, Rebels live action slash Ahsoka's journey as a master or mistress or
whatever you would call that. We, if you watch the Star Wars Rebels, you saw the Blueberry himself,
Ezra Bridger struggle to become a Jedi, come in tune with the force and be able to do things like
move a bowl on a table in his living quarters. Here, you're seeing Sabine Wren struggle to move
a cup on a table in her living quarters. Ezra Bridger's master was a Jedi Padawan who never
completed his training. Ahsoka Tano, Sabine Wren's master, is a Jedi Padawan who never finished her
training. Kanan Jarrus, also known as Caleb Doom, was a Jedi Padawan who, despite the fact that he
never finished his training, went through a lot of interesting experiences and tangled with Darth
Vader himself, Dark Lord of the Sith. Ahsoka Tano is a Padawan who, despite the fact that she never
finished her training, also tangled with the Sith Lord Darth Vader. I don't know if those parallels
and similarities bother anybody else, and I almost feel as if Filoni's work on Ahsoka is
erasing the work that was done on Star Wars Rebels. I find it peculiar. I don't want to accuse
him of retreading Star Wars Rebels in live action here because I want to be nice. I feel like it's
enough of a novel and different approach and it doesn't matter the way that things are being
repeated or being echoed from Rebels because after all Star Wars is like poetry, it rhymes.
But the way that it's rhyming is peculiar, especially because it's rhyming over the course
of the lives of these characters. When Ezra was struggling to become a Jedi and use his force
ability that he knew about, Sabine never mentioned it. I know I mentioned this previously covering
Ahsoka, but it just doesn't make sense to me that we're only finding out now that Sabine Wren has
some level of force sensitivity. And if it's in a book somewhere, a kid's book somewhere that I
didn't read, that's weird that I've never heard anybody talk about that because I listened to the
Rebels report, I listened to various people talking about Star Wars Rebels on podcasts back in the
day as it was happening live, and nobody ever mentioned it. And it just seems strange that that
would never get mentioned. So it's odd that there's like this retcon being made and it doesn't make
any sense. But more to the point, stepping away from the retcon issue, is I don't understand why
we're having Filoni exploring the same Master Padawan dynamic as was done in Star Wars Rebels.
And if Sabine and Ahsoka end up having discussions about the lessons of how they're a family,
even though they're not related to each other by blood, I don't know what I'm going to do.
I'm going to lose my mind a little bit because Rebels at some point became,
it's all about family and you know how fast they can drive their cars. So
that's frustrating to me. And I don't understand why you would just repeat those things because
throughout Star Wars The Clone Wars, I feel like the show over 100 episodes, I think it's like 112
episodes total, or is that just a Yuhawk show, the greatest story ever told animation? I don't know.
Anyway, I feel like over the course of The Clone Wars, there was never really a repetition of
anything and there was never really a retreading. And I didn't feel like anything in Rebels,
retread or repeated things from Star Wars The Clone Wars. So it's a little shocking to me that
going to live action, going to this big, huge stage and platform of live action,
that you would go ahead and do things that people could point to and accuse you of retreading,
repeating and replaying the same old song over and over again, Sam. And
I'm at a loss for why that was done.
That being said, I really enjoyed the training that Ahsoka is doing. I really enjoy seeing her
teaching and mentoring Sabine. I enjoyed it when she did similar type of work with the
younglings in the youngling arc of Star Wars The Clone Wars. I enjoyed it in the Onderon arc
when she was helping to train Saw Gerrera and his Rebels. And
something about the approach that Ahsoka has to teaching because she's an incomplete Jedi,
she's a Padawan who walked away from the Jedi Order after she figured she couldn't trust them
anymore, and something about her faith in people being who they are despite the fact that they lack
particular qualifications or certifications given to them by organizations is endearing.
And kind of wonderful and beautiful. I believe Filoni is like an accredited, you know, arts major
kind of guy from whatever schools you go to to get that sort of thing. And yet, he doesn't demand
that his characters have those sorts of similar qualifications, like I said, in order to be
recognized and competent and to be in these heroic roles. And I do like that. There's a little bit of
an interesting countercultural, like, I don't know, not punk, but like sub, sub, sub-genre,
that's not the right way, but like, I don't know, there's a little bit of like a countercultural
bent in that, where it's like, yeah, I'm unorthodox because I'm not part of this actual, you know,
legitimate school of, you know, whatever, but I do the business of, I do the duty of, I do the tasks
demanded by these people, and I do it in a way that's as competent as how they do it, or even,
you know, more competent than how they do it or what they're supposed to be. Like, I love to do
the ideals of this organization, even though I'm not an officially recognized or sanctioned member
of this organization. I think that's a really cool idea, and I think that's a really cool idea.
And it stresses the ethos that you don't have to actually be a part of a given thing or accepted
as a part of a given thing by the people who control it and who are the ones who dole out the
certification and who, you know, decree the dogma and such of the organization. You don't have to
actually meet their approval in order to actually do something, you know, to do something, you know,
to actually meet their approval in order to be good and to be correct and to be on the right path.
You can be a little bit of a renegade. You can be a little bit of a person who's, you know, living on
the edge or in these, you know, weird places that exist in between, and you can still be seen as
fully legitimate because it's not how others think about you that matters. It's what you do that
matters and what that makes you who you are, your choices that make you who you are. And I think
that's clear in the kind of stories and structures of stories and the types of characters or
archetypes of characters that Filoni is exploring in the stories that he's run, like Rebels and now
like with Ahsoka and even the Mandalorian, you could say, you know, because them being part of
Death Watch and whatnot, or the Lodge, Children of the Lodge, is all kind of, it kind of deals
with the same, really even, I guess you could say. So I find that really interesting. But talking
about Star Wars laser stuff, the whole put this visor on and let me walk around you and tap you
with the sword and challenge you to get in tune with the force. Super cool. Super cool training
session. I like, just I like how we got to see the full training session with the swords, which
shows the Shinzo, whatever she said it was. Like that was cool. And then the fact that Sabine,
like kind of as time went on, she got into it and then she failed by getting angry and frustrated.
And then Ahsoka told her, look, anger and frustration, they're going to give you power
and drive, but they're also going to unbalance you and make you fail that very thing you're
trying to accomplish. So do not rely on them, not because it's evil and it's scary, but like,
this is an unreliable, unsustainable form of activity or, or mode to put your mind in,
because it's going to make you fail and slip up ultimately. And then you'll be farther from where
you want to be instead of closer to where you want to be. So eschew, reject the anger and frustration,
accept them and know that they are part of who you are. And part of your experience as a
sentient being, but then set them aside and focus on having the drive, the determination, the core,
or the, the focus to do what you need to do. Cause that is the true path to mastery, not the,
the haphazard luck and, uh, I guess, and chance of doing things under duress or, or under anchor.
That was a really cool lesson. And I liked how she just says, all right, that was good. Let's do that
again. I didn't quite get the whole dynamic with her and Sabine with the, uh, the gunner, um, pod
at the back of the ship and like, you know, Sabine's telling her like dive and swing and flip and roll.
Like I liked that we saw them working together, but I just didn't quite understand why Sabine
needed them to do it like that. And I also didn't understand why things work that way. Like did
Sabine learn to shoot like that because she was shooting, uh, from the ghost while Hara was flying
and Hara was doing all sorts of evasive maneuvers. So Sabine was adapted to shooting like that,
because I can see, and they say fight, train like you fight. Uh, there's a meme about a guy like
running around with guns in the woods drunk, you know, cause he's like, Hey, I'm, I want to,
I'm training. Like I'm going to fight this. The assumption is he's going to be drunk when he needs
to get into a gunfight. Therefore he needs to be drunk while he's training to get into a gunfight
so that he fights in the same, in the same way. So is that what it was that Sabine came up under
Hara's, you know, desperate flying and, uh, that's how she adapted to fighting, um,
from a gunner pod. And she's asking the same thing with Soka. Soka wants to fly a different way,
not like Hara and Sabine's asking her to conform to the way Arrow do it. Maybe that's what's going on.
I don't know. It's unclear. It's unexplained, but I found that kind of interesting dynamic.
I really liked this idea of Hu Yang having these like, and like these training saber
safety sword things where they're meant more for like target practice and that they record
these strikes that the, uh, that's, you know, the student makes through them. That's really cool.
Um, one, cause I can conceive of how that technology could work too. It made it cool.
Well, I guess one, it made it cool visual to see how the technology would work and three,
my mind kind of jumped to the possibilities of how that would work in a, um, like how that would
serve to train a student and how it would serve to show the efficacy of their, their saber work.
So that was pretty cool. And also, uh, I don't remember him doing that in Sorrow of the Clone
Wars, uh, with the protrusions that he's got. And it's, he's kind of like a, like a proto grievance,
which is pretty cool. Um, it makes me think, well, now it makes me think back on, uh,
Dooku Taranis, if he maybe was, uh, involved in sabotaging, um, Grievous in his life before he
became, uh, more machine than man or being whatever he was. Uh, and if like Dooku's thought of the
Hu Yang design, it was like, if we can get this on a guy who just wanted to kill Jedi, he would do a
really great job, but the forearms are better than two. Although, you know, there's a lot of
forearms are better than two, although, you know, there's Basilisks and stuff, but we didn't know
about that at the time. Um, so by the way, Basilisk is the, I'm not talking about the snake from Harry
Potter or the thing from mythology, a Basilisk is the, uh, forearm people like Dexter Jester,
one of the greatest Star Wars characters in all of history. But anyway, um, yeah. So I wonder if he,
like, I just wondered if that idea like struck Dooku as a kid and he's like, we should do this.
And he orchestrates, you know, Grievous getting injured and, you know, choosing, choosing. If you
watch Star Wars The Clone Wars, you'll know that, uh, this like medical droid that Grievous has
feels like Grievous was like pressured into becoming what he is today. Uh, a killing machine,
pawn of the Sith. Anyway, so that just kind of made me think about Grievous and those connections.
So it's, it's fun because it's connecting me to the universe, uh, the broader universe.
Another couple of things that connected me to the broader universe and were interesting
were we got to see, uh, spoilers, spoilers, spoilers, Harry's son, Harry's son, who she had
with Kanan Jarrus, who for some reason, they assured us again and again and again throughout
the run of Rebels that Kanan and Hera had no romantic relationship whatsoever. Despite the
fact that they acted like a mother and father to the ghost crew, it turns out they were practicing
to be a mother and father, not to the ghost crew, but raising the ghost crew was practice for them
to be mother and father because they ended up having a kid, Jason Sandula, who's, you know,
half human, half Twi'lek, uh, no leku on this kid, but he does have green hair, which anyway,
people thought they were going to change the hair from green to black, but it's a very dark green
and, uh, that's kind of weird, but you know, I'm going to roll with it. I'm going to roll with it.
But yeah, it was kind of interesting to see that kid and his desire to be a Jedi made me think,
Oh, maybe he can be a Jedi with Luke. And then I think I thought, Oh no, what if he went,
was a Jedi with Luke, what would happen to him? And I'm pretty sure TFA came out after,
uh, after the end of Rebels. So I even thought about Jason being at Luke's, uh, Jedi school
and then, you know, possibly being killed by Kylo Ren or whatever happened there. Um, it's totally,
it's still unexplained from, anyway, uh, that's crazy, but regardless, um, yeah, that was, uh,
that was interesting. Is it unexplained or is it explained in the, uh, rise of Kylo Ren comic,
but it just doesn't make much sense. I think that's what it is. It just doesn't make much sense.
Anyway, so I don't dig that. I don't dig that at all. But anyway, it was interesting to see
little Jason's and Dula. I wonder if they have plans for this kid in the future. I mean, I mean,
both the actor and the character or what, I think that would be interesting. I don't know if he's
force sense of, but then again, if he's not force sense of, or he's barely force sense of, like Sabine,
he could be trained by Ahsoka too. Who knows? Who knows? Um, so yeah, this whole like, I don't know,
controversy or whatever of Sabine training with her low force aptitude is interesting. And I find
it interesting that like Vien was a jerk to her. She's being a logical, you know, machine man,
robot guy. And he's like, Oh, she doesn't have much force potential. And Ahsoka basically tells
him like, Hey, telling her that's going to bring her down and make her have a harder time focusing
and tapping into the force and all this stuff. And this idea of Sabine having trouble tapping
into the force is interesting. And then even again, brings up that like Mandalorians don't
have a very good track record of being able to be like powerful Jedi or whatever. Kind of doesn't
make sense. We know the dark saber comes from an ancient Mandalorian Jedi. And I don't know what
else. I don't know what else, but it's just kind of interesting. Um, yeah, it's interesting. Uh,
let me see what else. Oh, uh, seeing my mother was cool. Seeing some other senators and like the
state of the new Republic where they don't want to get involved. And I thought it was very
interesting. Like Hera's not being a warmonger. She's saying like, Hey, can I get some troops to
go find a guy who's potentially going to bring war back to the galaxy so we can stop him and
prevent another war from happening? I thought that was pretty cool. I did not like, and I do object
to, and I'm not a veteran. Uh, I short, I shortly, I very briefly considered joining the military at
some point. I have respect for people who joined because I believe they join out of a desire for
good. But I believe that are, uh, I'm going to break political for like two minutes here.
I believe that the United States of America has an Imperial, uh, army basically that we use to
subjugate and subject countries around the world to our will. And I think we're going to see more
and more other countries break away from partnership with us. They're going to start,
they're going to stop relying on our empty shell of a paper, you know, fiat US dollar, and they are
going to have currencies backed by gold or moved to Bitcoin type stuff or whatever. And they're
going to do the wrong thing. And, uh, you know, Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, all these different
countries are going to become more and more friendly with each other and actually cooperate
with each other in a peaceful way that will bring more peace to the world as opposed to our quote
unquote attempts to bring peace to the world by running around shooting at everybody who we don't
like who costs us some money. Um, so yeah, I believe that the United States has the potential
to be a great country. It was once a great country and that it's now a oligarchic Imperial shell of
itself. And that, you know, Lucas in warning about the, you know, how democracy dies and other things
in the prequels and even in the background of, uh, the original trilogy with like the kind of
commentary on the Vietnam war and stuff, it was spot on, he was spot on. And he was right that we
should be skeptical of government, social governments that sees more and more power for themselves,
and that seek to make enemies so that they can have forever wars that enable them to exact certain,
exert certain amounts of control over the populace and make them, uh, just like in a
perpetual state of fear, uh, which leads them to being subjugated and ruled by rulers who were
willed fear as a weapon, uh, all of the target doctrine and other things. So super interesting,
uh, political conversation that we had with star wars, but it's interesting that these senators
don't want to do anything because I think they want to appear dovish and they want to feel like
they've made peace, but they won't count the costs of things. And they aren't willing to send a
detachment of troops with a Soca and Sabine and, you know, some others, like a small group, it's a
whole big galaxy, right? You can't spend like, or send like, you know, a squadron, 10 ships, 20
ships, a hundred ships. I don't know, you know, a couple, you know, Republic, uh, command ships.
I don't know what they call them. They're not star destroyed, but the equivalent, they're probably
equivalent star destroyers send a couple of Mon Calamari battle cruisers or something like that
with them to go see if Theron is out in wild space. And if he does exist out there, kill him. And
again, you know, what about the U S assassin? You know what I'm talking about this star wars
galaxy far, far away. Now, if you want to assassinate a guy who's going to more than likely
lead a rebellion and start a new war in the galaxy, I'm okay with that. I think it's morally,
I think it's morally sound to do, especially because once you show up, the guy's going to
aggress against you and then you can just, you know, shoot them. So anyway, I think that's all
super interesting. Um, and you know, I think the idea is that this kind of stuff is going to lead
to the, the first order emerging eventually, and then coming and screwing things up in the sequel
trilogy. But I didn't like, so that's a lot of stuff. And that was a four minutes probably.
Uh, and here's another minute of politics. And then I'm going to close out. Uh, I didn't like
that. Hera said to the, what was the guy Chinese? Zioni, Ziono, uh, that Senator, did you fight in
the war? Oh no, you waited to see who would come out on top. Basically, if you didn't fight in the
war, then you have no right to talk about war or foreign policy or politics. And I think that's
bunk and bogus. And that's a establishment idea that gets weaponized against people like me and
other anti-war people to say, well, you didn't serve. So therefore you have no opinion. You have
no right to say the same as you didn't vote. Therefore you have no right to say anything.
Now I'm, I don't know that I want to vote in, you know, for a monster or an idiot. I given the
choice of being a monster and an idiot, what am I going to choose? I don't know. It doesn't feel
like much of a choice to me. So that's all very interesting. Um, but the star warsiness of it all
is good. Uh, I like the dog fights. I like the aerial combat. I gotta say, I neglected to say this
Baylin and Shin, they have these similar like armored type tunics with these like Chevron or
like a triangle overlapping designs on them that point downwards. Uh, I think they look really
cool. And I wonder like what kind of armor is that some sort of like, you know, whatever weave
armor that gives them protection, even though it's like a very much like a simple, you know,
ritualistic, uh, you know, order of something, such and such type of robe. I dunno. It feels
like that and it's very cool. And I like that you have her clothes mimicking his clothes. Um, but I
wonder were they just like her lightsaber mimics his lightsaber. I wondered is it that her clothes
mimic his clothes or is it that her clothes, um, like they got outfitted the same place at some
point, you know, not too long ago. I think that's interesting. I also am kind of curious about these
guys who are running around with them. They look a little bit like those weird storm chaser guys from
the high Republic thing. Um, and also like some of the newer aliens from like, uh, like the, like
the stupid like Jenga club or Jenga, Jenga, Jax, tell it to Jenga, to concha clubs. That was called
and he's concha club. Anyway, like I thought those guys look pretty much goofy or maybe it
wasn't, it wasn't the concha club. It was the other guys, but like, I wasn't impressed with those
designs too much. Um, and these designs feel reminiscent of them or across between them and
those like weird Viking space pirate storm chaser guys from the, the high Republic. So, um, that's
kind of interesting design wise. Um, I don't know much else to say. I mean, it's, it's pretty simple
that this whole, you know, hyperspace ring thing, the eye of Sion trying to get them to jump to
another, uh, galaxy. Um, you know, that's to find throwing cause he's off there. I like, I love the
connection to the pergill and that the pergill, um, do intergalactic, uh, planets are, you know,
intergalactic, uh, travel along these, you know, ancient, you know, these natural hyperspace lanes
that exist in the star wars universe. I think that's all really fascinating and cool.
And I'm curious to see how that, you know, develops throughout the rest of the series. It was
really cool to see them and it was nice to see a Soca and Sabine have like an emotional moment
seeing the pergill cause they saw them last with Ezra besides seeing them before them with Ezra.
So that's a pretty, pretty cool. So I like that a lot, but I think I've worn out my welcome now,
especially with my political meandering. So I'm going to go ahead and, uh, wish that you folks
are all well until next time. This is MJ signing out. I hope you enjoyed that. Go to MJMunoz.com
to leave any questions, comments, or other feedback you might have. There you can find
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