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Apr 19, 2024

‘Ahsoka’ Episode 3 Breakdown: “Time to Fly”

Filed under: The shorter and less eventful third installment literally lifts off, but fails to send our understanding of key character motivation into hyperspace “I was hoping that the urgency of our

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The shorter and less eventful third installment literally lifts off, but fails to send our understanding of key character motivation into hyperspace

“I was hoping that the urgency of our situation could expedite my training a bit,” Sabine says to Ahsoka, after a frustrating sparring session. Ahsoka, her sphinxlike expression almost acquiescing to a smile, lets her student down easy. “I’m afraid it doesn’t work like that,” she says.

Jedi training, the master tells her Padawan, takes time. And so, evidently, does reaching the most compelling parts of Ahsoka, which literally lifts off but figuratively gets grounded in its third episode, “Time to Fly.”

Episode 3 is shorter than each half of last week’s two-part premiere, and less eventful. It treads some well-worn thematic territory, builds up to a visually striking set piece with a conceptually creative but tactically nonsensical climax, and ends, abruptly, with its protagonists discovering something that the audience already knows. It’s a somewhat strangely structured episode that makes me long for a real-life Hamato Xiono who could cut through the pleasantries and prod creator and writer Dave Filoni to get down to business. Not just the business of dispensing plot—it’s fine for that to take time—but the more immediate, crucial task of establishing motivations, developing characters, and building bonds between characters and viewers that don’t depend entirely on preexisting attachments to a series that some Ahsoka watchers haven’t seen.

Take the training sequence that opens the episode and sets an Episode IV–esque tone that carries through the small-scale space battle at the end. En route to the Denab system where Morgan Elsbeth and her crew are installing the final nuts and bolts on the Eye of Sion, Ahsoka oversees a sparring session between her newly reappointed Padawan and Huyang. When Ahsoka steps in to school Sabine herself, her pupil’s performance is less than encouraging. Not only is Sabine incapable of Force-pulling a cup across the table, but she’s taken aback by being asked to spar with her eyes covered—a test that typically comes pretty early in the “learn to wield the Force” course. (Granted, Ahsoka does things differently from “standard Jedi protocol,” so her lesson plan probably strays from the recommended curriculum.) According to Ahsoka, this drill is called “Zatochi,” a reference to Zatoichi, the blind swordsman from Japanese film and TV who also served as inspiration for Rogue One’s Chirrut Îmwe.

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Ahsoka’s first pass at training Sabine, it seems, couldn’t have lasted long. The second pass isn’t going great either. All of which would be great fodder for conflict and drama if Ahsoka gave us greater insight into what’s driving our co-protagonists, aside from a desire to track down a friend and an enemy. Sabine isn’t a kid who’s trying to find her way in the world, à la Ahsoka early in The Clone Wars or Ezra Bridger at the beginning of Rebels; she’s a 30-something war hero who was perfectly capable before she got delusions of Jedi grandeur. She’s been an Imperial cadet, a bounty hunter, a freedom fighter, and a Mandalorian leader. She’s a demolitions expert and a sharpshooter; a skilled slicer and engineer; an experienced pilot and gunner; an artist and a polyglot. Rebels fans have seen her train with blades before, fall down, learn to hold her own, and triumph. She could contribute to this quest in any number of ways. Why is she trying to Force this?

“I don’t need Sabine to be a Jedi,” Ahsoka tells Huyang. “I need her to be herself.” In what way isn’t Sabine herself? How did she lose herself? Is it just that she’s had trouble removing her armor, transitioning to peacetime, and crafting an identity that isn’t defined by conflict? That would be understandable, considering what she’s endured, but is running right back into battle the only solution? Why would banging her head against her meager midi-chlorian count be the best therapy? Does it make her feel closer to Ezra to follow in his footsteps, even if she can’t walk the path as well? Ahsoka says Sabine’s Mandalorian upbringing won’t be enough to help her defeat their enemies, which may be true now that they’re facing off against so many Force-wielders, but what made Sabine seek Ahsoka’s instruction before? And what makes either of them think this will work despite Sabine’s lack of affinity for the Force? Is Ahsoka attempting to democratize use of the Force, and if so, is that a viable goal, given the talent disparities? I’m open to Sabine’s Jedi journey, and Ahsoka’s tutelage. I just wish I had some sense of why apprenticeship was happening, so I could get invested in the outcome. For now, it’s hard not to side with Huyang.

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Like a lot of Ahsoka scenes, the training sequence goes on a little longer than it needs to. (Which in turn made the episode seem like it didn’t last long enough.) But the title card cuts it off and ushers us into an interlude on the fleet, where Hera is trying to convince Chancellor Mon Mothma (played again by Genevieve O’Reilly) and a few Republic senators—including Xiono, father of Star Wars Resistance protagonist Kazuda Xiono—to authorize a search for Grand Admiral Thrawn. It is with a heavy heart that I must announce that the New Republic is at it again. The senators are skeptical that Thrawn is alive, and Xiono, at least, suspects Hera of using the specter of Thrawn to try to fund “another” sentimental search for Ezra (which, at least, establishes that this isn’t the first time Ezra’s friends have tried to find him, which wasn’t clear last week). Hera may share some of the brass’s doubts about Ahsoka and Sabine being on a wild whale chase—her initial reaction to Ahsoka’s suggestion that Thrawn is alive was “That’s not possible”—but she’s seen too much to dismiss the risk.

One aspect of Hera’s exchange with her holographic interlocutors explains why she isn’t fully on the New Republic leadership’s side, despite her buddy-buddy banter with Mon. When Hera asks Xiono if he was ever in the war, he has to answer no. Hera has a follow-up: “Just sat back and waited to see who came out on top?” A tense silence ensues. It’s hardly a diplomatic question, but Hera isn’t a diplomat—in the Mandoverse, diplomats and politicians are barely better than bureaucrats. Those who have faced and defeated the Empire’s evil are the only ones capable of sensing the Remnant’s rise, and they lack the autonomy to act on the instincts that kept them alive. Thus, the next war is on the way, no matter how hard Hera tries to prevent it. She might as well get the Ghost ready for Exegol. (Ironically, Xiono is the senator from Hosnian Prime, though he’s absent from the system when the First Order destroys it.)

The Mandalorian and Ahsoka have told us time and time again that the New Republic is overmatched, overconfident, and ripe for overthrowing by the future First Order. I get it; I, too, have seen the sequel trilogy. But how many more episodes and seasons of the Mandoverse must make this point before Filoni and Jon Favreau are satisfied that they’ve sufficiently set up the sequels? How many more hints about secret cloning projects have to be dropped on The Mandalorian and The Bad Batch before Filoni and Favs are convinced that they’ve sufficiently explained the “Somehow” in “Somehow, Palpatine returned”? How much longer until Star Wars storytelling can rewind and fast-forward far enough to escape this inter-trilogy period and the burden of laying the groundwork for J.J. Abrams’s derivative vision? At this point in the Star Wars timeline, there are still decades to go before The Force Awakens! Filoni has been open about his philosophy of knitting together the larger tapestry of Star Wars, but I’m struggling with this central long-term project for the franchise—putting down narrative track to a trilogy with a predetermined, disappointing denouement. I’m hoping Thrawn has more in mind than merely bringing back the Empire and his evil boss.

“Time to Fly” gives us a glimpse of Hera and Kanan Jarrus’s son, Jacen, who wants to be a Jedi. Jacen’s not known to be Force-sensitive, but we’ve got great news, courtesy of Aunt Ahsoka: The Force is in all of us. It’s certainly in Ahsoka and Sabine’s enemies: When they and Huyang arrive in the Denab system, they’re instantly set upon by starfighters led by Baylan’s apprentice Shin and ex-Inquisitor Marrok. Hera takes evasive action, while Sabine gets to the gun turret and tries to shake off her rust in a different kind of combat. Ahsoka hasn’t kept Sabine’s presets, but by the end of the action, their teamwork is partly restored; rather than try to impart training in the thick of battle, Ahsoka accepts Huyang’s rebuke and lets Sabine guide her, as Obi-Wan learned to do with Anakin and Anakin learned to do with her.

As Huyang scans Seatos, he detects a large, unidentified vessel in space. That’s no moon; it’s a hyperspace ring. The droid urges Ahsoka to stay on target until he can complete his scan, but Morgan lays down withering fire from the turbolasers on the Eye of Sion, which wears down the shuttle’s shields and eventually leaves it damaged, powered-down, and unprotected, a sitting target in space.

As Sabine frantically tries to repair the ship—the sort of assignment she excels at, in contrast to telekinesis—Ahsoka ventures into vacuum to “distract” the starfighter pilots. And distract them she does. From all appearances, it should have been incredibly easy for the baddies to blow up our heroes. The starfighters could’ve fired a missile. They could’ve parked themselves a safe way away and torn the ship apart with blaster fire. They could’ve made themselves scarce while Morgan resumed her barrage.

They chose to do none of those things. Instead, they make a few strafing runs and aim their lasers at Ahsoka, a tiny target on the surface of a much larger, utterly vulnerable husk whose destruction would take her out too. Some of the bolts miss, she deflects a few others, and one of the starfighters flown by a rando even strays so close that Ahsoka sabers it in half. Just in time, Sabine fixes the ship and rotates the wing so her master can touch down on the deck. Somehow, Ahsoka returned.

Look, I liked Ahsoka’s spacesuit. I loved the mercenaries’ World War II–style starfighter design. I enjoyed the dogfight’s transition to a more up-close-and-personal, Rey-vs.–Kylo Ren’s–TIE fighter showdown. (Ahsoka standing on the hull also seems reminiscent of Vader standing on top of his TIE fighter before his fight with his former apprentice on Rebels, the twins from Visions Season 1, or Ezra cutting a TIE apart on purrgilback.) But not since Obi-Wan Kenobi have I seen such an implausible fumble that took me out of a suspenseful scene. Or, for that matter, one that would’ve been easier to write around. Ahsoka could have used the Force to redirect a missile, or confuse the fighter pilots, or make their ships collide. The purrgil could have shown up in space instead of in the atmosphere. Baylan, who said in “Toil and Trouble” that it would be a shame to kill Ahsoka, could have intervened to save her against Morgan’s wishes. Anything other than the villains disabling the shuttle but inexplicably failing to finish it off. That glaring miscalculation undercut the menace of Shin and Marrok, who at least look the part of convincing villains, though there’s little substance to them thus far.

After that, Ahsoka, Sabine, and Huyang dive into the planet’s atmosphere and give their pursuers the slip by navigating through a pod of purrgil, who may be based on Seatos or may be making a pit stop there at one of the endpoints of their intergalactic migration. (It’s a relief that the purrgils’ first live-action close-up makes them look more majestic than silly.) The shuttle settles in under the forest’s canopy, and Huyang tells Ahsoka and Sabine what we gathered last week: The Eye of Sion is a hyperspace ring capable of an intergalactic hyperspace jump. “The Jedi archives speak of intergalactic hyperspace lanes between galaxies which used to follow the migration paths of star whales named purrgil,” says Huyang. Perhaps Ahsoka and Co. can hitch a ride with said whales, as Ezra and Thrawn did, if they can’t stow away on the ring.

Assuming, of course, that they can evade detection and capture by Baylan and the droids and mercenaries he instructs to search for “the Jedi” (who aren’t technically Jedi) in the forest, an order that almost arbitrarily ends “Time to Fly” with a poor excuse for a cliff-hanger. The episode closes with an almost 30-second dolly in on Baylan looking contemplative, troubled, or possibly bored. Huyang made me grin a few times this week, and his reference to Ahsoka coming from “a long line of nontraditional Jedi” rang true and hit hard, but even in a Star Wars era with more than its share of stoic, taciturn protagonists, Ahsoka stands out for its extended silences during dialogue, stone-faced countenances, and nonreactive reaction shots, even without as many helmets as the other Mandoverse series. Maybe that’s because it’s challenging for a live-action show to match animation’s energy, but when Sabine celebrated her first starfighter kill, I felt like cheering the brief deviation from the series’ subdued tone.

It’s tough to tell how popular the premiere of Ahsoka was; Parrot Analytics, Samba TV, and, oddly, Disney itself seem to tell different stories. Similarly, it’s not easy to anticipate what type of series Ahsoka could still blossom into, as its characters break the boundaries of the same old Star Wars galaxy where George Lucas and his successors have set their stories for 45 years. So far, though, we can sum up Ahsoka’s quality by echoing two lukewarm reviews of Sabine’s sword work: “Not bad, but not good,” Huyang put it. Or as Ahsoka said, “enough to get by.”

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