Ahsoka Episode 4 Review: The Hyperspace Trolley
Spoiler alert
Fair warning: There’s no point talking about this episode with a spoiler-free section. I gotta just jump right into it.
Ahsoka is dead. Sabine has joined the bad guys. Anakin Skywalker is in heaven wearing an outfit from 2005.
O.K., maybe I should back up a little bit. To recap: Ahsoka and Sabine fight the various henchmen—droid, human, and zombie—of Morgan Elsbeth, while her hyperspace ring fills the loading bar on spooky_spell_to_coordinates_converter.exe.
Ahsoka easily kills Marrok, who turns out to be literally no one. He is a reanimated corpse—a classic trick of Morgan’s Nightsister ancestors (and I guess a reference related to his name). Marrok’s haunted soul escapes his rotting flesh with a hiss and a puff of smoke—in turn freeing us from an even more hellish prison (nonstop speculation about his identity).
Then Ahsoka duels Baylan, while he talks serious trash about her old master, Anakin. Sabine, meanwhile, tries to not get stabbed in the liver by Shin again. Only Sabine is successful. With Ahsoka out of the way and Sabine threatening to destroy the map to Thrawn, Baylan gives her a great pitch to join them: Do it for Ezra. I was worried Sabine was going to say “I am doing this for Ezra,” before destroying the map. But she relents, making the morally dubious choice and giving me the inspiration for this email’s title:
I waited 16 hours for Dale Cooper to return from the netherworld in Twin Peaks season 3. So I can appreciate both a slow burn and a detour into the World Between Worlds. Soon everyone will be happy. Anakin returns without need of a flashback or a gauzy blue haze. Filoni will get to fulfill his goal of making Ahsoka the Gandalf the White of Star Wars. And most importantly, I will get to see Thrawn.
(In case you have any doubt about Ahsoka’s ultimate fate, check out the one difference between this scene in the Rebels finale and Ahsoka Episode 2. Hint: It’s Ahsoka’s robe.)
The worst crime of Obi-Wan Kenobi was how boring and safe it was. It was the first Disney live action project starring mostly prequel actors, but it had none of the endearing wackiness that makes those movies unique. If Lucasfilm will greenlight a five-hour live-action sequel to their cartoons, why pull punches? Kill the main character! Send her to the afterlife to meet Hayden Christensen! (Hopefully that’s a fate that awaits us all one day.)
But man, is it hard to explain what’s going on to someone who checked out on Star Wars after The Rise of Skywalker. Whatever Ahsoka ends up being, back-to-basics it ain’t. Watch as a young man’s mind melts in the span of five minutes:
Anakin’s smooth afterlife face didn’t move me. Obi-Wan Kenobi deflated the fun of Christensen’s return by already showing a far-less smooth version. (Weird how he looks 40 in his Attack of the Clones flashback but 20 in the afterlife.) I’m mainly waiting, ever nervously, for the return of our blue villain, which should come next week, barring an Anakin-and-Ahsoka-only episode (a terrifyingly plausible possibility).
What did we learn about Thrawn’s imminent return in this episode? Baylan says they’re fighting for a “greater good,” but I’m not sure it’s a reference to anything in particular. I’m still dubious on why Thrawn from the canonical novels would want to destroy the New Republic. He wanted to stamp out the Rebellion to ingratiate himself to Palpatine and preserve the strength of the Empire as a bulwark against other threats. Does a second civil war help?
In theory, the Thrawn of this story wants to kill the New Republic for the same reason the Legends version of the character did in 1991’s Heir to the Empire: It sucks. (This is seemingly confirmed in this episode when Ahsoka awkwardly declares Thrawn “the heir to the Empire.”) But that version of Thrawn had been at the periphery of the civil war, and thought he could swoop in and still force an eleventh-hour victory for the Empire. This new canonical Thrawn has been stranded who-knows-where and probably doesn’t even know the Empire is gone. He probably thinks M*A*S*H is still the No. 1 show on television!
Well, Rey was disappointed when she met her idol, Luke, in The Last Jedi. Hopefully Morgan Elsbeth has a similar experience in Ahsoka Episode 5.
The Rating
4 Morai out of 5
Meme of the Week
Random Thoughts
We now have the mechanism for Ben Solo’s resurrection. Can I bet on Adam Driver coming back on one of those sports gambling apps? I’ve never been more sure.
Ahsoka didn’t reciprocate Shin’s pre-duel robe drop, but gave Baylan the honor at least.
Really nice of Shin to force-push Sabine’s helmet off so Natasha Liu Bordizzo had to be in the scene and could get paid for it. That’s SAG-AFTRA solidarity in action.
The shot of the waves hitting the cliffs, confirming Ahsoka’s death, had a nice Ahch-To vibe.
I don’t like the way the lekku move in this show. I get that they have to be lightweight, but they need a little CGI touch-up in some scenes. In a movie, they’d be doing more artful wiggling.
Baylan and Morgan are sharing a drink they call loneliness, but it’s better than brooding at the hinge alone.
Between The Mandalorian episode 13 and this show, Filoni has figured out that the Volume produces great Kurosawa forest backgrounds. It’s a welcome change from mind-numbing simulations of endless desert.
#VantoWatch
We’ll probably know next week if Eli is in the show. I’m raising the Vanto chances to moderate due to the imminence of Thrawn’s appearance—not out of optimism.
"Vanto Watch" has absolutely made my day