Ahsoka Delivers A 'Fallen Jedi' With An Episode That Demands Your Attention
This article contains spoilers for "Ahsoka" episode 4, "Fallen Jedi."
The fourth installment of "Star Wars: Ahsoka," titled "Fallen Jedi", pulls no punches when it comes to having the situation go from bad to worse. As the forces of evil led by the descendent of the Witches of Dathomir, Morgan Elsbeth (Diana Lee Inosanto), and fallen Jedi Baylan Skoll (Ray Stevenson) work to extract the information from the map to find Grand Admiral Thrawn (the still unseen Lars Mikkelsen), Ahsoka (Rosario Dawson) and Sabine (Natasha Liu Bordizzo) work to repair their ship. After it got shot down last episode, they need to get it back in the air or retrieve the map personally. While Huyang (David Tennant) attempts repairs, Ahsoka and Sabine take to the forest. They're stopped by Shin Hati (Ivanna Sakhno) and Marrok (Paul Darnell), who engage them in an intense fight in the woods. Though Huyang warned Ahsoka and Sabine to stay together, they split up with dire consequences. Ahsoka races to retrieve the map and confront Baylan Skoll on her own, but lets her emotions get the best of her. Skoll is able to dispatch Ahsoka and convinces Sabine that the only way to find Ezra is to give him the map and join them as they cross between galaxies. Reluctantly, Sabine agrees. Elsewhere, General Hera Syndulla (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and Captain Carson Teva (Paul Sun-Hyung Lee) arrive in the Denab Sector to try to stop the hyperspace ring, but it manages to make its jump with Sabine aboard.
Meanwhile, in some sort of netherworld of the Force, Ahsoka finds an old friend, and "Star Wars" fans everywhere lost their minds about it.
Seven Samurai
The work of Akira Kurosawa seeps from every pore of "Star Wars" and "Ahsoka" has been no exception. As Ahsoka and the former Inquisitor Marrok have their duel, director Peter Ramsay stages the action just like a key fight in Kurosawa's 1954 masterpiece "Seven Samurai." The introduction of a master swordsman character named Kyuzo starts with a duel between him and a man boasting to be a better swordsman. As they have their duel, Kyuzo uses a quiet, calm, stillness to cut the other man down, even after he had bested him with a wooden bokken. Unable to accept that he'd been defeated, he insisted on fighting with swords. Kambei Shimada (Takashi Shimura) watches on, declaring the whole thing a waste because the skill of the other opponent is obvious. For those watching carefully to this fight between Ahsoka and Marrok, that much is clear to us, too. Notice that Ahsoka is only using one of her two lightsabers? It's very much the same mood as Darth Vader fighting Luke Skywalker on Cloud City with only one hand. But when Ahsoka calms herself and adjusts her stance, she's able to cut Marrok down, just like Kyuzo.
This moment in "Seven Samurai" was also mirrored in "Star Wars" before. The death of Lord Maul in "Star Wars Rebels" at the hands of Obi-Wan Kenobi had exactly the same energy and shot construction to it, adding another layer to the connection between "Star Wars" and Kurosawa's work and adding a deeper thread of emotion and meaning to the moment in "Ahsoka."
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Over the years, Dave Filoni has brought a lot of elements from the Indiana Jones movies into his "Star Wars" work, from aping themes or tones to straight-up homages. (Hell, Club Lao Che appears in "The Bad Batch.") But this episode goes a little deeper and brings one of the central themes of "Raiders of the Lost Ark" to the forefront. In "Raiders," one of the most pivotal and tense scenes comes on the island when Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) has procured a bazooka. He is going to destroy the Ark of the Covenant, an invaluable piece of history, if they don't let Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen) go. Unfortunately, he can't do that. Belloq (Paul Freeman) calls his bluff and Indy has to go along for the rest of the ride.
Baylan puts Sabine through a very similar dilemma here. She gets the map and is threatening to shoot it, just like Ahsoka told her to. But if she shoots it, she loses any chance of bringing Ezra back from the other galaxy. Baylan manipulates her in much the same way Palpatine manipulated Anakin Skywalker, promising a return of their loved ones in exchange for exactly what they want. Combining those thematic elements from "Star Wars" and "Raiders of the Lost Ark" is exactly the sort of filmmaking that would likely make George Lucas proud.
I also want to specifically call out Ray Stevenson and his fighting style. There's a raw power to it that is nothing short of terrifying. He also has the best line of the episode, "How inevitable." It echoes a Sydney Greenstreet sort of moment that Steven Spielberg and George Lucas called out as particularly thrilling and interesting in their story conference for "Raiders of the Lost Ark" with Lawrence Kasdan. In that conversation, they talked about how much more interesting it is when you pull a gun on him and instead of reacting to it, he sort of sighs and lets you know that he's simply disappointed in you. He is as much the fallen Jedi of the title as ... you know who.
Details to watch out for
"Fallen Jedi" has a number of cool things to spot if you know where to look. First, you'll notice the droid Huyang holding his own against the HK assassin droids and stooges of Baylan and Elsbeth. This isn't the first time we've seen him kick ass and take names. In the episodes of "The Clone Wars" where he first appeared, he gets attacked by Hondo Ohnaka's pirates. Even though he was missing extremities at that point, he was still beating down pirates.
The other thing you'll notice is that Huyang uses the codename "Fulcrum" when Hera gets in touch with him. Ahsoka became an agent named Fulcrum for the Rebel Alliance in the struggle against the Empire. Others also took that moniker at times, too, including Cassian Andor.
This episode brought back the infamous VCX-100 light-freighter, The Ghost. Interestingly enough, as Hera is walking out of the hangar to get to her ship, you'll notice that it's the same hangar that Han Solo offered Lando the Millennium Falcon to fly during the Battle of Endor. The Ghost, for those who don't know, too, is the ship Hera flew in most episodes of "Star Wars Rebels."
Questions raised
This episode also raises some questions. The three biggest to my mind are these: Where's Zeb? What happened to Baylan? And where is Ahsoka at the end?
The last time we saw Zeb — who was one of the central members of the Ghost crew — he was with Carson Teva at Adelphi base. With Carson Teva breaking from the New Republic to be with Hera, why wouldn't Zeb be doing the same thing? Will we get more rebels joining them and have Zeb come up in a future episode? Or did he specifically not answer the call?
As for Baylan, he has a lot of interesting dialogue that implies a past with Anakin Skywalker — or possibly even Darth Vader — and even Ahsoka in the past. He tells Ahsoka that he knew Anakin and his mark on the legacy of the Jedi must leave a mark on her. In every episode, the mystery of Baylan's turn and fall from the Jedi becomes more and more interesting.
As for where Ahsoka is, many will assume this is the "world between worlds", the time-bending nexus of the Force that Ezra pulled Ahsoka out of, saving her from her fight with Darth Vader on Malachor. The other likely explanation is that she's dead and this is the netherworld in the Force that Yoda said that Qui-Gon Jinn spoke of, and she's meeting him on that plane. This might be my favorite of the four episodes of the show so far. It has a pulsing thrum of high stakes action, excellent character moments, tantalizing questions, and an ending that made the little "Star Wars" fan in me weep much harder than I expected.
Next week can't come soon enough.
Fallen Jedi
Hayden Christensen's return as Anakin Skywalker has to be at the top of the list of positives for this week's episode. This was the moment I wanted so badly in one of the Skywalker Saga films in the sequel trilogy — that conversation. I want Anakin after-the-fact owning up to what he's done and helping the good side again. This introduction promises we're going to get exactly that in the next episode.
That's not to say there aren't complaints though. The digital de-aging look still needs work.
It became a joke, but one of George Lucas's most important bits of direction on "Star Wars" was the phrase "faster and more intense." The actors on "Ahsoka" are certainly bringing the intensity, but not necessarily the speed and I'm not sure why. The other is that Baylan Skoll has done nothing but stand in the wind on the henge for the last three episodes. What is he doing there, just staring out at the sea? It makes one want more for him to do. Hopefully, the end of this next episode promises that.
Aside from those two points, I thought this episode was masterful and a perfect example of what "Star Wars" in this era can be.
New episodes of "Ahsoka" premiere on Tuesday nights on Disney+ at 6:00 pm Pacific, 9:00 pm Eastern.