The Mandalorian

[Cyrrex]

I agree, some of CW is really good, and I liked all of Rebels.  Weirdly, I have not seen the last season of either of them.  I probably should fix that.

[Draegan]

That's my major problem with the cartoons that you just have to hand wave away. I'm only half way through Season 1, but the shows are decent and I see why people loved them.

From my understanding of her character through osmosis of the internet, she was basically there  throughout Anakin's temptation to the dark side. It's like three years between Ep II and III, and the last episode of the Clone Wars is the opening shot of Revenge of the Sith?

So apparently throughout the OT there is this Jedi trained force user that knows Anakin, Obi-Wan and apparently Leia in Rebels? (I think I've heard someone mention that), and no one brings her up? I mean, obviously the movies were made thirty years before the show, but the whole timeline is silly.

It seems like Asohka would be the kind of person to help Vader's son to rescue him. But you can also handwave that away that no one knew Luke's heritage anyway. But you could also see Obiwan trying to find her and get her to help after his death via the force.

I mean it's Star Wars so the whole thing is silly. I assume the last you see of her in Clone Wars and in Rebels she explains why she stayed away etc. etc.

[MediumHigh]

Ahsoka is kinda the best and worst thing about Star Wars the Clone Wars. On one hand she is a good character but on the other hand she is a massive death star like plot hole the writers kept stringing along. And the fans of the Clone Wars are generally too young to care so they pretty much got away with it. Ahsoka is their baby and they couldn't do the obvious thing which was to abort her in clone wars or have her die in the god awful Rebels cartoon.

She is the ultimate character of diminishing returns, because the more they want to put her front and center the more they have to explain why wasn't in the OT and the faster this house of cards built around her existence as a fan favorite add in, falls apart.. Which is a shame because these writers, excusing the miss steps, do actually care about star wars and the lore and can make mostly consistent star wars fiction.

[Draegan]

I'm ok with all the shitty timelines because the prequels and sequels are trash and I can just handwave everything with "they are just stories" as long as they come up on the other side of wherever they're going and write 10 years worth of decent Star Wars post sequels with something with the fun and heft of the MCU.

[Threash]

I really don't see the problem, there is no reason for her to be in OT.

[Khaldun]

I have no problem accepting that Ahsoka declined to be actually in the major military operations of the Rebellion or to be visibly associated with the command structure--that comes with the task of keeping fairly hidden. You'd think the Alliance might put in a call to her once it became clear Luke was a Force-sensitive--but maybe Obi-ghost and Yoda got on the Force phone to her and said "hey, we got Luke covered, you do your own thing". Or she wants nothing to do with Luke specifically once she hears his last name. Or maybe she decides after whatever happens on her search for Ezra that she's kind of done for the time being with other Force-users (which might be consistent with her reaction to the Child, I ain't calling it that other name).

[eldaec]

Anakin's apprentice seemed weird to me as an idea till I watched clone wars.

But it is fine. And she's not a secret apprentice. She is well known to all the jedi you've heard of. They had a sensible plot for how she left the order well before the start of RotS and a frankly awesome set of episodes for what she got up to during RotS.

Fwiw RotS is improved a fair bit by watching the Clone Wars, and the last episodes which run concurrently with RotS in particular.

[Velorath]

I'm ok with all the shitty timelines because the prequels and sequels are trash and I can just handwave everything with "they are just stories" as long as they come up on the other side of wherever they're going and write 10 years worth of decent Star Wars post sequels with something with the fun and heft of the MCU.

That the prequels were trash just made me less interested in the notion of fleshing them out further in an animated series.

I've never listed to Filoni talk about Ahsoka. Having had to do a test run on the Clone Wars movie when it came out, she just seemed like she was designed to appeal to kids. I don't know if there was ever a long term discussion around the fact that the person she was training under would eventually go on to murder all the Jedi except presumably Obi-Wan and Yoda. I have no idea if the original intention is that the show would end long before they ever got to that point, if the plan was to kill her off at some point and then the writers just couldn't go through with it, or if they had some notion going into creating her that they were going to have to come up with ways to write around the continuity. I just don't get why writers would decide to put themselves in that position of creating a character who realistically would figure into the movies had she existed as a character at the time.

Ultimately maybe I shouldn't give a fuck because even Lucas was introducing retcons during the OT leaving us stuck with stuff like siblings kissing in ANH. Also fans just handwave everything away with Obi-Wan "certain point of view" reasoning anyway that we all knew was bullshit when Obi-wan said it.

[HaemishM]

Writers come up with characters like Ahsoka because they don't want to just follow the dotted lines of pre-existing narrative.

[Velorath]

Then... maybe don't set your show like right in the middle of pre-existing narrative?

[Riggswolfe]

The Clone Wars cartoon series isn't perfect but it does do three things the movies absolutely failed to do:

1) It actually makes you believe Obi-Wan and Anakin are close friends
2) It makes the clones into actual characters. You actually get attached to a few of them and some of the most emotional episodes revolve around the clones. It ultimately makes Order 66 even more tragic.
3) It makes you care about Anakin. It fleshes out his character a ton and there are a few subtle times where you can see that Anakin's fate could have been different.

The last 4 episodes of the final season are some of the best Star Wars ever made. If you've watched the whole series it truly makes Order 66 tragic and makes you feel for both the Jedi and the Clones.

[eldaec]

Then... maybe don't set your show like right in the middle of pre-existing narrative?

No absolutely do this and stop worrying about it.

Star Wars' best asset is the setting. Heading off to different time period just seems weird to me. Espeicially when current projects are struggling to do world building.

Space is big. There is plenty of room for war stories featuring soldiers who never met Luke Skywalker.

Writers feeling the need to check in with every other character in a setting is annoying.

[NowhereMan]

On the one hand it is a bit weird that Luke Skywalker becoming one of the big heroes of the rebellion wouldn't prompt Ahsoka to come seek him out if only just due to the name.

On the other hand maybe there are half a dozen good reasons why she didn't from personal regret and pain to just not hearing it or not putting 2 and 2 together, stop worrying about it nerd.

Ultimately it comes down to whether you're telling good stories with engaging characters. If no option 1 is very understandable, if yes then option 2. I think it's perfectly reasonable to be grown ups and acknowledge that putting said characters in set events limits story telling in a bad kind of way. If someone was writing a new Trek series set in the TNG era it would be pretty frustrating if the stories were all fused into TNG episodes and canon rather than having adventures happening on the other side of the quadrant.

[eldaec]

Personally, I don't find it weird even a little bit.

Events in Clone Wars, Rebels, and her personality in Mandalorian suggest she would absolutely do whatever she could to stay away from central command structures and stay focussed on helping the person in front if her.

She explictly says failure to do this is why the republic is screwed up.

[Threash]

The Clone Wars cartoon series isn't perfect but it does do three things the movies absolutely failed to do:

1) It actually makes you believe Obi-Wan and Anakin are close friends
2) It makes the clones into actual characters. You actually get attached to a few of them and some of the most emotional episodes revolve around the clones. It ultimately makes Order 66 even more tragic.
3) It makes you care about Anakin. It fleshes out his character a ton and there are a few subtle times where you can see that Anakin's fate could have been different.

The last 4 episodes of the final season are some of the best Star Wars ever made. If you've watched the whole series it truly makes Order 66 tragic and makes you feel for both the Jedi and the Clones.

It also does a very good job in emphasizing how out of touch and corrupt both the republic and Jedi order were at that point, which also makes Anakin's fall more believable.

[Threash]

Goddamn, today's episode was great.

[Speedy Cerviche]

If they are going to build out the Star Wars universe as a massive flagship property of games, movies, series, etc. for decades it is probably going to need a lot of retcons. The main movies are kind of a hot mess of continuity.

[Velorath]

Robert Rodriguez directed that one. Not bad.

[Khaldun]

Clone Wars did a great job I think at doing everything Lucas didn't do in the prequels--and showed that it could in fact have been done. The basic failure is first simply that the first film shouldn't have been about Anakin as a kid. That story should have been a ten minute prologue--Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon Jinn show up on Tatooine chasing some weird rabbit hole story that Qui-Gon has heard about a Sith working with the Hutts (say, Qui-Gon is obsessed with the Sith and that's why he's on the outs with the Council, who don't think they exist any more), they meet Anakin and realize he's astonishingly Force-sensitive, QG buys him out of slavery and promises to Venmo some credits to free his mom when they get back to Coruscant, they meet up with Darth Maul at the end of the prologue and get away narrowly with their lives.

Council doesn't really believe QG but they let him continue to train Anakin as a second padawan, unorthodox as that is--they're worried that QG is gonna go Count Dooku on them and leave the Order, so they're trying to humor his quirks. Flash forward and Anakin's an angry but very talented 14-year old still learning from QC and Obi-Wan, Obi-Wan and QC are the only people he trusts, QC venmoed the credits but they've told Anakin he can't go see her because it's attachment and also because they don't know where that Sith guy is. QC hears a rumor of the Sith guy on Naboo and gets involved in the whole weird Trade Federation blockade thing. Cut Jar-Jar out, add in some thriller hunt-the-Sith expose-the-conspiracy stuff; Anakin gets sent on a sidequest to guard Amidala while QC and Obi-Wan track Maul. Duel of the Fates; Anakin and Amidala have love-at-first-sight.

Then the way the cartoon developed Obi-Wan and Anakin would work really well and Anakin's anger would make so much more sense--always treated as a kind of shunned outsider by the Council, angry that QC was never believed about the Sith, but has a chance to rise because it's wartime and the Council needs his skill, etc.

[Abagadro]

Other than making it impossible to shoot accurately, I'm starting to wonder what Stormtrooper armor is actually supposed to protect against.

[Khaldun]

If it hadn't been for Return of the Jedi, you could still imagine that it was basically riot-control gear intended to deal with nuisance melee attacks, but no, Ewoks throwing rocks are an instakill.

So yeah, I dunno what it's for.

[Threash]

It's really good against bullets.

[Samwise]

It repels tigers.

[Abagadro]

I joke, but Fett going HAM on troopers using the gaffi stick was pretty damn cool and a visceral level of violence that SW usually lacks, i.e all the shattering and crunching of all that armor.

[Rasix]

If it hadn't been for Return of the Jedi, you could still imagine that it was basically riot-control gear intended to deal with nuisance melee attacks, but no, Ewoks throwing rocks are an instakill.

So yeah, I dunno what it's for.

To be fair, some of those rocks were from fairly high up and could be classified as "landscaping boulders". A good 15-30 pound rock is going to leave a mark.

The true horror of Return of the Jedi was the death by Ewok. You had to know that at best most of their melee attacks and sling attack were just stunning or knocking down. Death came slowly as small armed teddy bears wielding stone aged, child-sized weaponry slowly beat you into a pulp. Or they manage to slide a barely sharp spear into the creases of the armor. You are likely alive for several minutes of this.

You have to wonder if they served Storm Trooper at the end celebration.

[Draegan]

Good episode but I was a little disappointed that you could just put tython into your GPS and just go.

[NowhereMan]

Good episode but I was a little disappointed that you could just put tython into your GPS and just go.

Eh, I can believe it was a known world for force users with appropriate levels of Jedi security that, with the accelerated rate of Jedi influence and force users that seems to be part of Episode III>IV, just vanished and left the planet known as basically a funny tourist attraction with no other value as a planet. So not hard to find it's more equivalent to a weird English heritage spot a few dozen people a year pop over to take photos of themselves in the ruins.

Of course for that to make sense, you need to be onboard with the idea that it makes sense that within 50 years of fall of the Republic nobody believes Jedi exist anymore and their most sacred sites are all forgotten.

[eldaec]

Recent history suggests that convincing a significant part of the population that scientifically established facts are all a hoax takes considerably less than 50 years.

Tython hiding is all deep EU isn't it? So I had filed it under 'don't care'.

[Threash]

Ahsoka could have just told him, she knew where it was. So who did Grogu contact? cause obviously someone has to show up.

[eldaec]

Ahsoka could have just told him, she knew where it was. So who did Grogu contact? cause obviously someone has to show up.

It could be random new guy, but the only live jedi we explictly know of are Luke and Ezra. I think?

Since it seems likely they'll bring back BoKatan for the sabre and we already have Boba and Mulan in tow, and main character also wants to pick up S1 prison break guy, it is getting a bit crowded to also bring in another jedi.

So I'd guess whoever comes is a final episode epilogue / cliffhanger thing.

[Threash]

I believe Quinlan Vos is probably alive at this point.

[Riggswolfe]

It won't be Luke or Ezra. Luke because you just can't recast that role and Ezra for spoilery reasons that are fairly obvious if you watched Rebels. My candidate is Kyle Katarn. After all, they already have the Dark Troopers in here.

[Draegan]

They could do Luke with some de-aging stuff.

Not sure if that would make for a good story, but they could do it.

[Cyrrex]

Could just as likely be that he made no contact.  Or a dark side contact.  I am not brushed up enough on CW and Rebels stuff to even know who all is out there, but it seems likely it would be from either of those.

Asajj would still be out there, for example.  I think.

[Hammond]

I was pretty happy they brought back Boba Fett and cleaned up some loose ends with his backstory. Only downside to the episode was the capture of Grogu was a bit to telegraphed for me and as soon as I saw him lay down his jetpack I knew what was going to happen.

Overall the fan service on this show has been pretty great for me. Some of the cgi is a bit cheesy but on a TV show what do you expect. The dark troopers were one of those I was just not impressed with. While the assassin droids from the previous episode were way better.