In the Flesh: Ahsoka s1e08: The Jedi, the Witch, and the Warlord

Why does Ezra wear the stormtrooper helmet when he reunites with Hera and the Republic forces? As a human being, why would he risk being shot for no conceivable reward beyond, I suppose, surprising a friend? As viewers are we meant to be surprised when, having seen Ezra drag an unconscious Stormtrooper away to steal his armor, he shows minutes later wearing said armor? Is the show attempting to fake us out using information we already have? Why do Ezra, Sabine, and Ahsoka remain with the caravan of little hermit crab aliens? Why are they floating sedately along at low altitude when their only means of escape from the unknown planet is rapidly preparing to leave? For that matter, what in the Great Mothers’ basement was so important that Thrawn forewent absolute certain victory in order to pack it up first and take it with him? There’s a little Raiders of the Lost Ark shot of Stormtroopers stacking crates in the belly of his star destroyer, but this is the finale, man! Give us something to anticipate. As for Ray Stevenson’s Baylan Skoll, one of the season’s sole redeeming elements, he’s relegated here to a five-second appearance during which he stares at a distant mountain capped with a glowing beacon of some sort. Not much of a payoff for his charming, heartfelt performance, cut short by the actor’s tragic premature death.

With Thrawn himself it’s more of the same. He talks about his plan. The plan goes tits-up. He explains why it’s good that the plan failed. Lars Mikkelsen is really killing it bringing the Grand Admiral’s serene menace to the screen, but there’s nothing in the script to support his strong performance. Bombard this, delay that. Nobody dies or gets injured, and at no point does that seem like a remote possibility. Not great for an action adventure series. The plotting here is so incoherent that it seems sort of meaningless what any given character plans or does; it’ll fall out the way the script needs it to fall out with no thought given to how to make that sequence of events feel remotely natural or believable. The bit with the zombified Stormtroopers is pretty neat, though if the show is going for horror it’s a long way from threatening or revolting. We get a single glimpse of mutilated flesh, but otherwise the heroes’ reanimated foes remain chastely intact and unexposed. If the main cast could emote maybe this would all feel more real, more pressing, but they remain stubbornly soporific. Their bland, inexpressive performances have given us a season of television in which it’s not really clear what anyone feels about anyone else, or why they do what they do.

And the fight choreography — good God! The Jedi look like video game characters running through their emote commands as they slowly, woodenly swing their lightsabers around to deflect blaster bolts. There’s an attempt at some cool Wuxia-style swordplay with Morgan Elsbeth’s cursed blade, summoned by the Great Mothers in a whirl of green energy that looks for all the world like a Windows 2000 screensaver effect, but the pacing, blocking, and physical movements of the episode’s action scenes are just unfixable. There’s no tension, no emotion, no momentum. The Force-assisted jump Ezra makes to board Thrawn’s star destroyer is perhaps the goofiest CGI “stunt” I’ve ever seen, just indefensibly ridiculous and poorly conceived. I hope Esfandi and Bordizzo got a bag out of this, because my god, they’ll never live it down. And with that, I’m free.