In the Flesh: Ahsoka s1e05: Shadow Warrior

In the singular hands of writer, director, Chopper the droid voice actor, and showrunner Dave Filoni, Ahsoka’s fifth episode pulls off the impossible: it is measurably worse than the four lackluster duds preceding it. We spend our first half-hour cutting between Hera flying back and forth over the ocean and Ahsoka and the Force ghost or mental manifestation or whatever of her former master, Anakin Skywalker, sparring and trading dull platitudes. Filoni’s script punches straight through the bottom of the proverbial barrel, replete with crackling back and forth like “So you do remember. That’s good.” “Why?” “It means you still have a chance.” “A chance?” “To live.” It’s galling. Incredible, even, that a show this expensive could read like it was scripted by ChatGPT on an off day. Every single conversation in the episode consists of characters placidly, emotionlessly trading sentences of six words or fewer that could be cut down to a single line, or sometimes even an image.

Not that the episode’s images are any better. The majestic space whales, which I assume I'd have to watch one of those hideous cartoons to understand the origins, motivations, etc, of look like a middling Windows 2000 screensaver. The dusty vision quest battlefields are giving "shitty fan film". And hey, did you know Anakin Skywalker became Darth Vader? Ahsoka seems to think we may have forgotten a strong contender for the single most widely known piece of pop cultural trivia on Earth, because it flashes between the uncanny CGI de-aged Hayden Christensen and Vader’s iconic armored silhouette no fewer than three times during the long, meandering, and, to put it generously, pointless, infuriatingly slow, and stultifying dream sequence in which Dream Anakin plays a third-grade word game with his pupil. When he starts acting evil his lightsaber turns red and his eyes go a kind of muddy yellow, an unsuccessful attempt to recreate his jaundiced Dark Side stare from Revenge of the Sith, as though we might be unable to parse things like his facial expression and actions. It’s so dully oversimplified, so pandering to the least attentive, least perceptive viewer imaginable, that the sheer length of each and every interminable scene starts to feel like an insult.

Without Ray Stevenson to shake things up by being good at his job, there’s nobody pulling their weight here. I don’t know how you get this work out of Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Rosario Dawson, two actresses I’ve seen burn the house down time and time again. The godawful makeup, which makes you want to scrub their faces, can’t help, but there has to be something going on directorially to explain the total lifelessness of virtually everyone we meet. There’s no shouting, no crying, no anger, no affection, just an endless slog of people talking to each other like broken Speak n’ Spells until it’s time for the next infinitesimal advancement of the plot to happen. ‘Shadow Warrior’ sets a new benchmark for complete and total lack of redeeming quality. Art made by a man who can’t wipe his ass and blink at the same time for an audience delighted by a set of jingling keys that cost a hundred million dollars.

This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the show being covered here wouldn't exist.