'Ahsoka' Episode 4: "Fallen Jedi" Recap & Review
THE series hits its stride in a thrilling mid-season climax
WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS
The fourth episode of Ahsoka opens with the heroes at a crossroads. Unable to contact their New Republic allies thanks to their malfunctioning shuttle craft, and facing a ticking clock as the villains mount to achieve their goal, Ahsoka (Rosario Dawson) and Sabine (Natasha Liu Bordizzo) are faced to confront a hard reality. Their enemies have all that they need to make their inter-galactic voyage to retrieve the sinister Grand Admiral Thrawn, and Jedi Ezra Bridger. Ahsoka brings up the fact that if they cannot retrieve the starmap from Morgan Elsbeth (Diana Lee Inosanto) and her allies, then the map should be destroyed, and nobody should have access to it. Ahsoka rationalizes the possibility of permanently banishing their long-lost friend Ezra Bridger by destroying the map, citing that Thrawn’s return is far too dangerous a threat to the galaxy. The moral dilemma for Sabine is challenging, having just regained hope that her long-lost brother could come home one day, after almost a decade of radio silence on that front. However, she reluctantly tells Ahsoka that she can be counted on, should the circumstance occur where they would need to destroy the map, ensuring it cannot be used for harm to the galaxy.
The show cuts back to General Hera Syndulla (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and her son, Jacen Syndulla (Evan Whitten) in the hangar bay of the New Republic’s command ship, Home One. Hera, disobeying orders from the Republic’s Defence Council, flies out in her signature starship, ‘The Ghost’, flocked by a small squadron of X-Wing fighters, lead by Captain Carson Teva, (Paul Hye-Sung Lee), reprising his role from The Mandalorian. The impromtu Rebel squadron sets their paths to the planet Seatos, to support their Jedi allies on the surface, and to stop the arrival of a new Imperial fleet from the new galaxy.
The show then catches up with Huyang (David Tennant), who is ambushed by Elsbeth’s deadly HK-Assassin droids while trying to repair the shuttle’s communication system. The Jedi quickly come to Huyang’s rescue making quick work of the droids, before rushing out to the villain base through the crimson forest. At the base, Elsbeth has established the map system, and is loading the coordinates from the starmap orb up to The Eye of Sion. Baylan Skoll, (the late Ray Stevenson) dispatches his fellow dark-siders, Shin Hati (Ivanna Sakhno) and Marrok (Paul Darnell) to eliminate the inbound Jedi.
Shortly after, the Jedi’s run in the forest is interrupted by the arrival of the two dark-siders. Two separate lightsaber duels ensue, with Ahsoka taking on Marrok, and Sabine getting her rematch with Shin. Ahsoka makes quick work of Marrok, swiftly killing him with a well-timed strike. Marrok’s body falls to the ground, with a screeching sound and a trail of dark dust leaving his body. This is quite the discovery, even causing Shin and Sabine to briefly pause their duel to see this. This leaves Shin a little shaken, and off-guard. Sabine seizes this opportunity, telling Ahsoka to go and get the map before it’s too late, suggesting she can finish Shin alone. The fight between the two becomes more intense, with Hati’s superior saber-skill prevailing, knocking Sabine to the ground, seemingly defenseless. Sabine attempts a force-push, to no success. Shin flinches, but is then caught off guard by Sabine quickly firing a blast from her Mandalorian wrist gauntlets, knocking Shin’s lightsaber to the ground. Shin quickly dispatches a smoke-bomb and makes her escape.
While this duel meets its end, another shortly begins. As Ahsoka makes her way to the map, she is greeted by Baylan, who quickly explains that he’s heard of Ahsoka Tano from her former Jedi Master, Anakin Skywalker. Baylan then reveals his motivations, and that he sees his actions as a necessary force for the greater good. Both Skoll and Tano remove their robes, and a duel ensues. Clash after clash, Baylan exclaims his remorse, not wanting to have to kill Tano, and is upset he has to go to these lengths to ensure his goals are achieved. Ahsoka is able to outmaneuver Skoll ever so slightly, grabbing the starmap orb, disrupting the Eye of Sion’s hyperspace calculations, also burning her hand in the process. Shin then comes into the duel, which Ahsoka reads to mean that Sabine is dead. She acts impulsively, tapping into a bit of darkness, pushing Shin into a nearby rock with her force powers. This gives Baylan the upper hand, locking Ahsoka into a bad stance, right above the cliff. Sabine quickly arrives, grabbing the starmap orb, threatening to destroy it with her blaster, if Baylan doesn’t let Ahsoka go. Baylan then flings Ahsoka off the cliff, launching her into the water.
He then pauses for a moment, presumably taking a moment to read the situation with the force. He then converses with Sabine, trying to empathize with her, promising her that if she allies herself with him, that she could travel with them to the new galaxy, promising the safety of both herself and Ezra. Baylan makes a particularly effective comment, about how Ezra being the only family Sabine has left, revealing to the audience that her family, Clan Wren, died offscreen in the Mandalorian purge. Sabine, convinced by Baylan, surrenders the starmap after much hesitation. Shin quickly re-emerges, and force chokes Sabine. Baylan disapproves, ordering his apprentice to release Sabine, proving himself as a man of his word. Skoll then ignites his lightsaber, and destroys the map, after Elsbeth’s calculations were completed. Skoll, Hati and Wren are then quickly brought back to The Eye of Sion by one of Elsbeth’s shuttles.
Outside the orbit of Seatos, Hera and her squadron arrive, detecting that The Eye of Sion is about to make a jump to hyperspace. They attempt to mount an attack, to prevent the jump to the new galaxy, but they are too late. The Eye of Sion makes its jump, leaving a massive electrical surge behind, causing the destruction of several X-Wing fighters, leaving only ‘The Ghost’ and Captain Teva’s X-Wing intact.
The episode ends by cutting back to the water, where Ahsoka lays unconscious, before the environment transitions to resemble ‘The World Between Worlds’, a mysterious force-based void between space and time, last seen in Season Four of Star Wars Rebels. She slowly gets up, and orients herself, before hearing a familiar voice. She turns around to see her former Jedi Master, Anakin Skywalker, (Hayden Christensen) as the episode comes to a close, with a trail of Darth Vader’s theme kicking in, as the episode cuts to black, and the credits begin.
Watching this episode, you can really feel that the series has hit its stride. Everything feels quintessentially Star Wars, while also feeling like its own show, and its own journey. No narrative momentum is lost, with the plot always moving quickly forward with palpable stakes and urgency. Filoni’s writing has been quite solid throughout the series so far, but it never fully felt like what was on the screen was as good as it may have sounded on the page, until this episode. The several action scenes are well-lit and choreographed, with equal amounts of grace and tension. The character decisions feel lofty and consequential, namely Sabine’s tough choice of surrendering the star-map to Baylan. The episode, from the start, poses tough choices, and makes good on the impact of the choices. While galactic in stake, they also feel deeply personal, and emotional. This episode owes a great debt to the herculean talent of the late great Ray Stevenson. Not only does his amazing physical presence shine in the lightsaber duel scenes, but his dramatic prowess shines too, making the Dark Jedi Baylan seem very genuine and honourable when attempting to convince Sabine to join him. This episode marks Peter Ramsey’s second foray into the Star Wars galaxy, and his presence is genuinely felt, and an extremely welcomed one. His camera work and sense of objective within each scene really help give this episode the added stakes and gravitas that the story needs it to have. While the big cameo surprise at the ending is bound to be what makes headlines for the show over the course of the next week, Ramsey’s great directorial effort, and all the other great elements of the episode should not go unnoticed, as up to this point, it is easily the series’ best, and a standout episode amongst the wider collection of live-action Star Wars TV catalogue.