Something I really, really liked about the first two Ahsoka episodes is just how prickly Ahsoka is when she doesn’t want to deal with something. She’s not handling everything with Sabine all that well, she’s still hung up on her guilt about Anakin even almost three decades later, to the point that it’s spilling over onto her relationship with Sabine, she still feels distant from Hera, she’s downright almost mean to Sabine after she loses the map, there’s very little sense of whimsy or fun to her, she’s calm on the surface, but very much still a hot mess underneath.
Felony gets a lot of shit for the way he talks about his favorite character (and not undeservedly so) but the way he writes her here, is not actually a perfect character but instead a complicated and thorny character who is legitimately really, really engaging to me and is allowed the room to make mistakes and be messy.
She is not the most True Jedi Who Ever Was.
She’s still ignoring her feelings!
She’s still afraid to let go of Anakin!
She’s still holding herself at arm’s length because she’s scared of losing people and being hurt again!
These are all things that are foundational to being a Jedi to deal with! And she doesn’t!
Because she tells herself she’s not a Jedi and so she doesn’t have to do the things a Jedi needs to do, doesn’t have to confront and let go of her feelings, and she just leaves things where they lie!
And it makes her relationships prickly and clouded and messy, all while being completely understadable, she was dealt a hand that’s an impossible mountain to climb, with leaving the Jedi Order, with the genocide of her people, with the death of her entire extended family, with the Force being darkened by the Sith, with the devastating truth about Anakin, with never being able to go back to the Jedi Order like she wanted because the Jedi Order was stolen from her–all of that is a deep level of trauma that haunts her and she hasn’t pulled it out of her heart yet, and it makes me love her all the more.
This show said, “Let Ahsoka be a living, breathing character who has a story worth telling because it’s not easy and it’s not perfect, but it’s heartfelt and deeply caring.” and then gave it to us.
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