If you saw the end of last week’s Ahsoka, you know what Shadow Warrior means, and you know I was a little upset about it. They’ve since made up for it. Season 1, Episode 5 is a good episode, and I’m really excited about it.

Mrs. Know-It-All is back for this one too. Last week there was nothing nice that was going to come out of her mouth, so she told me, “I’m going to bed now,” and sat that one out. No problem. I totally got it. She’s glad she came back for this.

I liked the flow of what I did last week, so I’m not going to get too deep into every little bit of minutiae. You should be watching the episodes. I’ll recap a little, but I’m not going to live there. The episode chunks itself into three segments, and the first one belongs to Anakin Skywalker.

Anakin Doing Anakinny Things

There’ve been leaks and rumors online about what was and wasn’t going to be in this thing. I don’t read a lot of those and I really don’t care. It was a fun, exciting encounter, and you got to see Anakin doing some Anakinny things.

We don’t get an answer on whether Ahsoka was actually in the World Between Worlds, which is a thing from Rebels and the later Clone Wars. It may or may not be the afterlife. It may or may not be the Force. I don’t really know the scenario, and I’m not looking too deep into what it means for the greater canon, or why we didn’t see this or that character. It’s just good storytelling as far as I’m concerned. Something is happening on a level, and Mrs. Know-It-All had the right way to put it: on a Jedi level.

Anakin tells her he’s going to finish her training. She says she already finished her training. So he takes out his lightsaber, which is blue. She has hers, which is white, and she only uses one. They duel for a bit, and then he says, “Oh, you think I’ve taught you everything?” and cuts the ground they’re standing on. It breaks apart like glass, and she falls.

The First Live-Action Clone Wars

She falls through, the night sky turns into purplish red clouds, and she gets up a younger girl during the Clone Wars. That’s our first shot of a live-action scene from Clone Wars. You get to see Anakin with the shorter hair he had back then, wearing the dark version of the armor, the black version of what Obi-Wan used to wear. The top portion is reminiscent of what would eventually be the upper part of his Darth Vader armor. We’d never seen it in live action, and we got to see it.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get the name of the young actress playing the younger Ahsoka. It isn’t Rosario Dawson de-aged or anything like that. It’s an actual actress, and it’s really great, because Ahsoka clearly keeps her memories and knows what’s going on. She’s asking what her legacy is. And he tells her that when he was being trained they used to be keepers of the peace, and now he has to teach her how to be a soldier and a leader.

I feel like there’s a greater conversation at work that Dave Filoni and the other writers are trying to put forward, and I like it. There are different phases and different times for this stuff, and things shift.

Vaderkin

There’s an amazing bit where young Ahsoka is getting tired of the fighting and he tells her she’s got to keep going. Anakin walks toward the fight, there are these bursts of lightning or energy fire, and in them he keeps flickering between Darth Vader and Anakin. It looks so dope.

They end up at the Siege of Mandalore, where she was. She and Anakin had already parted ways by then, and he says so: he didn’t come to this fight, he doesn’t know this fight. He’s stalking toward her, he turns around, he ignites his lightsaber, and it’s red. As he’s talking, his voice starts modulating. It doesn’t go full James Earl Jones. They did a really good job. His eyes went red, and he had this ashy quality, like in Return of the Jedi when Vader has the helmet off and he’s got that ashy white look. You could tell that’s where it was headed. He started to have some scars too.

The music out there, on what we’ll call the glass bridge, with the red saber: you could hear all the past scores we know. I’m going to coin it right now. Vaderkin. When he started to modulate I was like, “Oh, bro.”

And I love it, because she tries to say something to him and he goes, “Oh, is that what this is about?” Really, dude? You’re just going to hand wave that whole Vader thing? Get out of my face.

She ultimately manages to disarm him and says, “I want to live.” And he says, well, then maybe there’s hope for you yet. Then there’s a reflection under where she’s standing, the water starts rising, and I immediately knew where we were headed. They find her and pull her out of the water.

Thank God they didn’t cut there. I would’ve been so ticked off.

Back in the Real World

While all of that is happening, Hera and the others have been searching. Teva isn’t happy. Someone’s going to come for answers, and Mon Mothma can’t protect them much longer. Then Jacen is standing there overlooking the water and says, “Can you hear it? Mom, you’ve got to come listen.” He hears the lightsabers fighting.

Everyone’s asking what’s going on, and Huyang just says, oh yeah, he’s got abilities, like his father, who was a Jedi. And you’re like, oh, okay. That’s literally what happened.

When I asked Mrs. Know-It-All what stood out to her, that was her answer: she’s learning a lot about Jacen, and you can tell right away the Force is strong with that one.

For me it was Huyang. It looked like his heart was broken holding Sabine’s helmet. “I told them to stay together, and they never listen.” Remember, he’s over a thousand years old if not more. I think he might even be 10,000. Imagine, if droids can feel, and I’m not talking about a human facsimile of emotions, what he must feel after thousands upon thousands, if not millions, of Jedi who’ve come and gone in his operational time. I wonder if it’s almost cyclical to him. We always think it’s down, then it’s up, then it’s down, then it’s up. I wonder what his viewpoint is.

Did Sabine Leave the Helmet on Purpose?

Mrs. Know-It-All had a question for me, and it’s a good one. She’s really fickle about how she feels about Sabine. Remember, last episode Morgan Elsbeth, Baylan Skoll, Shin Hati and Sabine all took off, because Sabine was given a choice. Rather than destroy the map the way Ahsoka wanted, she took the opportunity Baylan Skoll put in front of her, which is to go find Ezra. Good, bad, indifferent, they made that choice and now we’ve got to deal with it.

So her question: did Sabine do it on purpose? This is the kind of stunt she used to pull. The helmet was sitting there almost like a sign, like she knew there’d be an imprint. Especially when Ahsoka looked over at it. Did she leave a clue in there? She hopes she’s right on that one. Whatever the case is, I’m excited to see what’s next.

The Purrgils Are the Only Option

About a day passes. Ahsoka wakes up and Huyang tells her what’s going on. The fleet is coming, basically to arrest them, and Mon Mothma tells them flat out she can’t do anything to help unless they’ve got Morgan Elsbeth in custody or proof of an Imperial uprising. Ahsoka takes the pieces of the map and uses the Force to hear the imprint of what happened, and sure enough she sees the whole situation.

Then she looks up and has an idea. Even if you knew the coordinates, it’d take forever to plot a course to another galaxy. So who else does it? The purrgils. Dude, that’s awesome.

Huyang helps find the largest one. She walks out on the wing one more time, does her thing, communicates, and the next thing you know the purrgil opens its mouth. She knocks on the window and tells him to go ahead, go inside. Huyang says, “I beg your pardon?” Then he asks if she’ll at least come inside, and she climbs back in, and in the mouth they go.

It’s so great. Hera tells Teva to stall the fleet, so Teva flat-out tells them the truth, and they’re like, okay. Then Hera tells them to get out of the flight path, because they’re going and they’re going quick. I’ve heard of the purrgils, but I’m not familiar with them and hadn’t seen how they do what they do. All of a sudden their tails start opening up, lighting and glowing, and sure enough, they go. Here we go, man.

Star Wars Fans Are Eating Good

There are all kinds of rumors floating around the internet, so take all of them with a grain of salt and just enjoy the thing for what it is. I don’t believe any of the hype out there, or the complaints either.

A lot of people are bandying around phrases like the best Star Wars we’ve had in a long time. I kind of tend to want to agree. I know there’s a conversation happening where people are trying to compare Ahsoka and Andor, and my feeling is, why don’t you just enjoy it? Star Wars fans are eating good on some of these shows, is all I’m saying. Andor did amazing things that were unique to itself. Ahsoka is doing amazing things that are unique to itself. Same with The Mandalorian and a lot of the other parts. There are elements I enjoy from all of them, and there are some things that have disappointed. Heck, go watch last week’s review and you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about.

The Verdict

Star Wars: Ahsoka Episode 5, Shadow Warrior, is a 9.0 out of 10 on the Know-It-All Index, and that’s from Mr. and Mrs. Know-It-All both. We’re together on this one. Simpatico.

This episode earned it. It gave us a lot of things I’m excited for, and I enjoyed the heck out of it. They got me back.

Your turn. What did you think of Shadow Warrior, and did Sabine leave that helmet behind on purpose? The conversation lives in the comments on the video above. And never forget: everyone loves a know-it-all.