I’m going to bury the lead a little bit: it’s a lackluster episode of Ahsoka this week. This is the penultimate episode, and I kind of expected more.

Mrs. Know-It-All was in the hot seat with me for this one, and when it ended neither of us really knew where to start. It wasn’t horrible. It wasn’t bad. It just wasn’t great. And when you sit here and look at a penultimate episode, they’re supposed to be great.

The story was fine. I get it. I don’t have a problem with the story. I still love the Noti, that’s not going to change, and anybody who says otherwise, you’re wrong.

Kung Fu Ezra

We got to see Kung Fu Ezra. If any of you are privy to the leakers and the spoilers they drop every now and again, a couple of months back something came out that said Ezra was going to have developed kind of Jedi kung fu powers. He throws people. He did a lot of pushing. And I’m like, come on, man, let’s see what you came up with all this time.

Hera Made It Personal

One storyline happens very quickly, right out of the gate, and it’s Hera’s. She goes before an oversight committee. You’ve got the Chancellor there, you’ve got Xiono there, and Hera’s great. Xiono’s like, so you thought you were protecting the Republic by ignoring its rule? And she’s like, no, I’m protecting the Republic by ignoring you. Mrs. Know-It-All said Hera made it personal, and that’s okay. She totally did.

Then who do we see? Our good golden boy, C-3PO. He shows up just as they’re about to announce that she’s going to be court-martialed. Senator Leia Organa, off screen, is invoking the fact that she’s head of the defense council. So it’s, yeah, no, there’s a secret mission that I assigned her. And the Chancellor is going to accept that? Yes, yes, yes, because I don’t like him anyway. For sure. I think he’s a punk anyway.

It’s always good to see the spirit and heart of Senator Organa, no matter what. That was a lot of fun.

The Purrgil Graveyard

Then we join Ahsoka as they’re arriving at their final destination. As soon as they arrive, sure enough, there’s all kinds of rocking and shaking, the purrgil opens its mouth, and they’re being attacked by a minefield that’s been laid out for them. Huyang is like, the purrgil are covering our escape. No, they’re not. They’re smart. They’re gone. They’re like, nah, we ain’t doing this.

So she gets chased down by some fighters and has to go into what they’re calling the debris field, but it’s really the purrgil graveyard. It is a debris field, a debris field of purrgil. It’s rough, though, man. Ginormous ribs crashing into each other. It’s terrific.

Baylan Skoll Cuts Her Loose

Planetside, Baylan Skoll and Shin Hati have managed to track down Ezra and Sabine. And Baylan does what I kind of didn’t think he was going to do. We knew they were going to part ways eventually. I didn’t realize it was going to be literally this episode.

He essentially says to her, look, you don’t have to be a Jedi to realize your ambitions are taking you in a different direction. I’m not even going to fight you, sweetie. You go, you do the thing. He even tells her: go kill them, whatever, rise to power in this new Empire, do your thing. He’s such a wise master for being a false Jedi, a fake Jedi. He knows it. He peeps it, man.

Ray Stevenson is doing amazing work, posthumously. It was really a wonderful performance. People have jokingly been asking online who they’d recast him with if Baylan makes it out of the series, because obviously it was an untimely demise that befell him. I’ve seen some people put Gerard Butler there. Whoever said that: yes. All the yeses, right there.

Either way, I love the character. He’s such an interesting dynamic that we’ve not really gotten in Star Wars to this point, somebody with both ambiguous and non-ambiguous motivations. Ahsoka reaches out and tracks down Sabine using the Force, which is really great, and when she eventually lands, Baylan Skoll’s there. He’s like, look, I may not be helping him, but I’m not going to let you interfere either. They get to have a fight, and it’s a really good fight.

Anakin’s Lessons

Before they get to that, I don’t want to miss this, because I really enjoyed it. Shout out to Anakin. Apparently he recorded a bunch of lessons for her. This is before he went out the door, before he started, you know, killing younglings. Even Huyang’s like, I had no clue.

It explains so much. I’m not saying that’s the reason she ended up the way she did, but clearly she had more training than we all thought. That’s really awesome.

Thrawn Is a Thinker

You get to see the Noti in their little RV wagon train. They do look like roly-poly bugs, and they’re circling the wagons, if you will, to protect one of their own while they’re being chased by marauders and everybody’s fighting folks off.

And finally Thrawn is like, look, everybody call off whatever’s going on. Time’s on our side, man. We’re almost done loading the cargo. We’re going to go. Let’s leave them here. I could care less what happens. We’re going to stay ahead of them. And Morgan doesn’t get it. She just doesn’t get it at all.

That’s what ultimately always made Thrawn. Thrawn is a thinker. Everybody else tried to be Sith passionate, you must feel all kinds of things. Thrawn’s like, look, we’re going to calculate it all down to the minute, we’re going to figure this thing out, and I’m going to beat them with this.

If you know anything about Heir to the Empire, that’s very intrinsic to the character. In the original Legends Star Wars universe, the Empire is very xenophobic. They’re very human-centric. So here he is, an alien in a group that hates aliens, rising to the position he rose to, and he held it tightly.

When he finds out Anakin was her master, you can see it land. If you think Thrawn didn’t know who Vader was, you’re ignorant. I feel like he’s thinking she’s going to be dangerous, and the sooner we can abandon them here and leave them in this galaxy, the better. A hundred percent.

It Was Just Kind of There

The story progressed. My issue is that it was just kind of there.

I asked Mrs. Know-It-All what she didn’t like specifically, and she said it was going to sound so funny, but it was the chase. The Noti’s little bugs don’t go any faster than, like, 30 an hour. So here are these guys on howlers, which are alien motorcycles, that’s what they are, and they’re going faster than the stupid motorhomes. It wasn’t engaging. It wasn’t bad. It was very slow.

I don’t know what I was expecting, but you know what you expect with a penultimate episode. You expect Battle of the Bastards. That’s a reference to Game of Thrones. That was a huge penultimate episode. You’ve got a dude staring down an entire army by himself. That’s big. That’s epic.

We got some good fights here. You got to see Ezra kind of pushing people. But they’re telegraphing that we’re getting no resolution. And everyone’s like, well, of course we weren’t, what were you thinking? No. Your job is still to keep us excited, as if, oh my God, maybe they’re going to wrap this up next week. I don’t feel that way.

Which could be good. People are kind of tongue-in-cheek calling it the Filoni-verse of Star Wars, and eventually all the points are going to meet up. The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett, this. Eventually all these characters are going to meet up in one thing, which is ultimately fighting and challenging Thrawn. Don’t believe all the hype about Filoni wiping away the sequel trilogy. I don’t believe that’s the case. He’s far too classy for that. I think we’re just getting really good, exciting Star Wars.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m still enjoying the entire series. It’s just very disappointing, because they’ve set the bar high. The last couple were really great episodes. They hit it out of the park. And then we came to this one.

You can tell me they can’t all be winners…but bro, you have eight episodes. Yes, they can. When it’s 26 episodes in a season, like old TV was, then I can be like, well, they can’t all be winners. This legit should have been amazing.

The Verdict

Ahsoka Episode 7, “Dreams and Madness,” lands at a 7 out of 10 on the Know-It-All Index.

Mrs. Know-It-All went first, and hers was a seven: “Not bad, not good, not horrible, not wonderful, but there it is.” I was originally going to go seven and a half, but after talking with her, she properly convinced me it’s a seven. So we’re both in agreement this week. Seven out of ten for the seventh episode of Ahsoka.

Regardless of what happens next week, whether or not we get a resolution, I do believe they’re going to be setting us up for something really big and special. Anybody who thinks Star Wars is dead has not been watching or paying any attention. Would I love to see a Star Wars movie in the future? Absolutely. But right now these are scratching that itch for me. Hopefully you’re enjoying them too.

Your turn. If Baylan Skoll makes it out of this series, who do you replace Ray Stevenson with? And tell me what you thought of the episode. The conversation lives in the comments on the video above. And never forget: everyone loves a Noti.