Ahsoka Ep. 7 is chill and self-assured, like its Jedi.
But tiiiiimme. It’s not on our side. No, it isn’t.
The Short Take:
This wasn’t a penultimate episode that merely sets up the finale. It was a joyous payoff of well-tended character arcs. Deleuze’s time-image helped me understand the role this episode plays in the larger season.
[SPOILER ALERT: Retreat into your shell and lay low until you’ve caught up with the series.]
Image Credit: Bounding Into Comics
The Long Take:
No one got mad. No one got mad!
Well, except for maybe Shin Hati.
Most of my friends and fellow Star Wars podcasters were a little cooler on this episode, rating it below several of its predecessors. There were no major criticisms that I recall, but it was more that the episode didn’t pack as much punch or have as much story progression. On Coffee with Kenobi this week, host Dan Zehr noted that this “holding pattern” episode left us with more questions than answers, especially about Baylan and his search for an unknown..power? Object? Person? Animal? Mineral? Vegetable? On the Rebel Base Card Podcast, guest Tom Gross described the episode as a “bridge” to the finale more than an episode unto itself.
, the author of Ahch-To Baby points out that “this very fun episode zipped through plot points to get everyone in place for the finale.” I find it difficult to argue with these takes.And yet, I cannot ignore the emotional high I felt as Ahsoka reunited with Ezra and Sabine. And I cannot ignore all the satisfying character beats wrapped up in that moment.
I put this episode on par with Episode 5, which has been my favorite of the season thus far, because it gave me the same uplifting feeling that Ahsoka communing with the purrgil did. More importantly, it counteracted last week’s episode, which generated some concerns. When Ahsoka wrestled with Sabine’s choice to give Baylan the map rather than destroy it, it was unclear if she had really gone through a complete transformation from Gray to White. In this episode, however, she radiated light and wisdom in a way that felt completely consistent with where she seemed to be at the end of Episode 5. Rosario Dawson’s performance is off the charts here, as she’s everything I would want Ahsoka to be: compassionate, daring, funny, and fierce.
And, I repeat: no one got mad.
Ahsoka does not greet Sabine with coldness or hostility. Natasha Liu Bordizzo’s face (which had so many expressions in this episode!) indicates that Sabine expected some kind of tongue lashing. Instead, Ahsoka simply smiles, happy to see her. That gives Sabine permission to smile back, in relief. The smiles get even bigger as Ahsoka lets out a joyful, heart-melting laugh. She hugs Ezra and looks upon him for the first time since he pulled her out of Malachor through the World Between Worlds, and this look did everything to convey to me that she’s made substantial progress since her trials in Episode 5. She’s learned to let go of her fears and enjoy this moment. In contrast to her attempt to Force-bludgeon Shin in Episode 2, we see her extend a hand and offer to help Baylan’s power-hungry, hot-headed apprentice here. “I can help you,” Ahsoka says. This surprises Shin so much she gets spooked and runs off.
Ezra demonstrates a similar sense of zen. When Sabine tries to change the subject with Ezra by saying “it’s complicated,” he very kindly asks, “The usual level, or worse?” This line says so much about Ezra and the unconditional trust that he has in Sabine. They have so much of a shared history that he doesn’t push her or get angry that she’s not telling him the whole story. He knows that even if it’s “worse,” that she did what she thought was right and that they’ll get through it all somehow. They always do.
Last week on Coffee with Kenobi, I said that I had such a sense of dread when Sabine refused to tell Ezra everything. And yes, Sabine still didn’t tell Ezra that Thrawn has a way back home too. But after this exchange, I don’t have that same sense of dread. I now feel more secure that the Ezra we see here would never say, “What did you DO, Sabine?!” Perhaps his time with the Noti on Peridea has afforded him a wisdom and maturity not even Rebels fans have seen. And I have to say, after all the Jedi have been through in the history of Star Wars, from the folly of The Clone Wars to Luke’s failures in starting a new Order, it was so nice to see two powerful Jedi exhibiting sage warmth, despite the circumstances.
But really, you’ve all been waiting for me to talk about the crab turtle people. I know it.
The absence of the Noti from my review last week in NO WAY indicates a lack of enthusiasm for them. They are adorable, whimsical, and do wonders for science fiction/fantasy world building in this series, which has had critters like Loth-cats and humanoid aliens like Ahsoka and Hera, but no in-between alien races that blur the line between creature and person.
Creatures like the Noti, to me, are a fundamental building block of Star Wars DNA. I wrote about this a little bit when The Book of Boba Fett first aired, saying that the weird details abounding in that series comprise a large part of Star Wars’ magic for me. I didn’t, in that review, get specific about the role of creatures, though.
from the Rebel Base Card podcast has dubbed the Noti the “E-rocks” because they’re cute like Ewoks but look like rocks when they tuck into their shells to hide. This clever nickname points to the function that these creatures serve: to reflect back, and positively, upon the human character with which they interact. In Return of the Jedi, the way Leia interacts with Wicket and the other Ewoks she encounters speaks to her empathy and openness, being brave and caring enough to extend kindness to a species with which she’s never encountered before.While Thrawn is doing who knows what with the Nightsisters (but likely resurrecting dead stormtroopers with dark magick) and ordering Morgan to destroy purrgil “with prejudice” when they appear, Ezra has harmonized with his surroundings, befriending the Noti to the point at which they have become his own little band of rebels, as Sabine says. Last episode tells us this, but this episode shows us how the Noti have welcomed Ezra as one of their own, giving him his own pod and protesting in fear of his safety when he tells them to go hide. With many viewers not having seen Star Wars Rebels and having no idea who Ezra Bridger is and how he ended up on Peridea, the choice to ally him with the Noti and actually make this “peaceful people” who have “survived well enough” a part of the fight this week is a very efficient way of conveying Ezra’s character to that sector of the audience.
It’s not just that nice heroes are nice to cute creatures, though. For the larger story of Return of the Jedi, Leia and the Ewoks on Endor serve as a stark contrast to the cold, industrial Empire, who would rather destroy a species like the Ewoks rather than befriend them. Ewoks and E-rocks alike support my theory earlier this season that Filoni is building a fantasy story in the tradition of Tolkien and Miyazaki, pitting nature (on the light side) against industry (on the dark). l can’t forget that Morgan said last week that her ancestors domesticated the purrgil and rode them “before time was counted.” And now only their bones remain in this new galaxy. So, I suspect that the Dathomiri witches weren’t particularly nice to our dear space whales.
I must confess now that drawing a parallel between the Ewoks and the Noti was all a circuitous way for me to crush on Eman Esfandi as Ezra Bridger. On Coffee with Kenobi this week, I said that he was “pitch perfect,” but didn’t have time to elaborate. Esfandi strikes a delicate balance between Ezra’s core personality traits that he’s always had — overconfident, scrappy, and improvisational, with just a dash of con artist larceny — with who he has become since we last saw him — a wise, peaceful Jedi strong with the Force. When he says, “The Force is my ally. That’s all I need,” Esfandi projects this duality. On the one hand, his intonation harkens back to Ezra’s familiar cockiness, as he’s in over his head but unwilling to admit it. There’s a flippancy in his voice that comes off as laughably misguided (he really should be more worried). He is, after all, the type of person who gives “Jabba the Hutt” as his alias when he doesn’t want to share his real name. On the other hand, I also believe that he’s strong enough with the Force to actually pull this off. He still says the line with a sense of determination. The combination swindled my heart.
Image Credit: We Got This Covered
I wasn’t always so enamored with Ezra. Much like Ahsoka, he starts out in Rebels as a plucky, snarky teen who seems too self-centered to be particularly endearing. In the early seasons of Rebels, he drove Zeb crazy and made Sabine roll her eyes at him on a regular basis. Over the course of four seasons, however, he went through a lot, including facing significant temptation from the Dark Side and losing those close to him. And towards the end of Rebels, his connection with the Force — and with creatures specifically — becomes increasingly strong, to the point at which he emerges as the most powerful and most important figure in the conflict with Thrawn. It was amazing to watch the journey he went on, and it makes perfect sense that he would have found the Noti and made that Leia-Ewok type connection.
Ezra’s most notable quality of late, however, is that he has been stranded in Peridea, as far from his home, Lothal, as he could possibly be. His chain mail made from dog tags subtly implies that he hasn’t just been glamping with the Noti, sipping hot cocoa and kicking back around a campfire; he has been fighting off bandits as well as, presumably, Thrawn’s Night Troopers in more of a Mad Max or Dune-style experience. Still, he has had nothing but time to reflect and meditate while trying to survive alongside the Noti. He has been the prisoner of time and its passing. He has no choice but to remain static, frozen as the other galaxy far, far away marches on. When he’s catching up with Sabine, we see just how much of Star Wars history he’s missed: “The Empire was defeated. (Battle of Endor.) The Emperor died. (That’s what people say. *giggle*) There’s a new republic. Zeb’s training recruits, and Hera’s commanding the fleet.”
And that, to circle back to where I started, is at least partly why this episode feels more like a holding pattern or a bridge with no discernible progress of its own. Peridea is a suspended wasteland in which our characters cannot relate to space and time in conventional or even logical ways. Baylan calls Peridea a “land of dreams and madness” in the previous episode, and this episode’s title is “Dreams and Madness,” so Peridea as a dream space could be at the top of Filoni’s mind. French philosopher and film theorist Gilles Deleuze might classify Ezra as a “seer” in a “time-image” film because he wanders through a deserted space that seems out of linear time.
Image Credit: Slash Film
Deleuze’s primary observation about film history, from which sprang many complex theoretical nodes, was that pre-WWII films were more likely to subject time to movement or plot, whereas in post-WWII films, it was more likely that movement or plot was subordinated to the flow of time. In his book, Cinema 2 Time-Image, he says that image and sound in time-image films use a new set of “signs” that do not necessarily serve as a concrete “index”: “sometimes everyday banality, sometimes exceptional or limit-circumstances - but, above all, subjective images, memories of childhood, sound and visual dreams or fantasies, where the character does not act without seeing himself acting, complicit viewer of the role he himself is playing, in the style of Fellini.” This may very well be in the style of Filoni as well. Ezra is a complicit viewer of the role he himself is playing simply by virtue of being, as Dan said on CWK, at peace knowing that his sacrifice, his self-selected exile, helped save his friends and his galaxy.
Baylan hasn’t been in Peridea nearly as long as Ezra, and yet he may be just as bound to the time-image. In the passage from Cinema 2 I just cited, “Visual dreams or fantasies” jumps out to me on this list, and brings me back to the idea of “dreams and madness.” Immanuel Kant once said that “The madman is a waking dreamer,” and when thinking about what the madness in this week’s episode title refers to, I go to Baylan because he wanders the plains of Peridea in search of some unknown entity that can realize his dream of a new era, free of the cycle of Jedi and Sith, Rebellion and Empire.
Again, this evokes Deleuze. Film scholar Richard Ruston paraphrases Deleuze in his book Cinema After Deleuze, saying “These latter films, films which are of the movement-image, return to the past or question the past in the hope of closing down the past: they search the past in order to find definitive answers in that past…By contrast, films of the time-image go into the past in order to open up the past, to render it malleable and questionable, and also to allow it to become retrievable and open to reinvention. Time-image films go into the past in order to enter that past as a zone of experimentation.” To me, this summarizes Baylan’s agenda; he searches for something from ancient history, told as fairytales when he was a child at the Jedi temple, but explicitly as a means of renegotiating and correcting what he sees as wrong with the past. I could also argue that Ahsoka is actively reinventing her past with Anakin, no longer allowing his transformation to Vader undermine all that was good when he was Anakin. Presumably she will reinvent her past with Sabine next week as they face Thrawn together.
Apologies if I’m getting too bogged down in film theory, but I bring all this up because it helps me understand why this episode feels like a non-episode, or an in-between story for so many. It lacks movement, but it is saturated with amorphous and mysterious time. And the landscape of Peridea, which seems like miles and miles of infinite plains, is surreal in a way that reinforces this idea. Everything out there looks the same, and without concrete markers of time and space to hold onto, there is only dreams and madness.
There are even explicit references to time and the control it has over our characters throughout the episode. In the “previously on” montage, Ahsoka says to Huyang that she didn’t have enough time to teach Sabine and prepare her to make the right choice. When she duels Baylan for the second time she says, “I don’t have time for this.” Again, his presence on Peridea seems to primarily act as a disruption of the flow of movement. And then the episode ends with Thrawn explaining how what looks like a loss is actually a win for his team because “Ahsoka Tano has lost the one thing she could not afford to lose today. Time. Time is very much on our side. And I shall keep it that way.” I think Thrawn may be overstating the control he has over the flow of time. Peridea seems to be the one not managing the clock but breaking the clock and throwing all our characters in disarray.
Image Credit: IGN
Narrative time, for us as viewers of this series, however, is decidedly moving on, as we only have one more episode left in the season. What must happen in that short span of time? What can happen? For a series with this few episodes, I try to always think of the simplest resolution to what we’ve already seen so far. Practically speaking, there’s very little room to introduce brand new plot lines, characters, etc.
What are the “loose threads,” as the Nightsisters would say?
Thrawn is trying to escape exile, with some mysterious cargo (probably coffins full of… long dead Nightsisters? More Night troopers? Centuries of pickling that they can’t bear to leave behind?)
Ahsoka and Sabine, now that they’ve reunited with Ezra, need to stop Thrawn from returning (they won’t) and also find a way home.
Baylan is searching for some unknown, mystical source of power on Peridea so that he can break the cycle of Jedi, Sith, Rebellion, and Empire.
The first two items on this list are in direct conflict with one another, in a race against the clock. Considering how Hera ends her scene in this episode with the phrase “hope for the best and prepare for the worst,” it’s very likely that Thrawn — if only to be around for the Mando-verse movie slated for May 2026 (at the earliest; that date is very much a moving target due to the recently concluded writers’ strike and the ongoing actors’ strike) — will succeed and prove Hera right.
I have not minded that we still don’t know what Baylan’s looking for, but I do hope that we get at least a hint of what it is by the end of the finale. I can see Baylan throwing a wrench into the final Thrawn v. Ahsoka showdown, disrupting their conflict with the unleashing of whatever he’s discovered at the 11th hour. I predict that it will not matter as much what Baylan finds (at least not yet), but rather the fact that he has found it, changing the game as he did this week through his absence.
It seems time will be on no one’s side next week.
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Always love reading your take. I think you're right that the journey of Ezra from eye-rolling to Zen mirrors Ahsoka's journey and Luke's too. Jedi are, in fact, pretty calm once they hit a certain level.
Your love of this show makes me love it more! Thank you!