In Ahsoka Ep. 3, references to animation both enrich and splinter.
A meditation in three parts.
The Short Take:
A short yet rollicking, action-packed adventure with many classic Star Wars touchstones. Compared to the first two episodes, I felt stronger thematic connections to Star Wars animation, especially with Ahsoka. Alas, I begin to sense the strain of multiple audiences.
[SPOILER ALERT: Not only spoilers for the new Ahsoka series to date, but spoilers for the animated series Rebels (especially the final season). Some spoilers for The Book of Boba Fett and The Mandalorian Season 3 as well.]
Image Credit: TVLine
The Long Take:
Last week it was loth-cats. This week it’s….PURRGIL!
When the majestic space whales I fell in love with during the animated series Star Wars Rebels flew into view, making all the starships look like tiny flies buzzing around them, I pumped my fist in the air to rejoice. (My dear husband, Jon, patted me on the shoulder to humor me.) They looked amazing in live action. I loved how the starfight continued in and around them; it reminded me of the Millennium Falcon chase in The Empire Strikes back, during which Han flies through an asteroid field and unknowingly lands inside an exogorth or space slug. This was only one of several times I thought of the Original Trilogy and classic Star Wars tropes — from Sabine wearing a zatochi helmet during training to the medium close-ups of Shin Hati in her cockpit (complete with Anakin-esque headset) to Sabine in the gunner seat.
Image Credit: Collider
I digress, though. I’m really here to tell you all about the purrgil, shimmery Cthulhu-tailed whales who can travel through hyperspace as if they were ships unto themselves. They encapsulate the kind of magic and wonder that is uniquely Star Wars.
The purrgil and the ecocritics.*
*An esoteric reference to Tolkien’s “The Monsters and the Critics.”
Image Credit: Inverse
For me, the purrgil are emblematic of what made Rebels so great, as a series that built an epic overarching story bit by bit through adventure of the week episodes. The space whales were seemingly inconsequential in a self-contained episode in Season 2, and then they make a grand reappearance at the 11th hour in the final episode of the entire series (in Season 4), becoming indispensible to the story. It’s only because Ezra had bonded with the purrgil and better understood them with the Force early on that he was able to call upon them for help in defeating Thrawn in the end. To have a seemingly isolated new creature and new concept pay off with such large dividends was huge thrill for me as a viewer.
To double down on my Tolkien/Miyazaki take from last week for just a moment, these star-charting marine mammals function in the Galaxy (or Galaxies — still not over that) in a manner similar to the Ents in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. They’re huge, awe-inspiring, ancient, pseudo-sentient beings designed to infuse an environmentalist message into the story. Tolkien created the central conflict on Middle-Earth — with Sauron’s orcs threatening to annihilate the trees and burn the Shire — in response to the destruction dealt by industrialized warfare during WWI. Miyazaki has also been known to tell stories with these themes. Characters often go out of their way to show respect for the forest (i.e. My Neighbor Totoro), or, in some cases, representatives of the natural world actively fight against human “progress,” like the mining town that cleared away the forest and produces firearms in Princess Mononoke. In Tolkien, the Ents are guardians of the trees; they are essentially giant trees that can walk and talk. As far as we know, the purrgil do not safeguard anything (or do they?), but it’s very clear that they serve a similar role in Star Wars: to make characters understand that one must respect the purrgil as wildlife in order to be more in tune with the Force.
When the purrgil first appear in Season 2 Episode 15 of Rebels, they are grossly misunderstood. Hera calls them a menace, saying she’s lost friends because purrgil have a bad habit of wandering into hyperspace lanes and crashing into ships. Her knee-jerk reaction is to scornfully fight them when they get in the way. Ezra, on the other hand, instantly connects with the purrgil. He’s fascinated by them, saying he never knew creatures lived out in space. He’s the only one who can hear them, and eventually he can communicate with them through the Force. Once he convinces the Ghost Crew to act with the purrgil rather than against them, they find them to be powerful allies. They save Ezra’s life and help escape an Imperial gas refinery in Season 2 and then, two seasons later in the series finale, they help Ezra capture Thrawn, clutching him in their tentacles as they jump with him through hyperspace to an unknown location, far away from the Rebel fleet. We now know that mysterious location was an entirely new galaxy.
Image Credit: StarWars.com
This contrast in perspectives — between Hera and Ezra — generates a dialectic through which to understand the Force’s relationship to nature. When Obi-Wan says to Luke that The Force is “created by all living things,” we now can say he, at least in part, implies that Jedi (Or everyone? More on that later…) must then respect and care for all living things, including non-humanoid species.
This idea may be a relatively new one in Star Wars canon. As far as I can remember, Ezra is really the first Jedi to specialize in what D & D players would call “beastmastery.” But he’s not the only one. Grogu also has the ability to commune with animals through the Force, which we see when he calms a rancor into a nap in The Book of Boba Fett. And I can’t forget the sneak peak of a mythosaur we got in The Mandalorian Season 3. There’s still an opportunity for Grogu to have some quality time with a creature that, like the purrgil, have big eyes to stare into (through extreme close-ups). So perhaps one of the elements that may distinguish the Dave Filoni era of Star Wars from George Lucas’ is this pro-creature and therefore pro-nature exploration of the Force. Because, very pointedly, Ezra and Grogu use their powers to help creatures and work with them rather than exploit them like mindless livestock.
At any rate, the purrgil are great. They’re cool-looking. They’re lovable. If they weren’t so gigantic and in need of a deep space habitat, I would want one as a pet.
The Purrgil Problem: Can this series cater to multiple audiences at once?
The purrgil, however, expose a problem. Or, rather, a challenge this series has, perhaps more than any Star Wars series before it.
I did a double take at the end of this episode of Ahsoka because our characters act so surprised, as if the existence of purrgil and their link to Morgan Elsbeth’s search for Thrawn is a total revelation. Huyang has a conspicuous piece of exposition when he says, “The Jedi archives speak of intergalactic hyperspace lanes between galaxies, which used to follow the migration paths of star whales, named purrgil.” That could be purely for the audience’s benefit. And he is a droid, after all — one who might deliver that information regardless of whether or not he thought his audience already knew.
Image Credit: Yahoo
That would not explain, however, why Sabine doesn’t seem to know what purrgil really are. When Ahsoka inquires after her melancholic demeanor, Sabine says, “I haven’t seen those creatures since the day Ezra disappeared.” Why wouldn’t she say purrgil instead? Was it purely to preserve the dramatic reveal by Huyang towards the end of the episode?
Now, it is very possible that Ahsoka, who did not witness the purrgil-assisted disappearance featured in Rebels first hand, did not know about them. But if that were so, wouldn’t Sabine, who definitely saw them and called them purrgil in Rebels, feel the need to explain what “those creatures” were after they appeared in this episode?
I’m not normally one to nitpick at the logic or realism in what I watch, especially Star Wars. But the way this series introduces purrgil made me acutely aware of my status as a viewer with above average knowledge of the story that this series continues. Even though I enjoyed the episode overall (very much so, in fact!), I still thought, “Well, duh!” when Ahsoka follows Huyang’s exposition with, “Like the ones we just saw.” Since I already knew that the purrgil had played a role in the defeat of Thrawn and the subsequent disappearance of him and Ezra in Rebels Season 4, it seemed obvious to me that they would be helpful in understanding how to get to Thrawn at the other end of the Pathway to Peridea, the route to another galaxy that Baylen references in Episode 2 of Ahsoka.
Image Credit: Polygon
In fact, the moment Grogu gazes up at purrgil in The Mandalorian Season 3, as he and Din fly through hyperspace in their N-1 straighter, I suspected that my favorite space whales would reappear in Ahsoka. From the trailer, I knew Ahsoka’s antagonist would be Thrawn. Thrawn disappeared with Ezra at the end of Rebels. The purrgil were arguably the last living beings to see them. It made a lot of sense that purrgil would be some clue or at least would appear as we searched through hyperspace for Thrawn.
Image Credit: Collider
Then I realized that all this would not be obvious to viewers who have never seen Rebels. And suddenly all these choices made a lot more sense. Huyang’s exposition is clearly for those who saw the purrgil and said, “what in the world are those?”
Could there have been a version of this episode that satisfied me without confusing them?
This is a sticky issue, one which I have heard debated in the critical discourse surrounding the series: who is this show really for and can it really be for multiple audiences? After the premiere, I saw that more casual fans were either bored because none of what they saw meant anything to them or — and this one is more online comments than reviews from critics — that they are just lost and don’t know what’s going on. Based on what we’ve seen so far, I do not think that the series would be super confusing to a casual fan who has not seen any of the animated series. It’s more a question of whether or not this type of viewer will care about these characters and this next chapter in their lives.
I’m not going to rehash my “but Star Wars animation should be taken seriously because some of the best storytelling happens there” take in its entirety, but I know that for some Star Wars fans, the “cartoons” are just not for them. They either can’t get past the idea that these shows are targeted more at kids, or just the style of animation isn’t pleasurable to watch. And I completely understand and respect that. I love animation of all kinds and so, I think, I’m able to watch an episode of Rebels just as I would The Empire Strikes Back. But I don’t think expecting everyone to watch hundreds of hours of animated television before they begin a new series is the answer to this conundrum.
The importance of audience in writing and, more specifically, the notion of writing to a specific audience, is a fundamental premise upon which the class I currently teach operates, but I often feel as though I’m teaching an unreliable pseudo science. At worst trying to anticipate a reader’s reaction is a shot in the dark, and at best it’s an educated guess, often informed by problematic generalizations. And then there’s the problem of different audiences with different needs. Just the other day a student asked me, if an AI algorithm exclusively searches for keywords in my cover letter, but a human after that decides who gets an interview in the second round, who am I writing to? How can I write to both those situations well? He asked this because we had been talking about how it can help to make a personal connection with your reader in a cover letter, and stuffing your letter with as many keywords as possible is antithetical to that. There are no easy answers there. The student has no choice but to try to write in a way that accounts for both scenarios.
To get a little meta for a minute, I too have this struggle with audience when writing about franchise or trans media storytelling. I know that many of my readers are like me — super fans who have seen it all and, in some cases, want to break down every little detail every week. They listen to or in some cases host podcasts. They read Wookieepedia for fun. They recognize most if not all of the Easter eggs. I know that other readers are the casual fans who come to me for the deeper explanation and for the context that they do not care to learn by watching more stuff. They’re intrigued by what they’ve seen and want to know the backstory behind a character, a place, or a creature mentioned in passing. For them, I’m offering a deeper understanding that they don’t have the time, energy, or desire to achieve on their own. I even have some readers who have told me that they do not even watch these shows! They either don’t have time to take on another series or do not/cannot subscribe to Disney+. They’re reading to keep up without having to watch.
I value all of these audiences and have not been able to designate one as my primary; I often find myself torn about how deep with a reference to go or how much context/explanation to provide. Including casual fan reader runs the risk of boring the super fans, and catering to the more knowledgable fans potentially alienates the more “standard nerds,” as The IT Crowd would say. It’s tricky, and I don’t think it is as tricky for non-IP series and films. I’d love to hear what you all think.
What does all this have to do with Ahsoka Tano?
More consequential than even a prior knowledge of Rebels is to the purrgil reference is the subtext with which Huyang argues with Ahsoka about whether or not Sabine can learn to use the Force. Because, like the purrgil, Ahsoka Tano was exclusively a creation of Star Wars animation, now trying to make the jump to live action. Only with Ahsoka, there is so much more story through which to interpret and experience what she does in this series.
Again, I think the dispute between Ahsoka and Huyang here, within the context of the episode, makes perfect sense. Ahsoka is trying to train Sabine and Huyang keeps reminding everyone that Sabine would not have been accepted by the Jedi Order. She would not have been deemed eligible to train. We don’t need to know more than that to follow the story. Their ongoing disagreement threaded throughout the episode, however, ends with Ahsoka saying, “I don’t need Sabine to be a Jedi. I need her to be herself.” Huyang’s response references a history outside of the show: “Well, you do come from a long line of non-traditional Jedi.” Outside of the immediate debate about non-Force sensitive people and their ability to train, nothing in this series, or even in The Mandalorian or The Book of Boba Fett, indicates in what way Ahsoka is non-traditional.
Image Credit: Star Wars News Net
These conversations (and this last exchange, specifically) mean so much more if you’ve seen The Clone Wars animated series. More specifically, if you know that Ahsoka left the Jedi Order during one of the best story arcs in Star Wars. Yes, I know that in the first episode of the new series Ahsoka has a line that explains that she “walked away” from Anakin and the Jedi just as she walked away from Sabine when they tried to be Master and Padawan before. The Clone Wars episodes, however, show just how flawed The Order was, how much of a case Ahsoka had for leaving, and how difficult it was for her to strike out on her own.
On Coffee with Kenobi this week, host Dan Zehr asked a tough question: can anyone actually use The Force? Is Ahsoka wasting her time with Sabine? I gave an answer with my teacher hat firmly on my head, but if I put the broader democratization of the Force aside (shout out to all the “broom boy” from The Last Jedi fans, like
and Joanna Robinson), what remains is Ahsoka’s fraught relationship with The Jedi Order.Ahsoka’s first appearance in live action was an episode of The Mandalorian titled “The Jedi.” One could misinterpret this and wonder if Ahsoka has suddenly changed her mind and returned to The Jedi Order (even though it no longer exists at this time). But that title reflects how other people see her. That title reflects the idea that even if she left the Order, she would still be considered a Jedi because she wields a lightsaber and uses the Force.
But that’s not how she sees herself. And this subtle distinction is barely noticeable if you don’t arrive at her live action appearances having done your homework.
Image Credit: Vulture
And so, it seems that, not unlike Sabine training in the ways of the Force, my casual fan friends are too being put to the test, their ability to hang with the hardcore fans in doubt. Now that I’ve discovered this analogy, I realize I’d much rather find a way to be more like Ahsoka than Huyang, open to the idea that the Force, and Star Wars, are for everyone.
Reading these I am getting the inspiration to maybe finally write my long delayed take on the Darth Maul tag scene in Solo and how it truly broke the animation/live action divide for the first time.
I loved this Long Take! Within the show, I also appreciate how Huyang acts as a voice / avatar for the audience.