Negotiations with a Lightsaber

Ahsoka Part 5 "Shadow Warrior"

Sweep Again For Spoilers

“Live…or die?”

In other words: “To be, or not to be, that is the question.”

Ahsoka’s fifth episode, “Shadow Warrior,” uses the biggest meaning-making tools at its disposal to frame the biggest questions it can. Kanan Jarrus’s Force-sensitive son, The World Between Worlds, and yes, the return of Hayden Christensen as Anakin Skywalker. We see young Ahsoka, Anakin in Clone Wars: The Movie armor, a brief appearance from Captain Rex, even see the evolving look of the clonetroopers. We glimpse the Siege of Mandalore. For those who have followed the Filoniverse for so many years, it’s a feast.

I was acutely aware that Ahsoka Part 5, and Ahsoka the series, really, is aimed at a younger generation of fans. “Shadow Warrior” is crafted to provide an audience that is twenty years my junior everything they ever wanted, and I imagine they went crazy for it.

Is that to say it left me cold? Absolutely not. It’s great Star Wars. But time is time. I first met Ahsoka Tano when I was already thirty-two years old, after the Star Wars Saga had ‘ended.' So, of course, the nostalgia I feel for Ahsoka and Anakin is just never going to match the nostalgia I have for characters like Luke and Han and Leia. I met those characters when I was barely out of diapers. It’s not even fair to compare. This was an episode wrapped in nostalgia, so it’s effect on the viewer will have some relationship to how deep his, her or their nostalgia runs. This was Ahsoka about Ahsoka.

For me? I’m loving the Hayden Christensen Eras Tour. He was so wonderful in Obi-Wan Kenobi, and he was fantastic here revisiting the rest of his Chosen One oeuvre. We see, for the first time, Skyguy as portrayed by the actor himself.

The translation from Matt Latner to Hayden underscored a few things for me. Hayden Christensen was so well cast as Anakin Skywalker in the films. Christensen is an actor with a leading man look, a boyishness, but also an inherent heaviness. Hayden always had an underlying weight, as if he’s carrying more than a young man should. It’s why his fall to the Dark Side, his internal struggle, felt right and his occasional quips seemed a little labored. His smile was always a sad one. He was always at his most convincing in his rage.

It’s why he’s an uneasy fit for a man who says things like Snips, though. Animated Anakin and Ahsoka are comic book characters, having fun like a big brother razzing his kid sister. In live action, the quips feel like echoes of a happier time, performed by people who have seen too much.

In Ahsoka, words often fail. It’s action and image that makes this series work. Ahsoka communicates in Lightsaber as if it was a form of American Sign Language. Almost every episode has some conversation played out between two characters by way of a glowing blade, the fights telling us who the characters are, what they feel, what scares them, and what drives them.

Which is why it makes so much sense for Anakin and Ahsoka, after all this time apart, to communicate by engaging in… aggressive negotiations.

To understand each other, they duel. It’s a duel of, if you’ll excuse me, the fates.

Anakin Skywalker was, first and foremost, a great warrior. Anakin’s fight defined him, for good or ill. (Even in an early The Phantom Menace deleted scene, we see Anakin fighting with a young Greedo!) He was at home in conflict because he was conflicted. Will fighting define his erstwhile apprentice, the way it defined him?

I believe that’s what the extended sequence in Ahsoka’s past was meant to ask. It’s what it showed more than what it said. We see Ahsoka at war, watching her Master flutter between caring Jedi and Darth Vader. We watch Ahsoka process the contradictions in her Master’s messages, how her story was forged by a war and death, even as she strived to be a harbinger of hope and life. (After all, the final episode of The Clone Wars is called “Victory and Death.”) Ahsoka’s story is littered with loss, and we’re meant to understand that it’s left her as a lonely samurai, unable to make connections.

In the final moments of their extended encounter, Ahsoka holds her Master’s red lightsaber in hand, staring into the face of Anakin-as-Vader. She throws the weapon away (see: Return of the Jedi). She chooses to live, she says. And so, is returned to the real world by way of the sea. She is, at last, Ahsoka (read: Gandalf) the White.

That’s all up there on screen, more or less. It’s what we see. But I still felt like there was something both ambitious and incomplete about Ahsoka Tano’s dream. The dialogue itself tended to offer platitudes that were less profound than the composition, acting, or score might have called for. After all, what does “there’s hope for you yet” mean from a character who needed a galaxy’s worth of redemption? What is he trying to teach his clearly wiser apprentice?

Also, “live or die,” the question “to be or not to be,” doesn’t readily apply to Ahsoka’s dilemma. I was curious about this framing as it was spoken. It’s a question for a person in crisis, for someone who cannot make up their mind.

That doesn’t describe Ahsoka. Ahsoka is not Hamlet, her choice to “to be” didn’t arrive after a four episodes of dispondency or doubt. Ahsoka, as seen on TV, is nearly the opposite. She’s supremely confident and laser focused on her mission. She doesn’t seem lonely so much as detached, and certainly not conflicted like her former Master. When she chose life, I didn’t feel relief. The answer was no surprise. The question is (and still is for me, to an extent) what does choosing to live… mean?

Perhaps she’ll show us when this refreshed Ahsoka, with her whole new color scheme, at last flies into the unknown. Chekov’s Space Whales have been the solution to our heroes conundrum for a few episodes now, so I’m thrilled that we’re finally riding in their belly alongside the Tenth Doctor-Bot and Trogutan Jonah. It’s time to see what lies beyond the map.

One more note about this episode: it finally made me understand why The New Republic is being portrayed as a bumbling antagonist. I still don’t love this choice all the time, I want to root for the Empire’s fall, but especially after hearing about Senator Organa’s support for Hera’s rogue mission? I had the long overdue aha moment: this is all to justify existence of The Resistance. If The New Republic was an enthusiastic supporter of fighting the Imperial Remnant, why would Leia need a guerilla outfit funded in secret? (Sorry, everyone! This was likely obvious to a lot of you! It took this old man time to process The New Republic being portrayed as a bunch of pills!)

Watching Part 5 of Ahsoka, I remembered a lovely addition to The Last Jedi release: a score-only version of the film. You can find it in extras for the digital release, I think it’s even on Disney Plus. It’s exactly what it sounds like: the entire film with only John Williams score to tell the story. It’s a profound look at just how much of the Star Wars could be a silent film: everything is there to see and hear, with or without dialogue.

I’d love to see a version of the “Shadow Warrior” that works that way, that leans into the language that Ahsoka speaks most fluently, the language of image and music, the language of choreography and design. The score, the deep cuts, the styles, the depth of feeling, are all on display in a way that isn’t always served by the utilitarian words. Ahsoka is a vibe as much as it is a story, and if you’re riding those waves of light and sound, it’s going to take you to a whole new galaxy.