Star Wars: Ahsoka Part 3: 'TIme to Fly'

© Lucasfilm

‘Ahsoka’ throws its characters from one thing to the next to teach them to fly in the next part of the tale.
by Jeremy Fogelman

Ahsoka continues the story in “Part Three: Time to Fly” where a great bit of metaphorical and literal flying takes place -- honestly the amount of things you could call “flying” here are fairly high. The episode starts with Sabine trying in lightsaber forms, which she’s not bad at, but she admits that her real weakness is in her connection to the Force and such related powers.

As Huyang hilariously snarks and insults Sabine with typical droid honesty (in general he’s the funniest part of the episode multiple times), Ahsoka tries to teach her padawan to see without seeing, to sense intention and avoid relying on anger and frustration for power. The classic blind training helmet that Luke used in Star Wars comes back again here, but Sabine continues to struggle with it.

Eventually she gets some additional classic advice -- that although talent is important, focus and training are the keys to success so she should start small -- say on a small cup perhaps. But we don’t get to see any success here yet (although I’m sure we will soon enough) as there’s more plot to be seen. Huyang drops the snark again about Ahsoka being from a line of “non-traditional” Jedi, which I believe goes her, Anakin, Obi-Wan, Qui-Gon, Dooku, Yoda -- in that order, so non-traditional does sound about right.

Although most of the episode centers around Ahsoka and Sabine’s little adventure, we do take a dip back to see Hera mired in New Republic bureaucracy as she is unable to get assistance or even permission to go with her friends to track down Thrawn and her old buddy Ezra. She is stymied by the various Senators, including the named Senator Xiono (Nelson Lee) so I expect he has some more importance than the rest, except for Chancellor Mon Mothma, played by the excellent Genevieve O’Reilly recurring once again for the fourth time (including once in animation in Rebels).

© Lucasfilm

This scene was good in terms of some additional stakes and contextualizing Thrawn’s threat level, but it’s immediately undercut when one of Hera’s colleagues literally says “That went well” -- I don’t know how that was missed as an overused cliche by this point. I have no connection to her son Jacen either, but we’ll see if he’s relevant later on.

Otherwise the action really ramps up when Ahsoka’s ship comes across the giant hyperdrive ring and is attacked by the evil space planes (in a dogfight highly suggestive of WWI planes, which I liked to see as a change of pace). Even though there’s no narrative concern that the evil Jedi will be killed here. The highlight here is Ahsoka leaping into space and destroying a spaceship -- even if somehow she couldn’t use the Force to bring her back safely to the ship (if Leia could do it near death why not Ahsoka?).

After that there’s a languid, somewhat draggy scene of the ship flying through a bunch of “purrgil” or giant space whales, the relevance of whom we find out about more later as they are known to travel intergalactically and thus are clearly connected to Ezra and Thrawn. After that the final moments are Ray Stevenson showing up for his one scene of the episode as he sends out soldiers to hunt the Jedi down without any real feeling at all. Still an interesting character, certainly.

Overall the episode was pretty decent -- the Hera stuff didn’t entirely work, landing with a bit of a thud on that segment, and the spaceship action went from being pretty compelling to pretty repetitive and a little boring. But the training stuff remains interesting and I like the rapport we’re learning between Ahsoka and Sabine. And Huyang remains laugh out loud funny several times, which is honestly pretty unusual for me, so I have to give it a lot of credit just for that too.

Note: We support the current WGA/SAG strike and emphasize the importance of writers and actors and ensuring they and fellow creatives are compensated and treated fairly for their work. This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the series being covered here wouldn't exist.