Star Wars: Ahsoka Part 4: 'Fallen Jedi'

© Lucasfilm

‘Ahsoka’ delivers a fun episode with mostly action and a real killer ending.
by Jeremy Fogelman

The latest episode of Ahsoka is called “Fallen Jedi” and it certainly deals with that concept in multiple ways. It’s all pretty straightforward action beats until the end, but those beats are pretty fun. We get some droid-on-droid fighting with Huyang versus a droid guard, a rarity even in Star Wars, and Sabine and Ahsoka easily cleaning up a bunch of guards.

Ahsoka drops the potential concern that if they can’t make the journey to find Ezra, no one should -- something that she clearly realizes Sabine has difficulty with, as she asks several times if Sabine is okay with the current plan. But considering the final moments of the episode, she’s clearly willing to do a lot to get a chance to see her old friend again when push comes to shove (if you will).

There’s also just a little bit of Hera and some New Republic stuff where she and recurring Mandalorian cameo Carson Teva dude survive the hyperspace ring jumping galaxies, but I liked that visual that you can be disrupted by such a jump. Otherwise there’s not much from them, this episode is mostly about Ahsoka and her connection to her past, despite her explicitly saying she doesn’t want to talk about it.

© Lucasfilm

Fascinatingly, Baylan talks about losing faith and says that her legacy is one of death and destruction, like her master’s -- that doesn’t seem to be consistent with a classic, mostly good story we’ve seen from her, so it does make things more complicated. She even harshly uses the Force to smash Baylan’s apprentice into the rocks when she thinks Sabine was killed, and the ending certainly makes things even more complicated -- she’s in some odd place, a world of space with star paths.

And suddenly Anakin Skywalker shows up, and she seems to happily call him “Master?” -- is there something else going on we’ve been missing? Sabine admits that she was hurt when Ahsoka didn’t come to Mandalore to help her family, one that Baylan is able to take advantage of. There are clearly some fascinating depths to this character that I do hope are fleshed out, given that Ray Stevenson sadly passed away after filming this season and he’s really excellent so far.

So Ahsoka literally falls, but there’s her own metaphorical falling as well, Baylan’s fall from his Jedi background, and Sabine’s falling into Baylan’s manipulations -- but how sincere is he? He does stop Hati from choking Sabine, although they do take her into custody, but he talks about Thrawn bringing a “greater good”, and that one must destroy in order to create.

© Lucasfilm

We still have no idea what he means by any of that, but it’s a good amount of interesting setup. The various saber duels this episode were pretty compelling, some of the more fun ones yet, and eventually we got to a pretty involved, complicated conclusion. Will we finally see Thrawn next episode, and how much will we really discover about everyone’s backstory?

There are a lot of balls being juggled so far and they haven’t dropped it yet (aside from some slightly iffy CGI or makeup on Hayden Christianson), but these Star Wars shows have a mixed record of endings, so I hope it can pull this new season off.

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.