Episode 3 of Ahsoka has dropped on Disney+ and I’m sad to report that this was yet another pretty big miss for Disney’s latest Star Wars series. Dave Filoni is popular across the fandom, but he seems to be struggling to make the transition from animation to live-action.

This should not be a huge surprise given the sorry state of The Mandalorian Season 3. I loved the first two seasons of that show, but Season 3 took everything that made them great and tossed it out the hatch.

In any case, I have some thoughts. Let’s dive right in, shall we?

Finally, the entire space fight sequence was just awful, perhaps the worst since the “we’re out of gas” space chase in The Last Jedi. Two squadrons of (admittedly very cool) enemy ships are blasting away at Ahsoka and co. and then Morgan orders the hyperspace ring to open up fire with its ominous-sounding turbo laser guns, but after lord knows how many direct hits they take they’re only down to 10% shields. One ship against six and a space station and they’re barely hurt. Even when they do take a direct hit it only stops them.

Yes, it stops them in outer space where there is no friction. They come to a stop defying all laws of physics. Then, Ahsoka goes outside in a space suit to fight off enemy space ships in zero gravity. She blocks blasts from spaceships with her lightsabers while doing the cringiest zero-G flips ever.

Here’s a thought: If your ship is literally sitting there in space not moving, the enemy ships could also just stop and aim at you and fire from all directions. They could fire at the ship, not the Jedi standing on the ship. This whole scene was so bad it defies words. Sabine manages to fix the ship (handy that the bad guys miss every shot and Ahsoka can deflect massive blaster shots that should knock her into the void) and then Huyang says some funny stuff to distract us from how bad it all was, and then space whales show up to distract us even more. If you turn off your brains I guess this could be good.

And no, I will not accept “It’s just Star Wars” or “it’s just a TV show” or “they have laser swords and the Force but you can’t suspend your disbelief for this” as excuses for all the bad writing and direction. The reason Star Wars became so popular in the first place is that there was a time when it was good. It was so good that even all the mishaps and nonsense we’ve gotten over the years, we still keep coming back for more, rolling the dice every time.

All told, this was a genuinely bad episode of Star Wars. So many of these problems are easily avoidable, too. Make the dogfight scene much shorter, have them take the hit and then escape through the whales with the last of their ship’s power. Cut out the goofy spacesuit fight stuff completely. Save Ahsoka being badass for some land battles next week.

You could also cut way back on the training segments with Ahsoka and Sabine, which were slow and boring but might have been really engaging with more economical storytelling. Do more with less. This was a short episode but it felt long, and the cool stuff was too little, too late.

Here’s to hoping that Episode 4 picks things up a bit, because we’re already almost at the halfway point and you could have pretty easily told all the actual story that’s happened so far in one episode if you cut out all the filler and tightened up the pacing.

Maybe next week they’ll give Ahsoka an actual personality. We shall see. What did you think of Episode 3? Let me know on Twitter or Facebook.

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