‘Star Wars: Ahsoka’ Reminds Us How Awful the Clone Wars & Jedi Order Were
Last week Ahsoka brought a few key Clone Wars battles to live action. And if you never realized how messed up all of that was before…
Viewers tuning in for Ahsoka were shown a big of the horrors of The Clone Wars in live-action last week. But for those of us coming to this show from the animated series’, this isn’t really a surprise. We’ve seen it get bad in The Clone Wars after getting attached to multiple clones and Jedi outside of the core cast. If at least one episode of The Clone Wars didn’t mess you up even a little, there may be an emotional block somewhere. But even for fans of animated Star Wars, seeing it in live-action made the already-pretty-bad battles somehow even worse.
Ahsoka Was a Kid
The earliest version of Ahsoka Tano we see on screen is an optimistic, fresh-faced, and right out of youngling-training fourteen-year-old. If that seems aldult-ish because of the “teen” bit at the end, take a moment and think about where you were at fourteen or if you’d trust any of the fourteen-year-olds you know to lead a battalion. Ahsoka is a little kid, and in animation, that was easy to forget sometimes.
This was probably in part due to the nature of the Jedi in general. Not having emotional attachments will simulate maturity, as well as focused and around-the-clock training. But this doesn’t take away from the fact that she was a young teenager.
And then there’s her costume design. When we’re first introduced to Ahsoka she’s wearing a tube top and leggings. For many of us, this is a design choice that reads as ‘older teenager’ as opposed to ‘fourteen-year-old.’ And even if we ignore any of the creepy implications of making a young character dress and act older than they are, it makes it easier for the audience to ignore that in our world she’d barely be in high school, and in Star Wars she’d fighting in a war.
We couldn’t ignore this last week in Ahsoka. When Ariana Greenblatt took to the screen as young Ahsoka, the character’s age, loss of innocence and childhood, and generally how out of place she looked on the battlefield became too obvious to ignore.
The Toll of the War in Live-Action
As I said, fans of animated The Clone Wars saw at least a few episodes that really messed us up. The show seems specifically designed to introduce you to, differentiate between, and love a whole bunch of clones. And it should. They’re all very unique characters with different personalities and skills. Each of the clones is an entire person who deserves the storylines they each get. But then The Clone Wars turns around and breaks your heart for each and every one of them. The Clone Wars isn’t without emotional depth.
But something about seeing and hearing the war scenes play out in live action took it to another level. We probably met one or two of those clones before. We’ve definitely seen those same battles in animation. But Ahsoka turned it from animated characters into a gritty war film, making it immensely more real.
As a series, Ahsoka is getting a lot of things right. But I think one of the biggest triumphs of this past episode was linking back to The Clone Wars and not only using it for context but elevating what we already knew about it to the next level.
What did you think of last week’s episode of Ahsoka? Did you realize how young Ahsoka was throughout the Clone Wars, or did you forget sometimes, too? What do you think will happen next in the series? Let us know in the comments!
May the Force be with you, adventurers!
