Life and Death / Practice Makes Perfect / Resolve (Tales of the Jedi - S01E01, E05, E06) - Animated Series

Discuss the latest Chapter! (Discussion)

"Are you sure you are ready to get back into the fight?" SPOILERS.

Ahsoka's home village

Tales of the Jedi is an animated anthology series using The Clone Wars style animation and can thus be considered an expansion of the series. The anthology has six episodes, and they are in chronological order, beginning with Ahsoka Tano's birth, then switching to the days of a young Qui-Gon Jin serving as padawan to Count Dooku, only to return to Ahsoka in the final two episodes. The anthology series covers roughly two decades or so and several scenes from the prequel movies are directly referenced. This makes one thing clear, Tales of the Jedi is for fans, not for casual viewers who never watched much of The Clone Wars.

Ahsoka's mother takes her newborn child on a hunt

Each episode is roughly 10-15 minutes long and because of the unique structure of the series we will talk about episodes 1, 5 and 6 here, the Ahsoka episodes, since that makes the most sense. Each of the episodes is basically a short vignette, offering a snapshot of certain key events in the life of Ahsoka and also Count Dooku in the other episodes.

Ahsoka the 'lil Jedi'

The very short runtime of each episode means not all that much really happens. In the first episode, Life and Death, we witness the birth of Ahsoka. Then her mother takes baby Ahsoka on a hunt, we see Ahsoka's beautiful planet with lush forests, her people lead a simple life. When Ahsoka's mother shoots some kind of deer a sabertooth cat attacks her and eventually kidnaps Ahsoka. But the little baby instinctively uses her force powers to tame the beast and she rides the animal back into village, where the village elder tells the obvious, that the child is a Jedi.

Anakin likes being fashionably late

The next episode, Practice makes Perfect, has no real plot to speak of. Ahsoka is Anakin's all new padawan and the episode is basically one long training montage. Anakin feels the training droids are not really doing it, he feels Ahsoka needs to train with the best, and that means Captain Rex and his men from the 501st legion. So we do get to see Ahsoka's and Rex' first meeting here. What follows is a frustrating experience for Ahsoka since the clones take her down easily. But Anakin insists she tries again... and again... and again... and again. Eventually Ahsoka does get better and later she still keeps on training with Rex and his men. We eventually cut to a scene from the finale of The Clone Wars, when Ahsoka has to face the clones, a short time after Order 66 has been issued, Rex had his chip removed and hopes that all the training over the years will pay off now, because dealing with dozens of clones won't be easy. But practice did indeed make Ahsoka quite perfect, as we know, but the episode fades to black here.

Practice did make Ahsoka pretty good indeed

What follows is the only episode with a proper plot, Resolve. We witness Padme's funeral on Naboo and Bail Organa spots Ahsoka in the crowd, he gives her a communication device she's supposed to use when she needs him or wants to get back into the fight. But Ahsoka has other plans, she wants to abandon everything.

Ahsoka the farmhand

Some time later we see Ahsoka working on a farm. Everything is under Imperial rule of course and the workers complain about ever rising quotas they can barely meet. Apparently the Empire has some form of planned economy? Ahsoka pretends to be a regular farmhand but of course things don't stay so peaceful.

Jedi gotta jedi

A cargo hauler is overloaded and a woman is about to get crushed by bales of what looks like hay, but Ahsoka rescues the woman by using the Force. The woman immediately realizes what's going on, but she won't tell on Ahsoka. However, her brother, the one who overloaded the cargo hauler, eventually also learns about Ahsoka's secret... and he turns out to be a snitch. It's an recurring theme here, since we once more learn that quite a few common people are actually in support of the Empire. Like the brother here.

A cool looking Inquistor for a change...

But of course nothing goes as planned. Ahsoka and the woman drive into town to sell their harvest and when they return they find the farm ablaze and a sinister looking Inquisitor has the brother on his knees. He's angry that no Jedi is to be found anywhere, but of course Ahsoka does arrive just when things are about to get even more nasty. The brother expects gratitude when the Inquisitor does indeed find the Jedi, but in true Imperial fashion his reward is meant to be death, but Ahsoka saves the brother.

A rather short duel...

We then see a very short duel between the masked Inquisitor and Ahsoka who doesn't even have her lightsaber on hand. But she makes short work of the Inquisitor, disarms him and uses his own lightsaber to end him.

Ahsoka has changed her mind...

Realizing that there will never a true escape for her, Ahsoka contacts Bail Organa who arrives in his ship, the Tantive IV, rescues the few survivors and then Bail asks Ahsoka if she's ready to fight again, she merely nods. We know the rest.

It was very nice to see more Clone Wars style animation. However, just like season 7 of the series, the quality of the CGI has come a long way, compared to early seasons. The series is very beautiful, we get stunning vistas, landscape shots, contemplative moments, especially in the first episode that had a certain spirituality to it, and the level of detail is simply amazing. I very much hope Lucasfilm will make more animation in the Clone Wars style. The only thing that still looks janky and weird are the running animations, people don't run like that, maybe some new motion capturing is in order here.

When it comes to the story I think the Ahsoka episodes brought nothing new to the table, nothing here will surprise you. Ahsoka is also one of the best explored Star Wars characters. I am not sure we needed to see her as an infant, while the first episode looked very pretty it was also entirely predictable. The second episode was just a training montage, more or less, and while it was nice to see Anakin and Obi-Wan again, Rex too, of course, once more nothing really happens. So I feel the episode mostly appeals to your nostalgia, and sure, the first meeting between Ahsoka and Rex is nice to see, but it's nothing special here. But the transition to the finale of The Clone Wars was a very nice touch, showing us that years of intensive training with Rex and his clones did eventually pay off. Only in very unforeseen ways.

That leaves the final episode, the only one with an actual plot. But yet again it's all very predictable, the Jedi who can't help it and rescues someone in danger is something we have seen quite a few times. Actually, Jedi: Fallen Order did the exact same thing as Tales of the Jedi, when Cal Kestis saved his co-worker with Inquisitors arriving shortly thereafter. But of course this episode is meant to show us how a disillusioned Ahsoka finds out that you can't run from your destiny and that the Empire is a force of evil that needs to be fought. Resolve once more also highlights that the Empire has no love even for people who support it, something we also see with Syril Karn in Andor. Here the brother who ratted out Ahsoka would have been killed, instead of being rewarded.

The Inquisitor design here was stellar, I hope there will be an action figure for him, if only the Inquisitors in Obi-Wan Kenobi had looked like that, or one of them at least. The short duel, similar to the one Obi-Wan had with Darth Maul in Rebels, was very short but once more highlighted what a truly gifted Jedi can do, Ahsoka made very short work of the Inquisitor, even unarmed.

So... where does that leave things? I am not entirely sure we needed the Ahsoka vignettes here, since they offer nothing new and what we get is extremely predictable. I feel it's mostly the nostalgia and sheer beauty of the animation, landscapes and scenes that will appeal to you. Seeing young Ahsoka again, her first meeting with Rex (nothing special here though), Padme's funeral on Naboo does tug at your heartstrings.

But ultimately Ahsoka is one of the best explored characters in Star Wars and there's few things we don't know about her early years, since she was a main character in The Clone Wars and Rebels and thus we do know a lot about her already. And while we don't talk about the other Tales of the Jedi episodes in detail today, I can say that the three episodes with Count Dooku were the actual highlight for me, since his episodes were all very interesting, with actual plots and gave us more insight into a villain we don't know so much about, based on his appearances in the movies and The Clone Wars.

All that said the Ahsoka episodes still make for very pleasant watching, everything looks great, the simplistic stories do serve their purpose, we learn a bit about Ahsoka's family and home planet, we learn that she trained very, very hard and failed very, very often until she became the Jedi she was, and we also learn that a beaten and disillusioned Ahsoka eventually realizes that running away from it all won't ever be a solution for her. She wants to help people, it's still within her, this need to serve others. So it's not that the three short vignettes are not about important moments in Ahsoka's life, I just feel things should have been a little less predictable maybe. And the trope of a Jedi in hiding who can't help but use the Force to rescue someone is rather old now. Even if it highlights a core part of Ahsoka's personality here

Should Lucasfilm continue with the format I do hope the series will focus on characters that are not as well explored as Ahsoka. But I will talk about that more in detail in the review for the Dooku episodes. Just one spoiler for that: I feel a Dooku / Qui-Gon Jin series would make a lot of sense. All in all the three Ahsoka episodes are of course very solid, pretty good even, just don't expect anything really new or anything surprising. It's mostly a very wholesome and pleasant experience though. And we do get some insight into Ahsoka at least, why and how she changed her mind and eventually joined the very, very early proto rebellion.

I feel the episodes are somewhat difficult to rate, 3.5 holocrons sounds fair to me, from a purely visual standpoint everything is excellent, there are also a few touching moments, like the dialogue between Rex and Ahsoka seconds before they open the hangar bay door to face the clones, and Ahsoka is a fan favourite character of course, but I have to admit, I enjoyed the Dooku episodes so much more, since we very rarely get deeper insight into villains or dark siders, at least in the movies or various tv series. And his episodes dive much more into issues that are more interesting, they have a grander scale and deal more with political issues and how the Republic was rotten at its core and Jedi caught between a rock and a hard place, whereas Ahsoka's vignettes are very personal. A loving tribute to a fan favourite character. You will certainly like her episodes a lot, even if little will surprise you. And the outstanding artstyle, direction, level of detail and (virtual) camerawork make it all very aesthetic and simply beautiful.

One last thing: it was good to hear Ashley Eckstein again, nothing against Rosario Dawson, she's excellent and she is Ahsoka in live action, she also looks the part, but to me Ahsoka will always be Ashley Eckstein. Her voice acting is once more outstanding here. Too bad she doesn't have the looks to make for a convincing live action Ahsoka, since she's a completely different visual type. But at least she will be Ahsoka in animation, they should never switch to Rosario Dawson's voice here, just like Matt Lanter is animated Anakin Skywalker, and not Hayden Christensen.