[Warning: Spoilers for the Ahsoka Season 1 finale ahead!]
Even though the title is very C.S. Lewis-coded—“The Jedi, The Witch, and The Warlord”—Episode 8 of Ahsoka made up for the lack of action and forward movement in last week’s episode 10 times over. The final stage of Grand Admiral Thrawn’s departure from this other galaxy far, far away is in full swing. Still, he really wants to make sure Ahsoka (Rosario Dawson), Ezra (Eman Esfandi), and Sabine (Natasha Liu Bordizzo) are stranded for good once he takes off. Part of this plan includes rewarding Morgan Elsbeth (Diana Lee Inosanto) for her devotion to his cause with some Great Mother magick.
The Great Mothers grant Morgan Elsbeth the “gift of shadows,” which makes her more powerful and a lot more sinister-looking with black eyes and burned-in markings on her face. Her reward also comes with the Blade of Talzin, which is a sword belonging to Mother Talzin—Maul’s mother and the Clan Mother of the Nightsisters on Dathomir in Star Wars: The Clone Wars—and has been known to withstand lightsaber duels (more on that later).
And while there was a lot of speculation after last week’s episode about whether Ezra couldn’t use a lightsaber anymore or just chose not to, the finale proved that he just wanted to honor Sabine’s newfound Jedihood by not taking her lightsaber when battling Shin Hati (Ivanna Sakhno). In Episode 8, Ezra is quickly putting together a new lightsaber for himself, much to Huyang’s (David Tennant) dismay. But it’s not Huyang’s fault; he’s an ancient Jedi droid whose sole purpose was to teach younglings at the Jedi Temple and show them how to build lightsabers. He doesn’t know much about Ezra, including the fact that this is the third lightsaber he’s constructing (and that his late master, Kanan Jarrus, taught him very well, thank you very much).
We also learn through Ezra’s conversation with Huyang that the reason Ahsoka chose to stop training Sabine is because of what happened to Mandalore. After the Empire and Moff Gideon destroyed the planet in the Night of a Thousand Tears, killing all of Sabine’s family, Ahsoka felt that her padawan only wanted to train to be a Jedi for the wrong reasons. Jedi cannot lead with hate or anguish, because, as Yoda says, “Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering”—you know, the path to the Dark Side and all that. If Sabine unlocked her full Jedi potential while in this mindset, it would not be the Jedi way.
But as Huyang tells Ezra, “The relationship between a master and an apprentice is as challenging as it is meaningful.” After Ahsoka’s trip to the World Between Worlds and her lesson with Anakin (Hayden Christensen), she has more clarity when it comes to Sabine. It’s why she continues Sabine’s training and forgives her for defecting with the enemy to go find Ezra, while she thought Ahsoka was freshly dead. Ahsoka shares that she knows how it feels to have people judge difficult choices she’s made—like Ahsoka’s choice to leave the Jedi Order—and how she was lucky that her master, Anakin Skywalker, was always there to stand by her.
The World Between Worlds-zen that Ahsoka now possesses makes her wiser and a little bit more like the animated, teenage Ahsoka we remember. It seems to really give her the push she needs to lead Ezra and Sabine into battle against Thrawn (Lars Mikkelsen), even after his Tie Fighters caused Sabine to wreck their ship (after a pretty cool slicing trick with the fighters, might we add).
Speaking of Thrawn, he truly hates Ahsoka’s guts—“They’ll be no negotiating with the apprentice of Anakin Skywalker,” he says—so it’s no surprise that he has some final Great Mothers magick up his sleeve in the form of zombie troopers. As Ahsoka, Ezra, and Sabine ride up to the front door of the Nightsisters’ fortress, dodging hellfire on their trusty Howler steeds, Thrawn has the Great Mothers perform magick on volunteer troopers that go to stop them. Just when you think that our heroes are winning, the Great Mothers go and bring the troopers back to life in the creepiest way. Kevin Kiner’s compositions have really kept this season going, and this finale is probably his best original work all series. The strings he has playing over the horror-movie-esque reanimation of the Night Troopers’s corpses? The perfect bone-chilling soundtrack for fricken zombie troopers. What’s scarier than a Stormtrooper who can’t aim? An undead Night Trooper who has unlimited tries because he can’t die.
Just as the action of this finale seems like it can’t get any more intense, Morgan has to step in to buy Thrawn more time, sacrificing herself for the Empire—and Dathomir, in her eyes—to go fight Ahsoka and co. with her shiny new blade. Ahsoka, Ezra, and Sabine do split up, despite Huyang’s solid advice a few episodes ago to stay together. But it doesn’t end in complete tragedy. Even though these zombie troopers bite, Ezra and Sabine are able to make it to the fortress’s platform right as Thrawn’s ship takes off. With the help of Sabine’s new connection to the Force, Ezra is able to make it onto the ship and on a path home.
Sabine has the same chance, but instead of leaving Ahsoka a second time, she decides to stay back and help her master fight off the undead and Morgan. And even though Ahsoka loses her shoto lightsaber in battle, she defeats Morgan in a clean cut using her remaining blade and Mother Talzin’s.
Huyang comes in with their fixed ship just in time for Thrawn to taunt Ahsoka with the fact that he knew her master, saying similar sentiments to Baylon’s (Ray Stevenson) about her connection to Anakin. Just before they leave Ahsoka and Sabine in the dust of their mega-super hyperdrive, he leaves Ahsoka with a parting sentiment. He says that maybe this is “where a ronin such as you belongs.” We’ve seen the Ronin before in Star Wars: Visions, which takes after the rōnin in feudal Japan, a samurai who severs ties with all close family and friends and has no master or someone to report to. So to someone who’s seemingly haunted by her choice to leave the Jedi, this is not a light diss (especially considering she’s about to be involuntarily stranded and cut off from civilization).
While Ezra makes it back to Hera (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) in a stolen Night Trooper suit and ship once back in our regular Star Wars galaxy, and Thrawn, the Great Mothers, and his battalion of undead (and potentially coffins of more undead) troopers make it to Dathomir, Ahsoka and Sabine are indeed stuck on this planet. But just like Ezra when he was stranded, they make it back to their adorable Noti friends, who are more than happy to welcome them back.
Shin, seemingly out of defeat, and Baylon, on a quest to seek out whatever power he feels in this land of dreams and madness, both stay on the planet as well. And while Shin sticks with the bandits, Baylon finds these massive statues of The Father and The Son, magical embodiments of the balance in the Force and the Dark Side, respectively. The third figure, The Daughter, is missing from this mountainside sculpture; the embodiment of the Light Side is stripped away. Could this be because she gave up her life source to Ahsoka in Season 3 of The Clone Wars? Is that why Morai (a female convor who also has ties to The Daughter) shows up to Ahsoka at the end of this season, telling her everything will be alright? It’s too much to get into, but the Mortis gods are a major part of the Force’s origin and well-being, so a potential future Ahsoka season (or the future of her story) will most likely dive even deeper into these entities and whatever the heck Baylon felt while on the planet.
It’s never fun to see our heroes suffer or get stranded, but Ahsoka’s wise words to Sabine are those of hope, not despair. “Ezra is where he needs to be, and so are we. It’s time to move on.” As hopeful music plays on, none other than Anakin Skywalker watches his former padawan as a Force ghost, proud that he trained such a wise Jedi.
