Hmmm... I thought this series got off to a good start and I initially enjoyed it. It was fun to see the 'Rebels' characters and locations brought to life convincingly, and I also gave it a pass on its massive female bias since the characters were at least true to 'Rebels'. I have commented on the slow pace of the storytelling and also my misgivings over some of the choices made in episode 4, but I was hoping things would pick up, however....
My liking of the series has taken a hit in episodes 5 and especially 6. The whole edifice is starting to creak for me. If you manage to still love it then good for you, but I'm really starting to question how much this feels like Star Wars for me. Yes, it was nice to see Hayden and glimpses of what a live action Clone Wars series would have been like, but that hardly advances the plot in this series, and since we aren't getting a live action Clone Wars, that amounts to teasing the audience with memberberries. And that aside, what else happened in that episode? Hera was ignored and then effectively slapped down by the Government; despite being a trustworthy General her reports were instantly dismissed! I'm struggling to find Elsbeth even remotely threatening, Ahsoka spent god-knows how long underwater and yet didn't drown (and because a woman simply cannot be saved by a man in modern Hollywood, did you notice she was fished from the water by a short female pilot when there was a much larger and stronger male pilot standing right on the ramp next to her like a big useless lump, when she emerged from the sea?). Ahsoka suddenly wearing white like she's the new Gandalf after being rescued and then standing on the exterior of a fast moving, extremely high flying space craft to Force-talk to the whales stretched credulity to breaking point for me, and the hyperspace whales themselves were a ridiculous idea in 'Rebels' and they look even more ludicrous in live action (they need baleen why exactly? Do they eat air plankton?).
As I say, this really isn't feeling much like Star Wars to me any longer.
And then we come to episode 6... Well, at least we finally got to see Ezra and Grand Admiral Paunch / Wig. We certainly didn't get to see much of Ahsoka in a show supposedly about her, but we did get to see Sabine ride a wolf-bat-horse that she was instantly able to communicate with without any difficulty whatsoever, have both of her blasters shot out of her hands by sharp-shooters who then sportingly stopped using their own blasters as soon as she switched to her lightsaber, enabling her to suddenly win a fight she was very much losing. We got to see Muppet tortoises who seem to spend a large portion of their lives pretending to be rocks miles from their homes for some reason, but we did finally get to see some stormtroopers.... this time complete with painted armour just like we never saw at any stage in the original trilogy, plus 1980's style post-apocalyptic leg-warmers / rags which served no obvious purpose that I could see other than to allow Hasbro to pump out a billion tweaked reissues. And as for the one with the ridiculous golden face... SMH!
As I say, if you're enjoying this, then well done, but for me this series fell off a cliff when Ahsoka did. It doesn't look like Star Wars and doesn't feel like Star Wars to me. What it worryingly
does feel like to me is Disney Lucasfilm setting the stage to completely undermine everything we know and love about Star Wars. The rumours about them 'killing' the Force and shifting the action to the other galaxy where only women can wield the Force's replacement (unless you're a villain, in which case men can... of course [must smash that nasty imaginary patriarchy with a load of hateful misandry]), sounds only too plausible...
I've come this far, so I'll finish the series and hope against hope for an improvement, but after this I genuinely think I may be done with Disney Star Wars...
