Part One: Master and Apprentice

The show starts very strong with good performances. Things are set up pretty nicely and even people who's never seen Rebels or any Star Wars can pretty easily follow and understand what is going on.

A lot of callbacks and nostalgia for people who love the Rebels tv show, and this feels very much like it is actually Star Wars. Music is used in a great way, sets, costumes etc. Have a good realistic feel. Story also seem to hold very nice narrative ways and set up the future episodes in a perfect way.

Where this first episode fails is first of all the choppy editing where we jump from scene to scene, from planet to planet, from set to set over and over again that it borders on confusing. The show cannot sit still for more than a few seconds and its not until about 30min in we get to breath in a environment which stay with us. The second issue I have with this first episode is that Map thing - why would some ancient witches long ago dead have a orb (map) of where Thrawn is? That made no sense whatsoever. And finally the performances are not 100%. No one is really bad, and all can act, it is just that many of them are not great at it.

Still a great start of the show. 8/10 and hope they can keep it up and fix the tiny misses I mention above.

Overall look and feel is nice, scene setting is nicely done

Main irks for me:

• Ahsoka looks bored AF and doesn't faithfully represent the giddy Ahsoka from the series

• more secret map holocubes

• people dying from a slash to the leg, yet mary sues survive stomach stabs

• on that note, stop with the stomach stabs that are perfectly removed and thus preserving the victim, it worked for Darth Maul/Qui Gon as he moved directly away/backwards to his next fight, all else make zero sense

• too many "super powered girl bosses" - massive yawn when literally everyone is doing it

= Disappointing.

It's nowhere near as bad as Kenobi or Book of Boba Fett, but it's not exactly good outside of Kevin Kiner's score and some good graphics. It's a bad sign when the end credits are the most captivating part of the episode.

The episode is pretty lifeless. There are three action scenes and all three are stiff and awkward. The lightsaber choreography is childish and the actors look uncomfortable trying to keep an intimidating straight face. The acting and dialogue aren't much better. The actors are all fine, but there is so much dead space where they're just looking around (especially Hera). The conversations are repetitive and don't tell much about the characters. There are some clumsy information dumps like Sabine randomly pulling out a hologram from Ezra to let the audience know what their relationship.

The episode is paced terribly in every scene. There are long scenes like Ahsoka looking around a temple or Sabine unlocking a map where the audience has no idea what the characters are trying to accomplish so their actions mean nothing. There's no sense of cause and effect in the story which leaves the audience disengaged and, in my case, bored.

Worst of all is the episode's end where they pull out an obnoxious plot point that seems to have become a trend in Disney Star Wars.

Overall, my expectations were beat coming off Obi-Wan, but as a fan of Clone Wars and Ahsoka's character, I was left underwhelmed.

Ahsoka obtains a valuable object sought by others.

This episode introduces the characters and kicks off the story competently, with a simple MacGuffin plot and a few exposition dumps that tell you all you need to know.

I have not seen 'Rebels', and only know the character Ahsoka from 'The Mandalorian' episode 'The Jedi', (which I enjoyed). For this to work I need to accept her as Anakin's apprentice, which is a fairly shaky premise for me, but I am willing to keep an open mind to what the writers do with her throughout this show. Particularly in any flashbacks we might see.

Some characters feel like stock young protagonists and antagonists aimed at younger audiences, but time will tell whether or not they can become interesting.

All the actors appear to be solid, but there is nothing particularly challenging other than physical scenes and brooding so far.

Visually I think it's excellent, with strong cinematography and editing that tells the story well. Plus the art design is great as you would expect from this type of production. The action sequences are very well done.

There is a lot hanging on this show - as unfortunate as that might be. In general, these Disney+ shows have started to dip in quality, something that we saw with "The Mandalorian," which premiered its third season back in spring. As the next show up, "Ahsoka" has a lot of goodwill behind it, especially because of the character's previous acclaimed appearances through the universe, and the creative team behind it, led by the character's creator Dave Filoni and a great cast of characters, old and new. The first episode is a solid opening for the show, but it does leave a lot to be desired.

There is a lot of lore already attached to this show. A lot of it comes from "Star Wars Rebels" which does seem like a pretty important pre-watch if you want to be able to follow along with everything 100%. However, Filoni does a good job of placing you in the middle of a big mythology and guides you along the way with ease, making it accessible for everyone. The characters all feel like the versions that we came to love in the animated shows, and Sabine Wren seems like she will be a highlight of the show going forward. The new characters are very fascinating and it'll be interesting to see how their connection to Thrawn will be explained, as well as how they connect to the larger world of the Jedi Order. The episode is quite long and that makes for a mixed pacing, with the action sequences feeling like roller coaster rides, yet the smaller character moments feel painfully stale and very slow. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but the cinematography on display isn't nearly astounding enough to take away from the more bland look the show has. There's not a big aesthetic bump from what has come before, but it does bring some of the animated worlds to life in beautiful fashion. The story is very interesting, but the episode is more focused on properly setting up the characters than really getting into the nitty gritty, which is fine, but has proven to be a detriment to past shows.

"Part One: Master and Apprentice" is a solid return to this part of the "Star Wars" universe, reintroducing us to familiar faces and familiar planets. However, the show's look has lost some of the luster the small screen provided in the beginning, and at times, it doesn't feel like we're in a galaxy far, far away.