Destiny

Embarrassingly bad and it disrespects the essence of what Star Wars is. I'm generally not hard to please and have loved many Disney Star Wars shows and movies that others have not. (Ahsoka, Solo, Book of Boba Fett to name a few that I enjoyed) However this is disgustingly bad and feels more like a fan fic. The fact this show has the highest budget of any Star Wars project is astonishing because it completely falls flat. The dialogue is bad, even for Star Wars standards, and the acting does it no favors. The only saving grace of this show is Master Sol and his terrific actor. He is the only interesting character that holds any ounce of my attention at any given moment.

This episode advances/exposits the plot about as much as a few lines of dialogue would've. It fills in a few holes/questions from the previous two episodes, but we really didn't need *all* of the "Jedi come and find the sisters" story onscreen. Perhaps if the dialogue were especially interesting, or the characters interacted in an interesting way, then, yeah, sure, go ahead and give us an entire rundown of that day's events, but no, the characters haven't progressed much further that Mae (bad seed) and Osha (neutral seed). And once again, despite having Carrie Anne Moss there onscreen, she's underutilized.

Through the years I've been the biggest Star Wars supporter. Almost to the point where I would go out of my way to find the good in everything they release. To be quite frank, I just sounded dumb. I try my best to make sense of The Rise of Skywalker. I'm that kind of Star Wars fan. But I think this might be the episode that has finally done it for me. I think I'm done. I've watched a lot of bad Star Wars and it seems to be getting worse yearly but this might be the worst that I've ever seen. I've tried my best in my head to make sense of it, but sometimes the answer is that it just absolutely sucks. We've reached the point where they don't even try to hide, their agendas. I hate being the person to say this, I really really hate it but it's obvious. When I look back into the past, I will remember this episode as the reason I have stopped watching Star Wars. I'm one person and it doesn't matter what I say, but I'm just expressing my feelings here in this review. I've officially lost faith in them. I am done giving any of my time and money to new stuff. Time and time again they have disappointed me. It's obvious they don't care about their fan base and are content catering to a small group of blue haired individuals. Well.... I hope it was worth it because your product is dying... heck it's on life support. Time to execute order 66 on the shows creator and Lucas film president. Wow this was just a horrible 40 minutes that I'll never get back. I feel dirty hating it this much but it's just that bad.

Unironically one of the worst things I've ever had the misfortune of sitting through. People complain about the sequels, but this is an entirely different level. At least the sequels have enjoyable scenes, likeable characters, and aren't pure nonsense. This is just pure nonsense. It feels like it was pulled off a 12 year old's Tumblr fan-fiction.

When the witches start singing together I almost shut it off. It was so cringey that I actually felt regret, Real regret. Like why did I waste my time watching this? I could have been washing dishes. I could have been shaving, How did I get to this low of a point in my life that I sat through this?

.....there is plenty of space for things not shown in previous Star Wars stories. A coven of force-sensitive women isn't outside the realm of possibility. And they might have been prosecuted because of their powers. There are several planets at least in the old Star Wars extended universe which were hostile to force users in general or Jedi in particular.

Moreover, this coven's interpretation of the Force as a "thread" might be different from what we have heard in Star Wars but it might just be a subjective description of what could be the same thing. Throughout our history there were several ways of describing something like gravity. Newton decribed it as a force, Faraday and Maxwell decribed it as a field of force extending outward at the speed of light and Einstein thought of it as a fundamental property of matter bending space and time around it. All we know is that if you drop a stone then it will fall to the ground. Considering that these witches only use the powers of "Force push and Force pull" which we have seen countless times in Star Wars, I can't say that their understanding of the Force breaks the "in universe" rules of Star Wars.

As to the "immaculate conception" of the twins we have too little information from this episode alone to make an assessment if it "breaks Star Wars". Something similar happened in Star Wars only once with Anakin Skywalker. That was a major event caused by "The Will of the Force". The head of the coven described it as a "miracle". It doesn't look like it's a convenient work-around for this coven to procreate without males. However, since such an event would require a "major disturbance in the Force" and not "It just happens because the plot demanded it!", the writers certainly owe us an explanation better than "I created them.".

As to the Jedi. They execute their right to test children for their Force potential. I see no indicators that they would simply remove children from their families against their will by force. The witches fear that they will have to leave if they pass the Jedis' test but we simply don't know the protocol here. There is a "cultural conflict" with the coven and we just don't know how the Jedi would resolve this conflict if push came to shove.

So much for Star Wars "theory", but does this episode work as entertainment? Well, it certainly is a slow burn. The relationship of the sisters isn't very riveting. It is abundantly clear that both are still very immature and not ready to "ascend" to anything. What makes it even worse is that they're played by child actors who arent very good at acting. The rest of the cast are uneven in their acting. The performance of Mother Aniseya is overly dramatic which subtracts from the gravitas she should have as a leader. Many other roles are either hyper-emotionals or wooden stoics. There certainly isn't much to connect to as a viewer. It says a lot when the Wookie Jedi is the most likable character (and if you're a cynic then you could say he has the best dialogue). The setting and the sets are nice, though. However, there were some strange editing choices of cutting away from a grandiose CGI scene to parts obviously shot on sound stages. Moreover, my pesky brain had some problems with dimensions and internal "world logic". How does a huge reactor room fit into a slim mountain? Where do all these witches get their food?

Finally, the way one of the twins "resolves" her inner conflict leading to a catastrophe only shows how poorly prepared and trained she was by her coven to deal with her potential. Basically, she proves the Jedi right. She needs additional training by experts lest she turns to the Dark Side.

All things considered, this episode isn't a "world breaker" but it certainly isn't a highlight of entertainment. It is a long flashback filler episode which seems to set up character motivations later in the season. Things like that have been done more efficiently.

All in all this episode is just "mid". I hope the writers will eventually get to "the good stuff". Three episodes out of eight is a rather lengthy setup period.