Destiny

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.

.....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.

In a show with bad writing and bad acting and illogical story beats, I was genuinely surprised when Jodie Turner-Smith came on screen with some legit good acting. Never heard of this actress, was ready to ignore her flat character and more placeholder dialogue - but couldn't. She's great.

Sadly, and I mean that, her good acting made the rest of the episode even worse by comparison.

No attempt is made to explain why things are happening. They just happen. Cue Jedi for no reason. Cue confusing politics with weird rules. Cue immaculate conception or something? Flashbacks are meant to inform - so why am I more confused?

I'll keep it short as the other reviews have done a good job on iterating through all of the awful things going on with this show.

But ultimately, it's just boring... there's so much they could have done with such a fun IP, but they're just writing such... meh... shows

Everything feels so forced, it's like the actors are stressing so hard to get their big break from a Star Wars show that so much just feels so unnatural.

Episode 1 and 2 felt like we were off to a good start, but this just feels like filler. I'm hoping the series can turn itself around since right now it feels like it's completely nosedived and it's going to be hard to try to carry on watching.

First off, I just want to say I am tired of defending the new star wars shows. I get that both boba fett & obi wan were tough watches for some people but the mandolorian and Andor were some of the best star wars i've seen in a good bit.

This on the other hand, this is tough to watch. I was okay with the first two episodes but this episode literally made me say outloud "What the heck is happening?" to which by the end of the episode I felt like I just wasted my time watching something Star Wars. Even just the thought of wasting my time on something in the star wars universe makes me extremely sad to think about. I absolutely love the world George Lucas made and I know that some shows and movies that have come out have been divisive and a let down but this show is on a complete other level. I feel that Kathleen Kennedy and here team are taking what was good about the universe (both canon and non canon alike) and destroying it. Disney is giving you basically unlimited amounts of money to make something great but you instead took what seems like a screenplay from some 10 year olds star wars fan fiction and made it into reality. I'm just tired, sad and upset at the way she and her team is handling this. There is so much good non-canon storytelling out there, stop trying to recreate the wheel and give the fans what they want.

I am going to try to give this show the benefit of the doubt but my expectations for the rest of this series has dropped to zero.