Night

Everyone is giving props to Leslie & Disney for this episode. If you knew anything about how action movies are made these days, you'd know that all action is subcontracted through specialists. So Leslie Headland has no say in the action choreography. Disney was smart to hire Christopher Clark Cowan to be the action director / designer. And because this whole episode was basically light saber and hand to hand fighting, it basically meant he directed the whole thing. And everything he did was great.

But Leslie's horrible leadership still bleeds through. The entire episode was filmed on this horrible jungle set, never truly looking like a real exterior. The dialogue was still cheap and corny, the twists were still predictable. Get a real director and pair them with Christopher Clark Cowan and we'll finally have something great.

The number of moments when characters did things that made no sense (or omitted to do things they should have) was probably in the 20 or 30 range, but you know what? I don't care. At least something happened. The big reveal happened, and it was terrible, but you know what? I don't care, because at least something happened. The previous four episodes, nothing happened. Well, to be fair, there was a fire and a bunch of witches died, but we don't even know how/why/who did it, so it falls in the 'nothing happened' category. Finally, people do stuff in this episode. And most of it was dumb, but i don't care. Substantial improvement, and i had fun.

For the last few weeks, I've been waiting for something that would signal the coming of great times for this show. The few half was a solid effort from everyone involved and has received way too much hate online for things that are honestly beneath some people. However, it also hasn't been a great show and that has been annoying given its potential. The show hasn't tapped into the darkness that it felt like it would, despite some very dark and deep themes going on. This episode did, however, deliver on its premise and also provided us with some really great and refreshingly deadly action.

The action in "Star Wars" has been surprisingly bland as of late, and with "Ahsoka" it felt like they took all the danger out of lightsabers and simply turned them into sticks. This episode delivers on the promise of last week's cliffhanger and delivers some stunning lightsaber combat that is - without spoiling anything - quite a deadly affair. The enemy is proving to be quite a dangerous being, and the development of his character this episode was quite satisfying, despite not being all that surprising. Instead, the mysteries are shifted elsewhere, and it sets up a new question for audiences that we'll want the answer to, and this is one that has been brewing for a few weeks, and one that I'm quite ready to get answered. The show still seems surprisingly aimless and it's going to be really interesting to see if they'll be able to make the landing without any real landing pad in sight. The writing is effective enough, and the dialogue - while still sounding prequel-esque - was much less cheesy in this episode and did provide some nice contemplative ideas for thought about the doings and rules that the Jedi uphold. Not anything that shakes the core of what a Jedi is and makes you think about it, but it works nonetheless. The acting is also quite great in this episode, and there are some cool and emotional moments that gives them plenty of opportunity to show their range, especially Lee Jung-jae who continues to be an absolute highlight of this entire show.

"Night" is the best episode of the season so far, and a lot of it is because of its immaculate action sequences and story developments. It still feels weirdly aimless, but the episode was a refreshing change of pace and did actually provide some good cheer moments and produced some pretty great performances all around.

The Good:

Finally something interesting happened in the episode! I won't spoil it, but there was at least some sort of action and conflict that was engaging. Far more entertaining than people walking through a forest for 30 minutes.

Additionally, the choreography of the fight scenes in this episode were actually quite good for the most part. Much stronger than Asoka, in this episode.

The Bad:

Amandla Stenberg playing a twin of herself. This was written as a key plot element of the story (however cliche) but she's just not a strong enough of an actress yet, to make this convincing. She would have been fine for one role or the other, but falls pretty short to play herself as a different person. Twins are very different people. She plays both the exactly same, but with a different haircut. You needed someone with a strong and dynamic range of acting skills to pull this off properly, and I don't think there are too many actors or actresses that could do that. They should have added in a 2nd actress to play either a twin or a sister. Or even just ditched the twin idea to begin with. It was rather unnecessary imho.

The Ugly: The CGI in this is like early 2000s Doctor Who. Really low budget look and feel. The general sets are also very Star Trek (80s series) quality. Really surprising given the extraordinary budget.

Overall, credit where credit is due, so I gave it a 6/10. This was the most interesting of the episodes to date, and really I'm left thinking this should have been the opening episode of the series. Everything that led up to this episode was slow and so much of it unnecessary. But this episode had challenges too. Still was far better than the other 4.

Chiming in with everyone else who point out the fight scenes are basically the only redeeming quality of this episode. In particular the majority of the acting and transititions between scenes are absolutely horrible. Whoever edited this episode missed the mark, and the main character twin-person simply cannot deliver dialouge in a convincing way.

Squid game guy does well with such a poor script. Dafne Keen did an excellent job and was my favorite saber fight. Still cannot explain the constant "turns" and switcheroos with Mae over this and the last episode - bad writing and makes no sense. The lightsaber haircut was just insanely bad, please stop Disney. Please.