Part One: Master and Apprentice

I watched the entire Star Wars: Rebels series in preparation for episode one, finishing season four the day of the premier. It's great fun seeing the Easter eggs and how the story seems ready to pay off the last episode of Rebels right from the start.

The Star Wars audience is always in good hands with Dave Filoni. But something about the direction or editing here seems strangely low-energy and slow. Perhaps I'm just over-used to the kinetic energy of th animated series. But it seems like there is a lot of staring and pausing and walking, etc. The characters earned a strong connection to each other I don't feel here yet. Otherwise visually beautiful and a great start to a series focused on one of Star Wars' most interesting characters. Can't wait to see how they bring back Ezra!

Great premise, good CGI, great value production, overall very good casting (except a couple of badly written characters), mediocre writing for the first episode.

But yet another teeny weeny, angry young (infantile) adult angle, jesus christ, have content writers really run out of ideas?

The Sabine Wren fighting scene was weak & uncommitted, sorry to say but this had more of a girly fight instead of 2 jedi's in action. The lack in effort & severe lack in training was quite clear. Truly hope this is going to improve in the coming episodes.

The verdict is not yet set in stone, so I still hope for improvement in the coming episodes.

Ray Stevenson, may this great actor rest in peace. Sad to see this old devil gone from the world of acting.

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.

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.

Text: Well, after months of waiting, Ahsoka is here!

I am pleased to say that I am overall satisfied with the first 2 episodes. I have a few problems with some choices here and there, but first the positives.

The casting is perfect! Sabine is a standout.

The set pieces and cinematography are fantastic. It felt very cinematic.

I love the newcomers - the fallen Jedi. If that is the correct term

The lightsaber fights were pretty good

It feels like Rebels Season 5

Great setup for the rest of the season. It took it's time and that was very much appreciated

There is an obvious point to this show

Some little things I didn't like:

Ahsoka seems a little bored - or I guess I should say Rosario

Some of the writing didn't do it for me

The story is too much akin to the Rise of Skywalker

Well, I'm excited for future episodes.