Part Eight: The Jedi, the Witch, and the Warlord is directed by Rick Famuyiwa and written by Dave Filoni, the showrunner. This is the series finale of Ahsoka, I really hope they make a second season because of how they ended it, loose threads and more adventures to come. I think it's needed until Dave Filoni's film in 2026. I thought this was a great episode, it contained everything I wanted to see from Ahsoka, Ezra and Sabine with them up against Thrawn and Morgan Elsbeth. But that was what we got. Two of my new favorite characters got pushed to the side, Baylan and Shin who was only seen at the end possibly because of pacing reasons. I just wish we had a longer finale, because of these two characters, now with Ray Stevenson dead I don't know what they'll do with the character. It was an interesting character and a terrific performance by him. It feels like Dave Filoni has a second season in mind because of him setting up a redemption arc for Shin Hati and this trip Baylan Skoll goes to, which is not present in this episode except for small voice less cameo roles.
The premise of the episode is: The heroes race to prevent Grand Admiral Thrawn's escape.
The episode stars Rosario Dawson as Ahsoka Tano, Natasha Liu Bordizzo as Sabine Wren, Eman Esfandi as Ezra Bridger, David Tennant as Huyang, Ray Stevenson as Baylan Skoll, Ivanna Sakhno as Shin Hati, Lars Mikkelsen as Grand Admiral Thrawn, Diana Lee Inosanto as Morgan Elsbeth, and Hayden Christensen. The characterization for Thrawn is on point, his intelligence and strategic mastermind is shown even more in this episode. Ezra Bridger, I would never believe I would say this but I love this character and mostly are because of Eman Esfandi's performance. I thought there were several good performances throughout the episode, Lars Mikkelsen and Diana Lee Inosanto stood out the most in my opinion. Natasha Liu Bordizzo gave us a good performance too, the writing for Sabine is better in this episode which I hoped but still not great, the direction she got was good though! I think Rick Famuyiwa did a fantastic job at directing the episode, here's someone who has directed multiple episodes of The Mandalorian so he has the experience working in this world.
The action sequences were great in this episode; nicely choreographed, directed and edited. The musical score helps to make the action more suspenseful, along with helping the dramatic scenes, Kevin Kiner has been doing some truly terrific work with this show. This is the episode they've built towards, the attack on Thrawn to make sure he doesn't escape and we get plenty of action sequences, at first I thought the action sequence with the Night Troopers had none of that energy but it was the characters holding back I believe to not tire oneself out. Then we proceed to action more keenly with our heroes skills, for example Ahsoka and her rematch with Morgan Elsbeth which was one of the show's best action sequence. For the others are something out of Clone Wars and what have been hinted at by Thrawn in previous episodes. Action packed from start to finish, great action at that.
The mise-en-scene of the episode was fantastic, brilliantly shot and use of visual effects, clearly higher budget and more heart than what is The Mandalorian these days. Ahsoka have since the first episode been a great show, technically, and whilst some writing choices have been average most of the writing has been on point. The new planet they introduced was a fresh and great idea from Dave Filoni, he's making something original, whilst the first three episodes were not original, the rest was. Part Eight: The Jedi, the Witch, and the Warlord is a great episode which had the potential to be perfect, if it would have been longer and focused more on the antagonists Baylan Skoll and Shin Hati, who became important characters to the show and characters. It just feels we deserved more, or simply a season with ten episodes instead of eight. Overall, a satisfying conclusion, I just hope we get another season as the show feels incomplete.
