I didn't see it yet, but I'm not sure I understand the author's reaction here:

https://thedirect.com/article/ahsoka...-canon-dispute

I don't understand it either. Also, she has deleted it.

By the way, the first Ahsoka episode relies entirely on an audience seeing a baby and cooing. Technically there's more substance to it, but if you don't coo at the baby then it won't be a particular favorite.

Grogu has taught the creators some bad lessons by being wildly successful.

Ep. 1 was the only dud for me. The rest were good to great. I was a bit disappointed to see that they had already jumped ahead so far in the Ahsoka story by her 2nd episode. We'd already seen so many Anakin/Ahsoka interactions that I would've rather they'd explored more of her childhood. The Dooku stuff was great. It seems like there's a lot there to explore if they wanted to with his slow heel turn.

I kinda wish the episodes were normal cartoon length so we got a bit more, but whatever, I'll take what I can get and am glad there's an abundance of SW content right now.

The one takeaway from the first episode was that Ahsoka was able to instinctively force-tame a wild animal as a baby in a way that Ezra had to spend quite a bit of time learning to do as a teenager.

As always, the proper takeaway is that Ezra sucks.

Agree with Boba > Obi-Wan, including the part about Obi-Wan being enjoyable despite occasional moments of abject silliness.

I've started in on watching Mando back, feeling like I was probably missing something by being more bearish on it than most. Through the first three episodes, it struck me that the initial arc (discovering Grogu, delivering Grogu, rescuing Grogu) was quite a bit stronger than I remember. Then the next three episodes were more what I remember: middling procedural without a lot to invest in. The show is absolutely nothing special when it's in "bounty hunt of the week" mode. Episode 5 was better than 4 or 6 though.

Guess I've still got a couple of episodes of rewatching to go in this season, so my mind could change, but my current inclination is that BOBF is better than Mando S1.

I could see that, I just think Baby Yoda is such an elite character that it prob puts Mando S1 over BOBF. I agree that the bounty hunt of the week episodes weren't great. I liked the way BOBF started out w/the Tusken Raiders eps, but then it got weaker as the season progressed. There's also the issue that Mando is kinda how I would've envisioned a Boba Fett series going down. I think it stole a lot of thunder from BOBF so instead we got a boring, elderly version of Boba Fett. In addition, the best episodes of the season ended up being Mando S2.5. I guess technically they're BOBF, but it feels like cheating.

Anyway, I would've preferred a bad ass, 20-something Boba. How did he rise to eventually become Vader's go to guy? That's a much more interesting story imo.

Well, cheating or no, I would think that those Mando 2.5 episodes have to count toward some series, and I can't see much of an argument for not considering them as part of BOBF. They did take Boba off-screen for a time, but they also clearly worked to set up that season/series finale.

Grogu is good when he's doing something and isn't just relying on "well, he's really small and looks like Yoda" - definitely thought it was awesome when he used the force to help Mando defeat the mudhorn in episode 2 - but he also isn't even around much in some of these procedural episodes. Mando keeps going out on these jobs and having to leave the kid behind, so he gets shown in the B-plot at most.

I'm sympathetic to anyone annoyed that BOBF gives us a softer Boba who has lost his fastball a bit. I actually liked that because I was never that intrigued by Boba's character from the original trilogy, so humanizing him this way works for me. But I said at the time I watched it that I could easily understand audience members being put off by their expectation for the Boba character being subverted, so that one just comes down to personal preference.

Yeah, senior citizen Fett wasn't the best, but Krrsantan and the Rancor saved the a lot of those scenes for me.

Fack me, I gotta watch some Star Warz. I’ve been watching wrestling bs nonstop.

Vice’s new Tales From the Territories is pretty good. The first episode was kinda lame tho. A lot depends on the guys in the round table.

I'm dead certain you'll love Andor.

As am I! Really glad to see the overall positive response from the wider audience.

I definitely forgot that Grogu force-choked Cara Dune. It’s like he used the force to get a sneak peek at her Twitter feed.

So, consistent with “my mind could change,” allow me to walk this opinion back. That lull in the middle of Mando S1 I still consider to be a lull, but the season starts really strong and ends even stronger. It’s better than BOBF. At least until I watch Boba again in the future and re-upgrade it.

I rated the Mando eps as I went this time, and my S1 average is 7.5. BOBF episode average is 7.0. Actually it looks like my Obi-Wan average is 7.5 too? I’m pretty damn sure that won’t hold up on eventual rewatch. That show hasn’t digested that well for me. So yeah, I’m at Mando S1 > Boba > Obi-Wan.

Absolutely loved the Dooku portion of Tales of the Jedi. Currently reading Master & Apprentice, which loosely ties in with more on the Qui Gon/Dooku relationship.

The Ashoka stuff. well, that happened too. Reading up on it a bit more, it's just baffling that they seemed to go out of their way to cause conflict with their choice.
https://dorksideoftheforce.com/2022/...-ahsoka-novel/

I’m actually in the middle of reading Master and Apprentice too. Good stuff so far. Claudia Gray continues to deliver.

Basically I’m happy to continue to get any further Qui-Gon content in any medium. Truly an elite character. And it obviously helps that it had Liam Neeson to bring it to life.

Maul and Qui-Gon were both awesome characters that went away too soon in the movies. The prequels should've been amazing with all these great characters, iconic moments, storylines, etc. Can you imagine if they were written by Filoni and his team w/help from some of the elite authors like Gray, Zahn, and Luceno? Revenge of the Sith with the team behind the darker tone of Andor? Holy ****

Tony Gilroy openly doesn’t care about Star Wars, so stuff like Andor is likely all he’s of use for in this franchise. Not a bad thing at all; this show should not be the last thing they do that is grounded in characters that aren’t wielding the force. But I have to imagine it would be a bit problematic to have handed him something like Revenge of the Sith, and he probably wouldn’t have wanted it. But it definitely would have been nice if the script was left in other hands.

So I got to the part in the book last night, where Obi-Wan is explaining lightsabers to whoever it was, but when he's asked who would win if two Jedi fight and he had no answer, it made me realize that they're not really trained to battle other lightsaber wielding individuals (Sith) because they don't believe they exist anymore. They should actually suck in actual lightsaber combat. Makes it more believable that Maul (who was training for years for this specifically) would be able to take out Qui Gon or hold his own on a 2 on 1 situation. I guess in situations after that, they've had 10+ years to realize the Sith still exist and they better sharpen their skills.

Yeah, it was Fanry who asked him about that. Your point seems reasonable, but in Clone Wars it’s made clear that Dooku can also defeat Jedi 1-on-2. Even these Sith apprentices seem to wield superior powers to Jedi. If anything, the lore would suggest that it’s crazy that Windu had Sidious on the verge of defeat in Revenge of the Sith before Anakin ****ed everything up.

Dooku’s favored style is Makashi, Form II, which is specifically tailored to combat with another lightsaber. It is a rarely used style in the prequel era, where Soresu (Form III) and Ataru (Form IV) are the most common. As OneOut points, most Jedi would not expect to fight an opponent with a lightsaber in this era. Obi-Wan uses Soresu (ultra defensive) and Qui-Gon favors Ataru (aggressive and flippy).

Yes, Maul’s main advantage was that he spent his entire life training to fight multiple lightsaber opponents.

Windu used Form VII, Vapaad, which he invented himself. It’s an extremely difficult style that allows the user to channel dark force energy, which is why it worked so well against Palpatine— he was literally redirecting Sidious’s own energy back at him. The form is super dangerous. Windu only ever taught it to a few other Jedi, but they always fell to the dark side due to using Vapaad. Shatterpoint is a solid novel if you want to dig deeper on Windu and his unique lightsaber form.

Story checks out. Those 2 Jedi lasted 3 seconds. At least Fisto parried a few blows, but was nearly as useless.

Thanks, this is interesting context.

Just saw where Disney+ is going from $79.99 per year to $109.99. Pretty massive price hike. May have to jam in all my watching in a month before the subscription renews. I'm not sure there's enough content on there to keep me interested for that price. Going monthly may be better.

You're probably better off getting the Hulu/ESPN+/Disney+ package than just subscribing to Disney+ standalone unless there's really nothing you watch on Hulu