Peter Ramsey, although being an Oscar winner for directing Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse, isn’t exactly a household name but with this episode you get the feel that is probably going to change in the future. A cursory glance at his credits would have you labelling him as the “animation guy”, a scroll through IMDb reveals so much more. Ramsey’s background is as a storyboard artist, the often unsung heroes of the film industry, who has worked with the best of the best. Having worked for the likes of Steven Spielberg, David Fincher, Francis Ford Coppola, Ang Lee, and Ron Howard, it should come as no surprise that Ramsey knows how to expertly frame and pace a live action production. His background would also explain how he ended up on Dave Filoni’s radar, a man with a similar career trajectory.
What I am trying to say is that Ramsey, with his second go at directing Star Wars after warming up with Chapter 21 of the The Mandalorian, absolutely nails the fourth episode of Ahsoka.
Fallen Jedi, a title that works as a singular and a plural, pickups right where the previous episode left of with Ahsoka, Sabine, and Huyang shot down on the planet Seatos while investigating what the villains are up to with the Star Map, which is a gateway to another galaxy and the location of Thrawn. This sets us up for a series of thrilling lightsaber duels while Hera and her son, Jacen, defy orders and race to planet to offer back-up.
An Ahsoka versus Marrok duel is calm and collected while the Sabine and Shin Hati rematch is angry and scrappy. It all leads to a showdown between two fallen Jedi, Ahsoka and Baylan, for control of the Star Map before the coordinates can be uploaded to Morgan Elsbeth’s hyperspace ring. All three duels are handled expertly by Ramsey and the Star Wars television stunt team. With a style that lands somewhere between the Original and Prequel trilogies, it great to see the lighsaber become a crucial element of live action Star Wars again.
No matter how thrilling the episode is, there is a great sadness to it in both fiction and reality. The story is classic midpoint Star Wars. The heroes are defeated with no obvious way to turn things around. Baylan strikes Ahsoka so hard that, although it’s not a clear kill, he hits her out of reality. Sabine is defeated both psychologically and physically, first talked into submission by Baylan, with the only way she can see to see Ezra again is to surrender, and then choked out by Shin. To cap thing off, Hera’s squadron are taken out by flying into the wake of Morgan’s hyperspace jump à la The Last Jedi‘s Holdo maneuverer. This leads to Jacen delivering a variation on the classic “I’ve got a bad felling about this”.
But the underlying sadness to everything is the real-life death of Ray Stevenson. His portrayal of Baylan Skol has created the most intriguing addition to the lexicon of Star Wars characters in recent years. This is no one-note villain. Stevenson delivers his lines with pathos and grief. Baylan was clearly once a believer in the Jedi way and still respects the order, he is the mirror of Ahsoka. Where Ahsoka declared herself “No Jedi” but remained in the light, he has survived the horror and lent into the dark. This is a character that has had it potential tragical cut short and the role looks like it may become a career defining one for Stevenson, which highlights the loss.
Everything in the episode builds to the reveal of the ultimate fallen Jedi with the return of Hayden Christensen (oddly de-aged here when he wasn’t in Obi-Wan Kenobi), as Anakin Skywalker, something that was leaked ages ago but still a surprise when it happened. He appears to Ahsoka in the World Between Worlds, a concept too complicated to go into here but watch Rebels for answers, and this has set the Internet alight with what it could mean. Is it actual Anakin, and Force Ghost, an echo, an imposter? Only time will tell, but this was clearly set up as a genuine cliffhanger/taking point, unlike like the fan created Marrok speculation. To see these two interact in live action is something that only a few years ago you would have said was impossible. No matter how loud the minority cry about Disney and other companies, be it Star Wars, Marvel or other genre franchises, we are truly living in the time of fandom.
As a avid devourer of all things Star Wars, there is nothing new here, but it is all executed masterfully. My only concern is how far can Filioni and Co. push things before they break Star Wars in the eyes of a causal fan. They are now leaning hard into the weird parts of Star Wars, something that has always been there in expanded material, both new and old, but not really touched in live action. Weird is what can stop a lot of genre material bleeding over to the mainstream and, if handled incorrectly, become the butt of jokes. If the creatives can make this work it’ll blow the doors of for all future storytelling, which can only be a good thing.
Oh, and Marrok – well, he was just Marrok.
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