#non-rebels viewers of ahsoka have no idea

[anoray]

[khakilike]

I'm surprised there aren't more videos like this on YouTube. Having Carson Teva show up for this mission without Zeb is a bonkers storytelling decision that left me scratching my head for the rest of the episode. It was the perfect time to introduce everyone's favorite Lasat, and the idea that Dave Filoni is saving that introduction for a more impactful moment later on defies logic.* But it looks like that's what fans are banking on.

*The writer of a tv show knows that X minutes into episode Y there will be a perfect opportunity to introduce a character---but the character doesn't know that. If Zeb's loved ones are in danger, he would try to help them now, not wait for an epic moment he doesn't know is coming.

I have my own ridiculous theories, but let's address some of the other explanations offered up in the comments. Zeb isn't in the episode because ...

... he isn't an X-wing pilot. Why would he need to be an X-wing pilot to come along on the mission? There are other types of ships he could fly. Or be a passenger in.

... he is a Y-wing pilot, and they didn't think they needed a bomber for this mission. If I know for a fact that the enemies I'm going up against are collecting Star Destroyer parts, I want to have a bomber on my side (though Ahsoka, Sabine, and Huyang are at least mildly surprised that the Eye exists, so maybe everyone forgot they were tracking a giant hyperdrive core).

... there wasn't time to wait for everyone to show up, so Hera needed to settle for the people who were immediately available. Carson Teva and Zeb are deployed in the same region, and are probably stationed at the same base. If Carson made it on time, Zeb could have made it on time.

... this episode takes place before the Mandalorian episode Zeb appeared in, and he hasn't joined the New Republic Navy or met Carson Teva yet. If that Mandalorian episode takes place after "Fallen Jedi," why does Carson spend it acting like he has no evidence of a plot to restore the Empire? His dead wingmen didn't convince anyone that *something* suspicious was going on?

... there are already too many characters being introduced and Zeb would have been the straw that broke the camel's back. They could have brought Zeb in instead of Carson Teva. Same number of characters, but using the one intimately connected to Hera and Sabine and Ezra, not the one who didn't even think of talking to Hera when he wanted the New Republic to help defend Nevarro. And if anyone is concerned about needing to spend time explaining who Zeb is to non-Rebels viewers, it only takes a second to have Jacen call him "Uncle Zeb!"

Filoni probably has something brilliant up his sleeve that will make me feel silly about getting so hung up on this. I hope so, anyway. Bring it on.

[bedlamsbard]

Architect!

Architect : Name the three most important things for you to plan

1. My keystone scenes -- these are the scenes that I'll plot and write the story around, the ones that get stuck in my head and won't come out. It's helpful if I have multiple keystone scenes that fit into different points in the story, since then I can plot the connective tissue by essentially leapfrogging from keystone scene to keystone scene -- for example, Backbone's are the Ahsoka telling Cham about Hera, Cham and Alecto shooting Kanan, Kanan with both red and blue lightsabers on Mustafar (a lot of people thought this was a reference to Shroud of Darkness, but it was actually planned almost a year before that ep aired), Hera's reunion with her parents, the assassination attempt on Cham, and Ahsoka giving Kanan back his lightsabers. (I might be forgetting one or two because it's been a while.) These don't all develop at once; a lot of them will come into being as the early connective tissue gets develops and then become keystones to write towards and around. They don't always stay in their original forms, either -- one of Gambit's keystones was the massacre in the Naboo throne room, but it was originally intended to be Amidala rather than Sabe.

My concept writing tends to be ideas where I only have one or two keystones, because I need at least half a dozen at various points in the timeline to actually be able to plan a full plot. I usually start with a keystone scene (Anakin talking to Obi-Wan's ghost in the vents in Wake, Loki meeting Frigga in the halls of the TVA in Morning) and roll it around in my head as other keystone scenes develop (Anakin, Obi-Wan, and Yoda's conversation + Anakin seeing the Operation Knightfall footage + Anakin pulling Obi-Wan back into his flesh + Anakin vs. Vader on Mustafar in Wake), and then work out the connective tissue to get between those points. One of the reasons that Crown's been stalled is because I have beginning and middle keystones, but not ending ones.

(Morning does have top/middle/end keystones, for the record.)

2. Emotional resonance/theming -- I don't necessarily sit down and go "this is a story about HOPE," but a lot of the time the emotional resonance and thematic notes develops along with the plot and keystones. The Ouroboros trilogy (currently at two out of three) focuses each AU on a reflection of each PT trio member's "worst case scenario" -- Anakin's nightmare universe is, uh, well, the OT canon, where he went to the dark side trying to do the right thing and got everyone he knew killed; Padme's nightmare universe is the one where she dragged a Jedi Knight away from the Order and turned away from the her faith in the Republic and was responsible for the start of a galactic war; Obi-Wan's is the one where his failure led to the destruction of the Republic and the shattering of the Order and where he can't trust the Force anymore. Backbone is a story about identity and faith and family, blood and chosen, and how to get out of a bad situation when you can't admit to yourself it's a bad situation. (So, uh, I got out of an abusive relationship in the middle of Backbone and about six months after that I was rereading what I'd written to date and went yikes, wow, was I ever working through some stuff.)

3. So I'm not a huge fan of the term "fix-it fic," but as someone who writes exclusively AU fanfic, what I'm nearly always aiming for isn't "what canon didn't do," it's "what canon couldn't (or wouldn't) do" -- whether it's because that story has always been told and with rare exception, canon doesn't outright AU itself, or because they're not going to tell ~that kind of story (whether that's sex, violence, darkness, etc.), or because like, they've got their release schedule plotted out for the next ten years and you know the characters aren't going to intersect -- whatever. Star Wars is not going to tell an OT era story where Luke Skywalker is not the big damn hero who saves the galaxy, because, well, the OT exists, but I want to tell the story where that role is played by someone else. Marvel is not going to give me my Asgardian royal family reunion where every single person involved is from a different point in the timeline and from a slightly different universe, but I want to write that story, and while I'm at it I'm going to AU five different movies as a result so that those movies turn out the way I'd have liked, but in order to do that, I have to know those films inside out. I never want to write a fanfic I can scrape the serial numbers off of and get a perfectly intelligible original fic out of, because for me, that's a failed fanfic. I want my fanfic so deeply rooted in canon, no matter how AU it is, that it cannot be disengaged from its canon context. Which doesn't mean it can't be read by someone who's not familiar with the canon -- I got a lot of non-Rebels viewers who read Backbone -- but that as a story it cannot exist without the canon it's based on. And that's a thing I think about a lot while I'm plotting, because if I didn't want to do that? I wouldn't be writing fanfic.

[bedlamsbard]

(in response to this post)

This turned out really, really long, so, uh, apologies?  The short version is that the number one rule is that your legacy characters don’t undercut your main cast.

I think Rogue One and Solo pulled it off -- Solo is a weirder case because it’s a prequel story about a main character, but Rogue One’s use of Tarkin, Vader, Mon Mothma, Bail Organa, etc. worked for me because from the beginning they were there to support the original characters in the film and never wavered from that.  Rogue One also benefited from knowing exactly what it was going to do and never wavering from that for an instant.

In terms of the shows, TCW is also not a straightforward case because it was using film characters as its mains and pulling from all over, but in terms of OT characters that appeared in the show, I am pretty happy with how TCW pulled off Chewbacca in Wookiee Hunt (3.22) -- puts him there, uses him well to support the main character of that particular arc (Ahsoka) and the other supporting characters (the other youngling Jedi), but it doesn’t turn into the Chewie episode. Same with Ackbar in the Mon Cala arc in S4: support, not overwhelming, doesn’t waver from the central theme of the arc.  Tarkin’s the other big one, and I’m pretty satisfied with the way he was used in TCW -- he’s always there in reference to the main characters of the arcs he appears in, and not in reference to himself, if that makes sense -- he’s there because having him there specifically makes more sense than it doesn’t.

(Honestly, I think the little philosophical lessons really helped with TCW being able to keep its focus: they have to drive straight towards that and not hesitate about it.  Every time they dropped those (I’m talking about you, Siege of Mandalore), they ran into a problem where they sort of wandered around a bit.)

Maul...I like Maul a lot.  I don’t have that much of a problem with the decision to bring him back into the timeline in TCW (at least you always knew that when George Lucas was doing something he was doing it because he enjoyed it, instead of the current case of “are you doing it for a purpose? for cheap lulz? for the aesthetic? are you setting up a sequel? are you trying to course-correct another piece of canon?”).  I do think Maul got overweighted in S7, and this is partially because they didn’t really have the space to build him up from where he ended in S5.  The Darth Maul - Son of Dathomir comic helps a little, but S7 is such a rapid switch from where he is in S5 (and you do have to assume that most viewers hadn’t read the comic) that he then pulls in too much narrative weight, and that’s because S7 was trying to do something really, really different from what the previous six seasons of TCW were trying to do.

Rebels sometimes pulls it off, sometimes does not.  Since we’re on the topic of Maul already, I am actually fine with Maul in Rebels.  I don’t actually think he was used to his full benefit because they pulled back at the last minute, but Maul in Twilight of the Apprentice? Fine with that. Same with Holocrons of Fate and Visions and Voices. (I’ve got a few other problems with Visions and Voices.)  Maul is always there in relation to the main characters of the show, not in relation to himself and not in relation to a non-Rebels character.  Did it have to be Maul (back in TotA, obvs, not the latter two)?  No, but it makes sense and it works really well thematically with all of the characters present in that episode.  Holocrons and Visions and Voices, same.

Twin Suns, on the other hand, another Maul episode, was a disaster -- beautifully made episode, everyone is in character, it should never have been made.  (I’m currently grumpy about this one specifically because I recently saw an “Ezra shouldn’t have been in Twin Suns” take.)  Yes, Maul and Obi-Wan are both interacting with Ezra, but Ezra in this ep is basically himself the McGuffin.  Neither the actual, thematic, or emotional conflict in the episode revolves around Ezra even if he’s the instigator of that final showdown.  If you can start and end an episode without the show’s main cast (and Rebels differs from TCW in that it did, very specifically, have a main character as well as a main cast), you’ve made a mistake.  Not to mention that Twin Suns takes a bunch of narrative and thematic weight that was set in TotA and earlier in S3 (such as the Maul/Kanan and Maul/Ezra parallels), and then completely ignores it in favor of a confrontation that is not going to be emotionally significant for viewers who are there for the show’s main cast.

Darth Vader mostly works in Rebels -- in S2 in isolation, not as part of the greater Rebels plot arc which is a weird hot mess of deescalating villains season by season (a whole ‘nother thing).  In Siege of Lothal he’s set up in relation to the main cast and that’s who most of his interaction is with.  Same with TotA, though I sometimes think more weight is put on the Vader/Ahsoka duel than should be there in terms of who the main cast are.  Sometimes I think it’s fine as is.  His other brief appearances are fine, since he’s mostly there just to loom and use up the fabric animation budget.

Tarkin really works in Rebels -- this is honestly Rebels’ biggest legacy character success, my gods, his introduction in Call to Action is terrifying.  Did it have to be Tarkin?  No, they could have made an OC and had the same role, but Tarkin here, in this context?  It ups the tension level a thousand percent, we see him ordering around the Imperials in the show (and the execution scene still gives me chills), and the end of Call to Action, when he’s talking to Kanan on the gunship and orders the destruction of the communications tower?  This is easily one of the most terrifying thing Rebels has ever done and to be honest, I’m not sure they ever topped it in terms of sheer presence.  Evacuating the star destroyer in Fire Across the Galaxy? Perfect parallel to ANH.

From S2-S4, Rebels really wavers back and forth on their use of legacy characters and this is true of the show as a whole from that point onwards -- when there’s a legacy character, they tend to be overweighted in terms of the episode and in terms of how much narrative space is given to them rather than to the main cast.  Not all the time (I have issues with the S4 Mandalore arc, but I think Bo-Katan was played fairly well because most of the narrative weight was still on Sabine), but a lot of the time.  The Future of the Force is really bad on this in terms of Ahsoka -- most of the episode is still focused on Kanan and Ezra, but then they’re taken off the board so she can have her dramatic fight scene.  Shroud of Darkness -- I go back and forth.  (I have other issues with Shroud.)  Leia in A Princess on Lothal -- mostly okay, but some weird moments, like using her to rally the Ghost crew into action?

Wedge in The Antilles Extraction -- fine  He’s played in relation to Sabine, his presence in the ep is thematically consistent with everything else they’re doing. Saw Gerrera in both S3 and S4 I really go back and forth on.  I think I’m mostly okay with him in terms of how he’s played in those four episodes, but I also think there are a lot of questions raised in terms of, like, his relationship to the Alliance.  (This goes for his appearance in Jedi Fallen Order as well -- I’m fine with it, it’s not mindblowing, it was nice to see.)  Mon Mothma I go back and forth on and part of this is because I’m not entirely sure what they were doing with the Rebel Alliance -- this same thing is true for Saw Gerrera.  Especially in the back half of S3 (though it appears earlier as well), Rebels is intersecting more and more with the Rebel Alliance in the lead-up to Rogue One and ANH, but I don’t think they were really entirely sure what they wanted to do with that thematically, which is how we get these wildly varying views of the Alliance even from within it, especially in S4.  Which is part of the reason why S4 thematically is A DISASTER.  (y’all I should not have come out of S4 hating the Rebel Alliance and I still can’t tell if they did that on purpose or not?)

I’m not mentioning every legacy character in Rebels here (Cham, Hondo, Madine, C-3PO and R2-D2, Bail Organa), but mostly the ones where they pay major roles.  Rex I think Rebels mostly managed to pull off having as treating him like supporting cast and not overweighting him as character.  -- The clone trio at the beginning of S2 has them in relation to Kanan, Ezra, Kallus and the stormtroopers, etc., not just in relation to themselves.

(I have no idea how to talk about Thrawn in this context because Thrawn isn’t exactly a legacy character from the current canon, but on the other hand he’s a major EU legacy character, so he’s also just a weird god damn case in general that doesn’t really have a parallel in current canon?)

What else we got -- Star Wars Resistance; doesn’t use that many legacy characters but uses the ones it has pretty sparingly.  Poe is always there in relation to Kaz, Leia has a very brief appearance, Phasma and Hux are mostly there because it makes sense for them to be there, same with Kylo Ren.  Resistance has its issues (both thematically and with pacing) but this is not one of them).

Jedi Fallen Order -- Saw was fine; Vader wasn’t overweighted once he showed up.  Battlefront II had its legacy characters almost entirely in context of Iden and Del; they weren’t there just to be there.  (And not being a gamer I’m not one hundred percent certain how those two felt in actual playing, vs. my watching them on YT.)

(I am not terribly familiar with the current canon books and comics because I stopped reading them a while ago.)

Non-canon example from Legends: Han Solo’s appearance in the Wraith Squadron novels.

The short version of this is: if you’re going to use legacy characters, you want them to be there in relation to your main cast. It has to work thematically; they can’t undercut your mains. Their stories, no matter how important to the saga as a whole, should not overwhelm the main cast of your actual show/film/game/whatever. And they definitely should not undercut your mains.  (I think Mando did this fine with Bo-Katan, tbh.)

[anoray]

Thank you for your thoughts!

I agree they could have made it clear what Ezra did with the purrgils much earlier on. The point I want to make is that it IS important and it DOES matter that non-Rebels viewers know that Ezra got the purrgils to help him save Lothal and remove Thrawn from the equation. Does this not give newcomers some idea of Ezra's courage and Jedi abilities, plus help build interest in his character and the quest to find him? Not to mention it helps clarify that Ahsoka is simply copying Ezra to an extent, not usurping or overshadowing what he accomplished first and all on his own while she was still MIA.

I also agree that further exploration of Ahsoka's psyche and everything that happened with Anakin/Vader in the WBW could have been far more in-depth as an entirely separate series rather than a single episode. Filoni's original intention seemed to be two different series because the Rebels epilogue gave us an already transformed "Ahsoka the White," plus Sabine's narration and the visuals of all the characters strongly implied the search for Ezra began soon after the Alliance won the war.

For whatever reason, Filoni & Co. retconned the epilogue with backflips and manipulations to shoehorn the Rebels sequel into Ahsoka's show. Although I am enjoying many elements of the series, especially what they've done with Jacen so far, it's unfortunate the Ghost family members have been undercut in many ways. I will have to stop grinding my teeth that Ahsoka has been crowned the main character of their story despite the fact she had no onscreen interaction with Thrawn and Sabine throughout Rebels.

I've decided that the Ahsoka show is probably at its best when the characters AREN'T SPEAKING. Which is unfortunate because it's a show that relies so much on its fun visuals and its fan service and its one-liners to do a lot of the work, and yet the characters talk so much without saying much of anything at all. Certainly nothing of any real importance or that pays off later.

I rewatched episode 5 today and was just hit by how much I genuinely loved the scene where Ahsoka goes to interact with the badly wounded clone during the Ryloth flashback sequence. It hit me when I first watched it as well and stuck with me as the best scene out of the entire episode, probably the best scene in the entire show so far. Everyone else was screaming about the Vader flickers and I'm over here obsessing over Ahsoka just silently walking over to an injured clone, sitting down to touch his hand, and the clone silently reaching over to place his hand atop hers. The whole scene probably takes place over about 20 seconds at MOST, and it's entirely without dialogue.

And it's PERFECT.

We get to just watch Ariana Greenblatt's face as she cycles through grief and pain and love for this clone whose name she may not even know or remember anymore and joy that he's still able to reach out to her to provide HER comfort when he feels her hand on his arm. We can't even see the clone's face, we're stuck looking at Ahsoka work through the emotions of this single interaction and how deeply it impacts her. It reminds us that the clones were people she knew, people she loved, people she felt responsible for protecting. These were her friends and they loved her, too. And so many of them died, while she still lives.

It lasts 20 seconds and doesn't have a single line of dialogue and it tells us SO MUCH about Ahsoka's relationship to the clones, both then and now. It tells us so much about how she feels about the war, the men she loved, and the fact that so many of them were lost, long before Order 66 happened. And she was powerless to stop any of it. We don't need dialogue to understand what she's feeling in this moment because they actually stopped to let the actor and the scene speak for itself, in the simplest possible way.

And then compare it to the scene where Ahsoka connects to the purrgil. SHE'S not speaking, but we keep cutting away from Ahsoka to listen to Jacen chattering away at Hera ("Is she going to speak to the purrgil?" "That's the idea" "Is the whale going to take her to Ezra?" "That's the hope, kid") and basically spelling out the plan and the scene for us in a way that we really did not need, especially since they have Ahsoka and Huyang basically explain it themselves later anyway. We're also cutting away to Carson Teva blathering to the Fleet Commander and stalling for time, despite the fact that we absolutely did not actually need to see that happen. So the emotion of the moment where Ahsoka is connecting with the purrgil keeps getting undercut by all of this extraneous dialogue by the other characters that is adding nothing to the plot or the scene. The additional dialogue also makes the scene last a lot longer, so it feels like Ahsoka's standing there for an age before anything happens. It's a LOT longer than the quick scene between her and the clone, but it's massively less impactful.