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This episode had a tall order to fill after last week, but splashy entrances, cute creatures, and an unsettling, spooky mood made for another riveting installment. A classic fantasy archetype performs important functions for the series and Star Wars more broadly. (That’s purposefully cryptic, much like this episode.) 

[SPOILER WARNING: This review is a one-way trip into spoiler territory. Traverse it at your own risk!]

Image Credit: IGN

Witch, please. 

I saw this on a mug at Target the other day, and it cracked me up. There’s a certain joy I’ve always derived from the dark fantasy and whimsy, the creepy and cute that is unique to Halloween time. Little did I know that Ahsoka would become the perfect series with which to celebrate spooky season. Otherworldly witches donning red robes in a dreamscape wasteland? Massive star whale bones strewn about, free-floating in space? Zombie Stormtroopers stitched together with scraps of crimson and gold, probably powered by green magic? (Sorry, magick.) Fire up Michael Jackson’s Thriller and order me a pumpkin spice latte (I see you, The Colbycast). 

I want to first acknowledge that this episode had huge moments: Grand Admiral Thrawn, the Moriarty of the Star Wars universe, made a grand entrance that left me shaking in my perfectly-framed-in-close-up boots. And the beloved street rat turned Jedi, purrgil pal extraordinaire, Ezra Bridger, finally had his long-awaited reunion with Sabine. Both were thrilling to see. 

Yet, I can’t get these witches out of my head. 

The Nightsisters or Witches of Dathomir seem like the perfect vehicle through which to infuse more mystery and mysticism into the series and Star Wars as a whole. And they reflect a very clever storytelling choice by Dave Filoni: to take a group of characters from The Clone Wars who have always kind of seemed out of place to me (though not in a bad way), or maybe just inexplicable in the mythology of Star Wars — and make the explanation as to why they are the way they are a central plot premise in Ahsoka. 

Image Credit: StarWars.com

In The Clone Wars, the Nightsisters’ powers generated a lot of questions for me. The magick they used seemed somewhat similar to the Force, but it was very green and swirly, and seemed to work more like magic in traditional fantasy stories, relying on spells, crystal balls, and glowing potions. It’s the same as what Morgan Elsbeth manipulates in Episode 2. The Nightsisters use magick for varied purposes: to heal, to resurrect the dead, to become invisible, or even turn someone into a rampaging monster. Most famously, perhaps, Mother Talzin uses it to heal one of her sons, Darth Maul, after he (miraculously) survives his duel with Obi-Wan Kenobi at the end of The Phantom Menace; she conveniently upgrades his DIY cybernetic spider legs to more humanoid ones. Magick always presents as very spooky, and very, for lack of a better word, witchy. 

And yet it’s never explained — at least as far as I can remember (correct me if I’m wrong!) — how exactly this magick compared to or overlapped with The Force. Did the Nightsisters have a different way of tapping into the Force? Was it another energy system entirely? To my recollection, there has never been an expository moment about it to clarify. I often feel as though I am the only one who sits around and wonders about these things, so if you have also had these questions, give us a shout in the comments.

Image Credit: Polygon

It was a huge revelation in the second half of the series premiere of Ahsoka that Morgan Elsbeth identified herself as a descendent of the Dathomiri Nightsisters because I had just never thought about them evolving into a more human-looking form, or forming relationships with humans that would eventually produce children like Morgan. But the even bigger revelation in this episode, I think, is that the Nightsisters are not even from this galaxy. Dave Filoni took a race with powers that didn’t quite fit in with our understanding of the Force and the Galaxy and made that a key feature of them, one that would drive the plot to find Thrawn and Ezra. The Witches can be different and strange all they want without having to answer for it because they are actually from an entirely different galaxy which may have entirely different properties and natural laws. 

At the risk of going into explainer piece mode, which I find myself doing more and more in these reviews (and that’s very telling about the precarious position this series finds itself in), I will note that in The Clone Wars, the Witches of Dathomir seem to be from a planet in Star Wars “galaxy prime”: Dathomir, a gender segregated matriarchy in which Nightbrothers like Maul and his brother Savage (pronounced suh-vaj, like Taj Mahal) live on one side, subservient to the Nightsisters, who occupy the other side. Early episodes of Ahsoka reveal, however, that the Dathomiri originally migrated from Peridea, the extragalactic planet on which this week’s episode takes place. We learn that the planet was once home to a thriving society of Dathomiri, but now, for unknown reasons, it lies in ruins. As far as we know, the three “Great Mothers” we meet in this episode are the only ones left on Peridea.

Viewers of The Clone Wars might remember that this was but the first near-extinction event the witches have experienced. The Nightsisters’ first appearance in The Clone Wars, in fact, was in an arc in which Count Dooku betrays his apprentice, a Nightsister named Assaj Ventress, because she has become too powerful, posing a threat to the Emperor. After she barely survives, she returns to her homeworld of Dathomir to seek aid in her quest for vengeance against Dooku. At the end of The Clone Wars, General Grievous, on Dooku’s orders, massacres the Dathomiri, and only a few survive. So when Morgan Elsbeth caustically says to Shin that she is a “survivor,” that line has a long — and now we know ancient — history behind it. 

In many ways, this episode is a direct follow-up or companion to Episode 2. I’ve certainly referenced it enough times here to support that notion. But what does this recurrence of the Nightsisters and their history mean for the series? How much does the origin story of the Nightsisters actually matter? 

I think it could mean that everything in Ahsoka begins and ends with these bad witches. Whatever Baylan hopes to find likely relates to their ancient history, as Peridea was once ruled by them. And it appears that Thrawn is only in a position to return to our heroes’ galaxy because he has made an agreement with them. 

There’s a way in which I can reverse engineer a challenge Filoni faced when writing Ahsoka. Likely conscientious of the criticism J.J. Abrams received when he structured The Force Awakens as an echo of A New Hope, Filoni wants to continue the story of Star Wars Rebels and bring back familiar faces, but does not want to merely retread past stories. How does a creator direct the impulse to expand a fictional universe? To, on the one hand, illuminate all those classic touchstones for fans while still offering them something they haven’t seen before? Again, this is all conjecture — it is, after all, very dangerous for critics to assume they can divine the intent of an artist — but from where I’m sitting, it looks like Dave Filoni took inspiration from (perhaps unconsciously) a very successful storytelling model provided by George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire and, of course, the landmark HBO series based on his books. 

George R. R. Martin likes a good spooky mood too. The White Walkers and the Night King, who are essentially ice zombies, are some of the scariest antagonists in high fantasy. And, in a more direct parallel with Ahsoka, the Red Priestesses like Melisandre (who sometimes goes by the name “The Red Woman”) can manipulate fire and shadow. They cast spells and generally do witchy things, not unlike the Nightsisters. Oh, and they can resurrect the dead. It would be cruel to mention specific spoilers for an entirely different series here, but let’s just say there are some key characters who benefit from the Red Priestesses’ powers. 

Image Credit: Inverse

I do not merely intend to imitate the Leo pointing meme when identifying these similarities. And it’s not just that they’re all wearing red (though they look great in it). Rather, I place these two types of witches beside one another to show how they serve similar purposes in the larger fantasy narratives they inhabit. Game of Thrones follows a very simple recipe: just add witches and the undead to a grounded political infighting story and you get instant mystique. Without the Red Priestesses, the White Walkers, and dragons, The Song of Ice and Fire is a historical epic based on The War of the Roses. Martin infuses the saga of rival houses trying to outgun or outwit each other, as well as the drama of human greed and ambition, with about 15% pure fantasy elements. And it works. Each makes the other more intriguing. 

I could say the same of Ahsoka, only the additional fantasy elements layer on top of what fantasy we already had by way of the Force and the Jedi. Dave Filoni cranks up the magic about 15% and it revitalizes the more familiar paths of Jedis and rebels fighting an Empire. Game of Thrones was a show that is very much rooted in political machinations and factions warring for control over the seven kingdoms. That’s not too far off from Imperial Remnants like Thrawn or the recently deceased Moff Gideon from vying to overthrow the New Republic. But the addition of characters like Melisandre and the Night King, of Morgan Elsbeth, the Night Troopers, and the Nightsisters, sprinkle in that critical 15% of creepy magic that alters the feel of the entire story. 

What’s more, the presentation of the fantasy elements is utterly mysterious in both. Just as we have yet to hear an expository breakdown of how magick works, Melisandre’s powers are never actually explained. They just ARE. At one point, she births some kind of weird shadow demon baby and no one says anything.  

Even before this episode, I could see the influence Game of Thrones has had on this series, and in a good way. The first indicator was the end credits sequence, complete with wistful strings set to a drumbeat rhythm and map locations we hop around. One is a diorama of different kingdoms and the other is star map of concentric circles, but the resemblance to me is blaring. To be clear, I like both these things and do not mind the resemblance at all. So much of the Filoniverse probably appeals to me because Filoni and I like the same non-Star Wars stories (see my past review that establishes Tolkien and Miyazaki as inspirations). 

Jon Favreau, Dave Filoni’s partner in Baby Yoda crime, said in an interview  with Entertainment Weekly that they wanted The Mandalorian Season 2 to be like Game of Thrones: “The world was really captivated by Game of Thrones and how that evolved as the characters followed different storylines — that's very appealing to me as an audience member." Ahsoka seems a lot more focused, but I can certainly see the conflict and characters here syncing up with many others in, oh, maybe a Mando-verse movie?

I’m not trying to say that Favreau and Filoni are actively trying to copy Game of Thrones. I don’t think it’s as simple as Game of Thrones was really successful, let’s just do what they did. One could easily argue that the wildly popular television series forever changed serialized storytelling; all creators may be living in a post-Thrones world. But, to me, Filoni’s deployment of the Nightsisters in Ahsoka speaks to his interest in world building, as another Tolkien or Martin. 

On Coffee with Kenobi this week, my final, half-baked thoughts pointed to the potential references or inspiration Filoni might draw from Shakespeare’s “Scottish play,” which features an iconic trio of witches, often known as the “Weird Sisters.” The Macbeth references in this series beyond the trio of Great Mothers aren’t necessarily subtle. The title of Episode 2, after all, is “Toil and Trouble,” which is excerpted from one of the most famous lines in all of Western literature: “Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn and cauldron bubble.” So I don’t think I’m going to blow anyone’s mind with this connection necessarily. Still, I think there are insights to unearth here. 

While the literary lineage and historical context which led Shakespeare to create his prophetic witches is rich, complex, and hotly debated amongst scholars and historians, one could trace them back to the Greek goddess, Hecate, who presided over magic, spells, and even necromancy. (There are those zombies again. The Night Troopers HAVE to be zombies like Marrock, who poofed into a cloud of green smoke a few episodes ago.) Later representations of Hecate featured three bodies standing back to back. Many scholars, including the one I quoted on Coffee with Kenobi, Laura Shamas, see Shakespeare’s Weird Sisters as an amalgamation of figures from folklore, myth, and socio-political anxity — a mix of Greco-Roman deities with Jacobean conceptions of pagan witches, for example. 

Image Credit: Comic Book .com

Meanwhile, there are the fates in Greek mythology, who appear to be entirely separate entities. My primary reference point for them is Disney’s Hercules. When I watched that film as a kid, that was probably the first time I learned about the threads of fate in Greek myth. Disney’s Fates very comically snip people’s threads before they die. I always laughed when their scissors broke as they tried to cut Hercules’ demigod thread. The invocation of threads in Ahsoka seems much more figurative than literal, and less tied to an individual mortal life. Conversations between the Great Mothers and Thrawn imply that some threads they can see, but other threads, like Baylan bringing Sabine as their prisoner, are “loose” and unpredictable. 

Image Credit: Business Insider

They very clearly can see Ahsoka coming as they say, “The thread of fate has spoken to us. Another comes. A Jedi. They ride the travelers.” And at the end of the episode, when Thrawn calls upon them to “once again” use their dark magick (so that means he’s already used it before — see the Night Troopers), they answer with “The thread of destiny demands it, Grand Admiral.” Perhaps they can see Ahsoka so clearly because there is a strong literary connection between Ahsoka and the Fates. In an earlier episode of House of R, Joanna Robinson reminded me that the Greek Fates sometimes go by the name Moirai. Ahsoka’s owl familiar from animation is named Morai. THEY’RE ALL CONNECTED. [Insert Charlie Day conspiracy theory meme.]

Filoni, like Shakespeare, could be using building blocks from past mythology and literary traditions as a shorthand, to tell us something about the sinister relationship between the Dathomiri Witches and Thrawn, as I discussed on Coffee with Kenobi. Or do the act of rooting the Nightsisters in these older tropes/characters/figures simply make them creepier and more ancient-seeming to us as viewers?

Image Credit: Polygon

I may, per usual, be overthinking all this, which could be even more hazardous if the the whole point of Dathomiri witches and magick is to defy all explanation and add that instantaneous mystique. Even if I never get answers to any of the questions I’ve posed here, I recognize that what we’re seeing in Ahsoka, despite drawing inspiration from past works or tropes, is new. In spite of all the fan favorite characters returning. In spite of all the Easter eggs. Dave Filoni is doing something NEW with Star Wars. And that couldn’t be more exciting. 

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