Comic Review – Grand Admiral Thrawn Prepares to Escape His Exile as “Star Wars: Ahsoka” Concludes with Issue #8
Yesterday saw the release of the eighth and final issue in Marvel Comics’ miniseries adapting Lucasfilm’s live-action Disney+ series Star Wars: Ahsoka, and below are my thoughts on this climactic installment.
Ahsoka #8 serves as a fairly straightforward adaptation of the show’s first-season finale, which was entitled “The Jedi, the Witch, and the Warlord," and for those who don’t remember, that episode began with Grand Admiral Thrawn making final preparations to depart Peridea and return to the main part of the Star Wars galaxy. Here, writer Rodney Barnes and artist Georges Jeanty recreate the scenes wherein Morgan Elsbeth receives her “promotion" to full-fledged Nightsister, Ezra Bridger builds a new lightsaber with the help of the ancient professor droid Huyang, and the titular Ahsoka Tano has a heart-to-heart with her on-again-off-again apprentice Sabine Wren about how the former will never abandon the latter, even if Sabine makes choices with which Ahsoka doesn’t necessarily agree.
This being the finale of both the season and the comic, there are some impactful action sequences that need proper handling as well, such as TIE fighters attacking and shooting down Ahsoka’s Jedi shuttle and the storm on the Great Mothers’ castle, which results in exciting combat setpieces between the Jedi and the zombie-like Night Troopers… not to mention Elsbeth herself. These larger moments translate well enough from screen to sequential art, but I noticed the absence of a few of the more subtle details that didn’t quite survive the transition. But ultimately I’d maintain that Jeanty’s art remains serviceable in delivering the emotions and narrative points that matter most, and one can feel the implications of Thrawn’s escape reverberate with import on the comics page nearly as it did on the show.
The denouement, however, does suffer from being compressed into too few panels, making me want to go back and revisit these moments in live-action (now that I own the series on 4K disc) just to get a better read on what the fates of Shin Hati and Baylan Skoll mean for the larger picture. Ezra’s reunion with General Hera Syndulla also feels rushed here, though the final-page reveal of Anakin Skywalker’s Force spirit watching over Ahsoka and Sabine plays nicely. With Ahsoka out of the way, Marvel is moving on to— finally– releasing its long-delayed Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker adaptation beginning next week, and I have to wonder where it goes from there with these things. There’s still The Mandalorian season three, which I could see the comics publisher tackling, and maybe Andor at some point down the line, though I don’t know if we’ll ever get adaptations of The Book of Boba Fett, The Acolyte, or Skeleton Crew. Either way, this was a decently entertaining read and it has me pumped to hear more details on Ahsoka season two, which will hopefully be coming out of Star Wars Celebration this year.
Star Wars: Ahsoka #8 is available now wherever comic books are sold.