Star Wars, Disney +, and is anyone else sick of Ahsoka?

Disney + is still kinda bad.

The Mandalorian is good. But The Last Jedi and Rise of Skywalker confirmed my suspicion that Star Wars has been a dead brand since 1983. The best idea in the entire series from the last 30 years, (aside from the holy 2003 Clone Wars miniseries of course), is that time they brought back Darth Maul with spider legs. So yeah, the bar was extremely low, and The Mandalorian didn’t have to do a lot to be a hit. It’s refreshingly good. It’s simple, it’s a space western, and it makes good Star Wars look easy.

But The Mandalorian is only thing that Disney + has. I waited till the entire series was on the platform before I got a free trial and watched the whole thing in a day. Which was a mistake, because I then forgot that I had a subscription and by the end of the week and I forgot to cancel it. So I got charged for the month. I forgot about it, because there is literally nothing else to watch on the site. And even the stuff that is there, is either partially missing, neutered, or incomplete. Shows like The Simpsons are cropped so even visual jokes are literally cut out. Shows that are on the platform are missing certain seasons for no reason. The 90's Spider-Man only has season 1. Recess is missing seasons. They have all the X-Men movies, except for Logan and Deadpool, you know, the most critically acclaimed ones. You go to the Star Wars section and it’s pathetic. You got the movies, The Clone Wars (2008), Rebels, and Resistance. That’s it. Where’s Clone Wars '03? It’s on YouTube, but not here? What about Droids, or the Ewok movies? You have all the old Marvel cartoons, so why not the old Star Wars ones? What about the hundreds of movies that you now own due to your purchase of Fox?

This stuff is so easy to fix too. Just put Logan, Deadpool, maybe stuff like Punisher War Zone, under a new banner called Marvel Knights, that you have to be in an adult account to even see, sort of like what Netflix does with their Kids section. Make a sub-section in the Star Wars part of the site called Legends, and put all the old expanded universe stuff, Clone Wars '03, Droids, Ewoks, throw in the Holiday Special. And put all the seasons of your shows on Disney + you bastards! Why the fuck wouldn’t you?

So The Clone Wars '08 is back, and just as mediocre as ever. We're about halfway through the season and not much has happened so far. The first 4 episodes make up a pretty average clone arc focusing on Rex. It’s fine, it’s pretty standard for this show. Actually, it’s arguably of a higher quality than most of the show. But they spent so much time hyping up Ahsoka and Darth Maul in the trailers for this season, and even hinting at a connection to Revenge of the Sith, though how that's gonna work, I have no idea.(*See Clone Wars '03 on how to do that properly) So can we get on with it? Finally, episode 5 of 12, we catch up with Ahsoka, and OH MY GAWD IT'S THE WORST ONE SO FAR! At least before, we had some cool action and Anakin killed a guy, but this Ahsoka stuff is just... boring.

Enter my rant on why Ahsoka is kind of a dumb character.

Canonically, Ahsoka shouldn’t exist as a character. In Revenge of the Sith, we get the line, "You are on this council, but we do not grant you the rank of master." Yet earlier, according to The Clone Wars, Anakin was a master, and had an apprentice. So the entire premise of the show doesn't really make any sense. As a character, Ahsoka is fine, but I think it's kind of telling that her best arc is the one where she leaves the show. They brought her back in Rebels so that Vader could kill her. A satisfying way to end to the character. Just kidding, she’s still alive because time travel. What is happening?

So recently, Rosario Dawson was cast as Ahsoka in The Mandalorian season 2. She’s a good actress, I’m sure she’ll be fine. But one of the best things about Mando is that it kinda has new things in it, or at least some new characters. So if Ahsoka becomes a major character next season… well, it was fun while it lasted. I hope that if and when she does show up, she has a brief guest appearance, like 1 or 2 episodes. But I assume she’ll have a major role in the Baby Yoda storyline.

Why so much Ahsoka? Rebels, a new season of The Clone Wars, she even had a cameo in Rise of Skywalker along with Freddie Prince Jr. And now Mando. Like every major Star Wars thing since 2008 has included her in some way. Why? Oh right, Dave Filoni, the guy who wrote the least good episode of Mando. He and Ahsoka are dominating Disney +.

Back on topic, there wasn’t anything else coming to Disney + till august, and that was before everything shut down and got delayed. At least DC Universe attempted to have consistent new shows in order to keep people hooked, Titans, then Doom Patrol, then Swamp Thing, then Young Justice Season 3, then more Titans, then Harley Quinn, and we're getting more Harley in like a week. D+ has such a huge gap between “hot new content” and even the stuff that is currently coming out is ok at best. Even the Lizzie McGuire reboot ran into problems because they can't make it good, and appropriate for D+ at the same time. Other, less promising streaming services like Apple TV+ feel like they have more going on. Apple TV+ literally has 6 things, but they're all new things, and the M. Night Shyamalan show Servant is really interesting, and unique.

Like yeah, if you don’t like something, don’t pay for it. But I just feel so disappointed because I know that there is potential for this thing to be truly great. Remember when Disney was an animation company? Even when they’re not trying that hard, they still end up with several cartoons that become classics. Recess, Kim Possible, Phineas and Ferb, fucking Gravity Falls, even Star vs the Forces of Evil is pretty great from what I’ve seen of it. And that’s just stuff from the last 20 years. There should be a half dozen original animated shows that launched with the platform. Give a handful of hot young talent 6 episodes each, and see what takes off. Do you know what does have several successful animated series? Netflix. Voltron, She-Ra, Castlevania, Bojack fucking Horseman. They just did a Fast and Furious cartoon, and it's more entertaining and has better action than most of The Clone Wars. Even DC’s Harley Quinn and Young Justice are critical hits.

In our current apocalyptic dystopia, the streaming wars have finally kicked into 12th gear. So far, Disney +, which should be leading the charge, has made one good season of television, and made Netflix worse by cancelling Daredevil. They've relied entirely on owning everything, yet their content is still incomplete. Once the pinnacle of creativity, they have almost no new ideas. Disney + kinda sucks, but it would be so easy to make it suck less. But Disney is too lazy to even try, and that's what pisses me off. Also, stop putting Ahsoka in everything!