I'm envisioning bookends with him as an old bartender or something telling a story.
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Re: the lighstaber fight... I think good points have been made about the defensive style Ahsoka started with.

And in both of these fights, I think there are two factors to consider when judging Ahsoka's power level and effectiveness:

1. She has other objectives in each fight. With Baylan Skol, she is trying to get to and retrieve the orb. With "Anakin," she is in defense mode. She doesn't want to fight.

2. I'll put on my Star Wars nerdery hat for a second and talk about lightsaber styles. Ahsoka has always been an Ataru/Jar Kai (Form IV) style wielder, who focuses on speed and flurries of blows and athleticism. This style is incredibly effective against multiple opponents, especially non-Force users.

Anakin is a Djem So (Form V) wielder, and according to the internal dialogue of Count Dooku*, THE master of this form. That form specifically is a tough matchup in a 1x1 duel for styles that are focused more on speed and precision (Makashi - Form II; Ataru - Form IV) because it is built on the defensive form (III) but focuses on incredible powerful strikes.

Baylan appears, based on the movements, the lightsaber, and the general style of fighting, to also be a Djem So fighter.

Ahsoka, being an athletic fighter who focuses on speed and multiple strikes and movement and precision, SHOULD have a tough time in a duel with someone who is much larger, heavier, and stronger than her, specifically deploying a lightsaber combat form that generates a lot of power in its strikes.

I'll take the hat off now.

* I will once again reference the maginficence of the Revenge of the Sith novelization, written by the fantastic Matthew Stover, which is where I pulled that internal dialgoue from Dooku from.

That book is worth reading just to be inside Dooku's head during the duel with Anakin and Obi-Wan. He comes into the fight so confident he will handle them, and that confidence is reinforced when they display Form IV techniques early in the fight (athleticism, flips, etc - specifically something Dooku's Makashi/Form II makes mince meat of unless you're Yoda). Then Obi-Wan switches to Soresus/Form III and Dooku is like "shit, he's a Form III user now? And holy shit, he's the best one I've ever seen. Gotta get him out of the fight!" So he does. And then Anakin switchs to Djem So/Form V, and Dooku again is like "Oh shit. He's this now? Oh holy shit, HE'S the best at this I'v ever seen and I can't handle this!"

it's fantastic. Stover is the shit.
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That is, without a doubt, the nerdiest Star Wars shit I've ever read.

Good stuff, Duncan...

(But if Ahsoka's style is based on speed and athleticism, shouldn't she appear to be fast and agile?)
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It's the space opera version of "big strong guy in plate mail with a broadsword fighting small fast guy with a rapier," to make it less nerdy.

I could give Clay a run for his money on SW nerdery stuff. I've stepped away from it a bit since the Disney acquisition (I owed basically all the EU books and comics), but some of the stuff stuck.

I also GMed a Star Wars RPG game for a few years, so had to REALLY dig into lightsabers styles and their intended interactions with each other.
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Yeah, that's some deep shit Duncan. I have to admit there is no chance I'm going that deep.

But to DJ's point, I will point out again, that they are at least moving and managing distance.

This is probably the dumbest moment I've seen in any fight fucking ever. (In case it doesn't work, it's at 1:40)



Just stading there whirling blades around? Take a step back and wax this fool. I like the fight and there are times they manage space well, but that is just incomprehensibly stupid.

Largely, give me an entertaining fight and avoid REALLY dumb shit like this, and I'll suspend belief.

Zooming out, I'm with you on most of the fights in the show Ahsoka dispatching Morak notwithstanding. But this one was better.

*Ducks the hell out before Duncan tells me why standing next to someone and flailing is good martial technique from some arcane treatise in the Jedi Archive. :-)
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It still irritates me to no end how badly Ewan McGregor was wasted by the Star Wars universe.

He's just always good...
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I've never read the novelization and I'm lesser for it.
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Its actually called a flourish, and can be used to confuse someone
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I know. But 2 dudes don’t do it to each other. And if you do it, you don’t leave the line to your midsection wide open.

Remains one of the dumbest things ever in Star Wars.
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My justification for it has always been that since light sabers won't have mass to speak of, inertia is a way to increase striking force. So you whip that sucker around a time or two in order to speed it up and bring more force to the party...
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That novelization does an excellent job of fixing the Palpatine confrontation as well.
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Confused me when I saw it.
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Imagine how much better this scene would have been if Lizzo had been cast as one of the Jedi...
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I think that is the “lesson” Anakin was trying to communicate. She has to want to live. After leaving the Jedi order, losing Anakin to become Vader, and seeing the New Republic slip into disarray, Ashoka has been trying not to lose….both in relationships and lightsaber fights.

Ashoka has been playing the Jedi equivalent of Martyball.

Anakin showed her that she has to fight to live. Has to quit going through the motions and quit trying to run the ball on third and four.

I think Ashoka’s lackluster lightsaber performance is about to turn a 360 and her next lightsaber duel will be ‘more free and unlike anything so far in the series.
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FYP
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