Welcome back to HIWWI (pronounced Hi-Why)! This is the show where I, someone whose only published works consist of a series of Star Wars articles for my college newspaper, wax poetic on how I would’ve done a better job writing pre-existing media created by a team of professionals. Here’s How I Would’ve Written It episode 1, starring Tales of the Jedi!
Released on Disney+ on October 26, 2022, Tales of the Jedi was a six-episode collection. Split between Ahsoka Tano and Count Dooku, the show follows both of them across their very different lives.
I already wrote an in-depth review of the show episode-by-episode, as can be read HERE. My thoughts on TotJ boil down to this: nothing connects the episodes. Dooku’s three consecutive chapters are good, but Ahsoka’s are just three entirely unrelated standalone stories. It begs the question of why this show was created around these two.
Here’s HIWII – the show should’ve worked as a direct parallel of Ahsoka and Dooku’s journeys.
The very first chapter of TotJ, in which we see young Ahsoka being recognized as Force-sensitive by her village, would still work. She is clearly loved and protected. But it would be interesting for the second half of the episode to be about Dooku’s family when they made the same discovery. In the canon novel Dooku: Jedi Lost, it is established that Dooku’s parents, being afraid of the Jedi, abandoned him outside of their home. If a Jedi seeker hadn’t found the baby, he’d have died.
I’d hoped for this from TotJ – I’d love to see an episode of when Plo Koon came to Shili and brought Ahsoka to the Jedi Temple. From the first episode, we know that Ahsoka’s birth parents cared for and wanted the best for her. How did that interaction go – would they have wanted Ahsoka to leave so that she could have a good life? This would be a fantastic parallel if the following scene showed Dooku’s family breathing a sigh of relief as they send him away with the Jedi.
Obviously, Ahsoka and Dooku had very different lives as Jedi. Dooku, being so much older, raised two Padawans before leaving the Order, and Ahsoka walked away when she was only seventeen. But there are still connections to be made. How did Ahsoka and Dooku both cope with loss and defeat? Who did they turn to when they were harboring the dark side? What sort of events did they encounter that shaped them into who they became?
These scenes would’ve been valuable when it came to the greatest parallel of all between Ahsoka and Dooku – the fact that they both walked away from the Jedi Order. It’s such an obvious place to draw similarities that I can’t believe TotJ didn’t do it. It’s the most significant action that they both share.
In Dooku: Jedi Lost, we see the scene itself where Dooku makes the decision to leave the Jedi Order and stay on his home planet. It was definitely a good idea not to show this in TotJ, as it would’ve risked changing a great deal of the book’s events. (SW has had a tendency as of late to undo major canon moments, such as the clash between the Kanan comics and the first episode of The Bad Batch… but I digress.) And it wouldn’t work to rehash the painful moments when Ahsoka walks away from the Temple, as that was already dealt with in-depth in season 5 of The Clone Wars. But what about after?
After Dooku left the Order, he wound up turning to Palpatine and the dark side. But Ahsoka, on her own, found the Rebellion and eventually joined Bail Organa in helping the galaxy. This is the greatest place where the mirroring of Dooku and Ahsoka’s paths can be emphasized.
In this episode, the creators could avoid having to recreate events that already happened in the books Dooku: Jedi Lost and Ahsoka. Dooku’s decision to join Palpatine could be strengthened by Dooku taking the first step as a Sith. His actions in episode 4 would actually fit this criterion perfectly.
In the Ahsoka novel, we see the exact chain of events that lead to Ahsoka joining Bail Organa. There’s no need to redo that scene exactly. (My thoughts on episode 6 of TotJ are a blog post for another day.) So do the same thing that was done with Dooku – show Ahsoka’s first step in fighting for the Rebellion. She could be lured to take a darker path for the greater good. In the end, if she stands by her morals and finds a solution that doesn’t involve the Dark, it would pair beautifully with Dooku’s own fall.
But we’re not at my favorite part yet.
Despite all that TotJ promised, what I craved the most from the show was an interaction between Ahsoka and Dooku. Dooku is Ahsoka’s great-grandmaster, after all! He trained Qui-Gon, Qui-Gon trained Obi-Wan, Obi-Wan trained Anakin, and Anakin trained Ahsoka. Of course Dooku would be interested in Ahsoka; she’s quite literally his legacy.
But when could an interaction between these two happen? Well, the novel Padawan by Kiersten White takes place after Dooku has left the Order. In that book, it is established that he still sometimes visited Qui-Gon in the Temple. The timeframe between Qui-Gon’s death and Dooku officially forming the Separatists would be roughly when Ahsoka was four to thirteen. If Dooku went to the Temple one last time before never coming back, it’d be a convenient time for him to encounter young Ahsoka. Perhaps she could ask him for help, or he could ask her for information. Maybe, if the episode was long enough, they could wind up defeating a criminal together. Dooku could be able to see how what he taught has been passed down across several generations.
Knowing who he is, Ahsoka could ask Dooku why he chose to leave all his friends in the Order. He could respond with something along the lines of “When you have no friends left, then you will understand.” It doesn’t have to be that on the nose, but having Ahsoka balk at the idea of walking away would be deliciously angsty. I’m picturing the show ending with Dooku and Ahsoka walking off in different directions – Dooku into the dark and Ahsoka into the light – but that’s just some heavy-handed symbolism that I’d find enjoyable.
The more I think about it, the more disappointed I am by TotJ. It’s not so much what we were given – Dooku’s arc is well done, and it’s fun to see snippets of Ahsoka’s life. But the potential for the show kills me. Both Dooku and Ahsoka walked away from the Jedi. And even though they both chose to keep fighting, Dooku sank into the dark side while Ahsoka claimed the light.
Tales of the Jedi has been confirmed for a second season, although little is known about it as of yet. The show seems to have exhausted its story capacities for Dooku and Ahsoka, so perchance we’ll be following new Jedi entirely. Whether the show takes a narrative approach again with certain focal characters or is more episodic with standalone chapters, I can’t hope for too much. TotJ never went as far as it could’ve, and I doubt the second season will deliver what the first one failed to. But hey – I love the animation style of TCW and the nostalgia that it brings. I’ll still watch it. Even if the potential for season one won’t quite be able to leave my head.
