Joshua Eklund

Loved this show. I haven't read the books but have heard a bit of commentary on them. If you're looking for something that closely and accurately reflects the books, this show won't do that. It's Westernized and character-driven. From my understanding, the books don't heavily focus on characters since everything is on a massive time scale. You really can't make a TV show or movie (a popular one anyways) without getting people invested in the characters. Book people -- my advice would be to not assume a movie/show is going to perfectly follow the book, especially if it's written on a massive time scale like this series. I still get annoyed by people who complain about the Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings trilogy. Yes, they differ from the books. Doesn't mean they aren't both amazing! As far as the sci-fi elements, it covers some scientific and philosophical ideas but nothing the average person won't be able to somewhat grasp. Give it a try! It's not exactly a slow burn, so if you don't really feel interested by the end of the first episode, you probably won't like the rest of it.

Not a hater, and I don't care so much about whether something is "woke" or not. Give me a decent story with some fun/interesting characters, I'm all in. But this was pretty bad from a storytelling perspective. Acting was really rough, too. Characters have no consistency, and motivations change on a whim. And so much of this show relies on the whole character-won't-fully-explain-themselves trope to create conflict where it shouldn't exist. I know I sound overly-critical, but if you use your brain even a little bit and ask why questions, this show completely falls apart. On a positive note, the lightsaber fights are great. That's about the only good thing I can say about it. Why did I keep watching it? That's a valid question. For me, it actually fell into the so-bad-it's-good territory. Another thing that didn't really work was designing this as a mystery. I could go on, but my opinion likely won't sway anyone. Nothing against those who liked this show, but don't be influenced by some of these obvious AI reviews giving 5-star reviews.

Disappointing and kind of boring... I was excited about this show, as many were, to see Ewan and Hayden on-screen together again. This show didn't offer much of that and instead chooses to focus on Obi Wan and Leia. This could've been fine, but what's surprising is the amount of filler and minimal progression of any kind of story for the first 4 episodes in a 6-episode series. I didn't need a certain story or great acting, but I did expect some awesome action and lightsaber fighting and the beautiful cinematography we expect from Star Wars. This series fell short in my opinion. All I wanted was something fun and exciting, but honestly, it's pretty boring until episode 5. There's a few good moments here and there in the first 4 episodes, but at the end of each episode I kept thinking "Is that it?" The sets and effects seem cheap at times. It just doesn't seem like they put nearly as much effort and thought into this as they did The Mandalorian. Last 2 episodes are solid, though a bit silly at times. They are fun and exciting, but it just made me wonder more why the previous episodes couldn't match that level of excitement. All in all, this is a story that didn't need to be told. I don't think it really adds anything to the overall story and actually at times detracts from it. Also, for a 6-episode series, with each episode averaging about 40 minutes in length, I expected it to be a tight story and each episode to be fairly action-packed. The pacing for the first 4 episodes is just too slow.