David Shiers

I tried to like it. I really did. I've watched every single bit of Star Wars and for the most part loved it. Its such a rich and expansive universe with great characters, themes and stories. The sequel trilogy knocked my enthusiasm a bit but then the Mandalorian and its spin offs, Andor and the live action characters from Rebels brought me right back in. This...it may be the first Star Wars that I don't see through to the end and I hate that I don't feel I can put myself through any more of it after watching three episodes. It was billed as a bit of a mystery show running up to its release. There is no mystery here. The mystery elements seem to last all of five minutes before being revealed. There is no buildup to anything then the reveals are pretty predictable. They made it look like there could be something very interesting going on with our lead character, being arrested for a crime only to reveal in no time at all that oh, she has an evil twin. There are some really good actors in the show, Carrie Anne Moss, Dafne Keen, among others. Unfortunately the characters they are playing are not particularly developed at all, with the pace and direction of things not allowing any and their acting comes across as very wooden, less because of their performance skills but because the dialogue is terribly written. The first two episodes seem to have basically revealed the entire plotline. Then there is episode three... this is where it completely lost me. We find out the twins are immaculate force conceptions, created by a coven of lesbian force witches (The showrunner said this) and we get to see the events in their origin that were referenced in the prior two episodes. Its clear that the evil twin seems to have been born a raging sociopath with no complex motivations at all that made her this way and despite being raised in an isolated commune the "good" twin has an ambition to leave everything to become a jedi? Again with no explanation as to why. Evil twin decides to burn the entire place to the ground to kill her sister for wanting to leave and all the witches just die offscreen. Its terrible storytelling. I can only assume this is Leslye Headland's teenage fanfiction with a multi million dollar budget. I approached the show with hope it would be as good as The Mandalorian or Andor while exploring an era of star wars that hasn't been seen before. I have been woefully disappointed unfortunately. Such a shame that presented with a completely unexplored time period, with pretty unlimited opportunity for storytelling, this is the story they chose.