Kat Valliant

Welp, the review bombers are doing it again. This is why I'm at the point of thinking online ratings are useless, but just in case some people still think they're balanced and fair, I'll leave one. Normally I'd give this a 4* but the review bombers have nudged my score up. SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS The Bad: My personal opinion is that some of the writing and acting is off; wooden & awkward. But that's a pretty common critique for most Star Wars (movies and shows). I think they could have combined the flashback episodes, since the reveal didn't add much for me. Up until around episode 5 I wasn't hooked, just interested in seeing what might happen. The Complaints that IMHO don't make sense: No, it doesn't break lore, unless you count Legends. People keep saying it breaks lore, but then ignore when people respond with specific examples of how it doesn't break canon lore. (Even if it did, George Lucas himself broke lore himself and retconned multiple things in the Prequels.) No, it's not 'ruining the Jedi' by showing them as flawed & emotion-having. Obi-wan straight-up sent Luke to murder his own father without telling him what their relationship was. "It was true, in a sense" was the shadiest response. The Jedi Council drove Asoka out of the Jedi by making ALL the wrong decisions. etc. etc. I won't say the characterization was perfect, but a lot of the complaints people are having about Mae & Osha changing their minds about things is directly related to their character motivations and changing circumstances. I guess you could criticize it for not making character emotions obvious enough, but it *is* targeting an older audience. The Good: The show is compelling, and takes a nuanced look at the light and dark side. One of the weak points in a lot of Star Wars shows & movies is that they don't make you really understand WHY good guys go dark. In the Prequels, Anakin goes from petulant teen to child-murderer so fast that they needed to fix it in the Clone Wars show. So this was refreshing and started to bridge that gap. By the end of Episode 4 and ALL of Episode 5, I was hooked. I've rewatched episode 5 a couple of times, it was so good. The fight choreography, the way it affected the character motivations, the visuals... *chef's kiss* (I won't say Qimir's arms aren't a factor, but I was invested before the big guns came out, ahahah) The pacing slowed down a bit after that, but generally I wasn't mad at the ending. Watching the crystal bleed happen in live action was cool. I enjoy a good negative character arc. And that's it. Thanks for coming to my TED talk, ahahah.