Ezra Bridger Got the Luke Skywalker Treatment in AHSOKA Episode 7 and I Expected More
When Ezra Bridger (Eman Esfandi) made his live-action debut in the sixth episode of Star Wars: Ahsoka, I was really excited to see him in some real action in Episode 7, titled “Dreams and Madness.” I was a big fan of Ezra and his story arc in Star Wars: Rebels, and I was expecting a lot from him in this most recent episode.
Now, before I dive into my disappointment with how Ezra was underutilized in the episode, I do want to say that I enjoyed the episode and the direction of the story. There are aspects that I really liked and appreciated, especially with Ahsoka and how her old positive personality is now in full swing as she’s flashing more of those great big warm smiles. I really missed that when she was brooding in the first several episodes.
It was also cool to see C-3PO make an appearance as a messenger for Princess Leia to help Hera (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) out of a bind. That was an unexpected but welcome cameo.
Then, there’s Grand Admiral Thraw,n and I just love every time that he’s on the screen. He is seriously the perfect live-action representation of the character and I’m in awe watching Lars Mikkelsen play him. I also like that the villain is inching closer and closer to his victory because we all know he;’s going to get away to fight another day.
It was also fun to see Hayden Christensen back as Anakin Skywalker again as Ahsoka was going through some lightsaber fight training. I believe we’ll see him one more time before the series comes to an end.
As for Ezra… when we were about to see some real action and he and Sabine (Natasha Liu Bordizzo) were going to jump into battle, she went to return his lightsaber to him, and he turned it away! She kept persisting, and again and again he said no, with no real explanation as to why!
My first thought when I saw this is I was reminded of the scene in Star Wars: The Force Awakens when Rey went to give Luke Skywalker his lightsaber back and he just threw it away. What is it with these recent Star Wars stories and these fan-favorite Jedi characters refusing to take their lightsabers!? It’s like the creative team Luke Skywalkered Ezra and it just rubbed me the wrong way.
I was so excited to see Ezra reunited with his lightsaber, I was excited to see him wield it and fight with it again, and instead, he ran around force-pushing a few guys. He didn’t even really see that much action, and there were some moments where he had the opportunity to really show off his Force skills, but it never happened and I was just left disappointed with how his character was handled in the episode.
His first brush with action in the live-action series should’ve been epic! But, in the end, it was underwhelming and he was underutilized. At least give us some kind of real explanation of why he didn’t want to take the lightsaber considering that Sabine was much more interested in pulling out her blasters and using those. I know he mentioned how she’s been training with it, but that wasn’t enough for me.
I just wanted to Ezra wield his lightsaber again and for some weird reason, the writers of the series wouldn’t give it to him. That’s my one gripe with the episode, but it’s a big one for me. It’s just what I was thinking as I watched the episode play out.
I might be alone in this because there are a lot of fans praising the episode, which is fine! It was a good episode, and I liked how it progressed the story forward. I just… ugh… Ezra!