I think Ahsoka has been overcooked and undercooked in Filoni’s brain at the same time, I think he’s spent so long thinking about this story he wants to tell that he’s no longer writing the connections that the story needs, that those of us outside his brain haven’t had the last ten years of simmering with to assimilate into our background noise, while also I think he hasn’t spent enough time really digging into the smaller details. Sabine’s character is the epitome of this for me–there’s clearly so much thought he’s given her in this show, the little details in that room that are so packed full you’d need to pause the video to see everything, where you can see Ezra’s helmet or Sabine’s helmet on the quick pan through the scene, where the scene she cuts her hair is a callback to Kanan cutting his hair as he’s ready to step back onto a new path, the Ezra hologram that was specifically for her, she’s allowed to be angry and messy, etc., you can’t say that Filoni didn’t give her a ton of thought! But she’s also undercooked in this show because there’s this entire relationship she had with Ahsoka that takes place off-screen and dramatically changes their dynamic without acknowledging that it’s a change for us, the audience. And there’s an entire motivation for “Why the hell does Sabine want to be a Jedi?” and “Why did Sabine set aside her Mandalorian armor?” that’s just not there because I think Felony has spent so much time thinking about Sabine’s journey, about her connection to Ezra and how to weave Ahsoka as a mentor (because of Ahsoka’s own issues with masters and apprentices, he wants to play on those themes), that he’s been writing this in his head since he first finished the Rebels finale’s script, that he’s no longer writing it on the actual paper for us the audience. I can’t shake the feeling that he’s spent too long with this story in his head, so he’s just made connections that have become part of the scenery for him, like, of course Sabine set aside her armor, of course Sabine was training with Ezra’s lightsaber with Jedi training, of course she’s Ahsoka’s Padawan, meanwhile I just finished watching Rebels and am going, “Dave, what the hell are you talking about, none of that was in the show I just finished speedrunning to watch this show!”
Having watched the entirety of the first season now, I have to say: I STAND BY THIS 100 FUCKING PERCENT. At most we get throwaway lines or infodumps about Sabine’s history, about Ahsoka’s history, about Mandalore’s history, about the Nightsisters’ entire lore, because Filoni wants to go from Point A to Point F without doing more than a quick moment of a character standing there, looking vaguely sad, and saying, “It was a rough journey when Point B happened, then C and D happened, and then E really took it out of us, but we’re at point F now, so it’s time to move on.”