Star Wars Has a Jedi Problem

It’s time to finally acknowledge the mythosaur-sized elephant in the room: Star Wars has a Jedi problem.

Ahsoka, Disney+’s new live-action follow-up to the animated series Star Wars Rebels, is the latest installment of the space franchise that proves how boring the Jedi have become. The plot of Ahsoka will be familiar to anyone who’s even dipped into Star Wars in the past decade: Ahsoka Tano (Rosario Dawson), who first appeared in Star Wars: The Clone Wars as Anakin Skywalker’s apprentice, searches for a map that might lead to big, bad Grand Admiral Thrawn (Lars Mikkelsen) and Jedi Ezra Bridger (Eman Esfandi), after they were yeeted into hyperspace by space whales at the end of Rebels. It’s a race against the forces of evil, led by space witch Morgan Elsbeth (Diana Lee Inosanto), whose aim appears to be reigniting the Galactic Empire by bringing Thrawn out of whale-induced exile.

Questions about who exactly is making these maps—which are critically important as MacGuffins for the story—and just leaving them lying around aside, the most prominent feeling Ahsoka invokes is that we’ve been here before. The Jedi are back, former Imperials are untrustworthy, the New Republic is full of toothless bureaucrats, and everyone is talking about it a lot. Is it any wonder we’re feeling weary when the lightsabers are trotted out?

This exposure fatigue runs counter to the thrill inspired by the original trilogy, in which the Jedi, sparse as they were, remained unfailingly cool. The idea of an enigmatic ronin, played by Alec Guinness, preaching the forgotten ways of “the Force” from behind a big glowy sword and pushing Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) to join a rebellion—stand-ins for the Vietnamese against a facsimile of Imperial America—in order to sell a bunch of toys certainly captured a lot of imaginations back in the day. In his prequel trilogy, George Lucas flipped the script: The Jedi are at the zenith of their ubiquity, but they’re also fallible, something that humanizes them as they take a larger role in the story. They become peacekeepers who actively contribute to the rise of space fascism. This, before they’re ostensibly wiped out in Episode III—Revenge of the Sith.

Not that today’s casual viewer would know that, given how many Jedi are on our screens now. Where once the Jedi were a two-decade treat, now it’s almost impossible to escape them.

Their proliferation takes away a lot of their impact. This is partly down to how the Jedi are positioned. George Lucas tended to place the Jedi as part of the rebellion. For much of the original trilogy, Luke Skywalker was mostly just some pilot who happened to have a lightsaber, contributing to a movement rather than rendering it obsolete by slicing through foot soldiers at the head of a band of rebels left with nothing to do. Now, under Rebels creator Dave Filoni especially, the Jedi have been arbitrarily elevated to leaders. Ahsoka is less a Jedi who emerged from hiding after the war than a sage-like and respected member of a New Republic she ostensibly had little hand in creating—a position that feels unearned given her absence since Order 66. Lucas always mitigated his Jedi, whether via scarcity or a general political naïvete and dogmatism, a relatable wake-up call at a time of perceived political equilibrium. Lucas’ Star Wars always at least referenced the world as we know it. All that relatability and real-world nuance has disappeared as Disney appears intent on making Star Wars as apolitical and alien as possible by refashioning the Jedi, in particular, as invincible, all-knowing superheroes.

This is apt, given how Disney’s perfunctory way of deploying Jedi mirrors its strategy when it comes to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Much as the MCU has started to function on an “if you build it, they will come” model—relying on diehard fans to keep turning up simply because there’s a superhero on the screen—it increasingly appears that Disney is hoping that the Jedi, by their mere presence, will elevate otherwise lackluster extensions of its Star Wars IP.

To be fair, overexposure isn’t solely to blame. The Jedi becoming so staid and interchangeable has a lot to do with the plummeting quality of the media in which they appear. Ahsoka’s plodding pace is emblematic of Filoni’s era of Star Wars, in which the Jedi do little more than stand around, arms folded, name-dropping characters for diehard fans. Want a dangerous drinking game? Take a shot every time someone mentions Thrawn in the first half of Ahsoka and then try to stand.

In these works, the Jedi spend so much time telling the audience what’s going to happen and engaging in fan service, it’s amazing they have time to practice with their space bokken. Sure, those long, ponderous monologues gave the late Ray Stevenson plenty to do in his final performance as Dark Jedi Baylan Skoll (it appears he’s the only actor in Ahsoka in the vicinity of a lightsaber capable of mustering a semblance of charisma, brooding though it is). But otherwise, it’s all starting to feel a bit rote and flat. It makes one start to wonder who exactly Disney’s Star Wars is for. Is it, as Lucas so often claims, an IP aimed at children (toys, people, toys)? Or is it reserved for longtime fans whose enjoyment rests solely on reference? Judging by Ahsoka, it’s the latter. As the Mandalorian Padawan Sabine Wren (Natasha Liu Bordizzo) complains, in one lightsaber training scene, that she can’t see, and exclaims, “Got one!” while shooting fighters in another scene, it all starts to feel a little déjà vu for anyone who’s seen Episode IV—A New Hope.

That’s not to say there’s no potential for Ahsoka to rediscover some of the energy that made Jedi interesting to watch in the first place. Ahsoka beating up fighters with her lightsabers in space captures the cool factor that accompanies the Jedi at their best, while Genevieve O’Reilly’s return as the chancellor of the New Republic  Mon Mothma promises some of the politicism that marks Star Wars at its best. Even if these scenes are sandwiched between ponderous, often portentous, talk sessions in which nothing really happens.

But with Ahsoka, as with other disappointing entries in this current phase of the franchise, like Obi-Wan Kenobi and The Book of Boba Fett, Disney appears largely bent on appeasing longtime fans terrified of change, who remain the only ones enthused by Disney’s uncompelling, apolitical rendition of Star Wars, forgetting that Star Wars, despite its toys and bright lights, has always placed the Jedi as part of a wider political system. Where Star Wars, and the Jedi, once reflected a (granted, simplified) version of our own world, now the Jedi are apolitical superheroes that feel more like a branding tool for one of the world’s largest media hegemonies, rather than heroes and villains who are given room to grow in the real stakes of a compelling narrative, as they did in, for instance, Episode VIII—The Last Jedi.

This is only compounded by Tony Gilroy’s radical 2022 series Andor showing us how interesting a post-Jedi Star Wars universe can be. With not a lightsaber in sight, Andor’s (and its predecessor/sequel Rogue One’s) political allegory depicting boots-on-the-ground rebels felt surpassingly human. Other recent shows like Obi-Wan Kenobi and The Book of Boba Fett are so forgettable that recalling their plotlines is a challenge, yet Andor has been seared into memory for its relatable struggles that made the world of Star Wars look more like our own than it has since 1983’s Return of the Jedi.

The Jedi only look even more bland and inhuman in comparison, a decline that the live-action rendition of Ahsoka Tano fails to arrest. Heck, even the lightsabers don’t swish anymore—like their wielders, they have been made bleak and bland, turned into sticks that only vaguely glow. Ahsoka was always unlikely to capture the lightning-in-a-bottle magic of Andor, but in relying solely on placing fan-favorite Jedi on the screen and hoping that fans will fill in the gaps between the occasional hum of a lightsaber, the show feels like a step back. It’s just not enough, not anymore. If the reception to Andor was any indication, audiences have moved on from the tired wish-fulfillment that diehard fans still seem to crave. Both shows, albeit in different ways, prove it’s time for Star Wars to move on from the Jedi.