As someone who has watched all of Clone Wars, Rebels and read the Thrawn books, I fully get where you’re coming from. Though I think there must be a 10 minute YouTube video of “what to know before watching Ahsoka” somewhere. Rebels is enjoyable (and gets suitably dark in its later seasons) but doesn’t tell an overtly complex story, so a quick primer video would be enough if you don’t want to experience it all.

All the dead space between lines stood out to me too. Ahsoka is obviously older here, but where’s her playfulness and spark?

Agreed. The whole pacing of the show felt like they were stretching to fill time, and the fight choreography and editing felt lazy, like they didn't have enough time to properly train those fight moves and resorted to a lot of cuts to hide it. The whole writing of the show is pretty cliche and so many lines of dialogue were easy to predict before the actors even opened their mouths.

Really disappointed, I was hoping it would be more on par with Andor.

Yeah, this is the opposit of Andor that I could recommend to people that hadn't seen much Star Wars, this is for all intents and purposes Rebels Series 5 and dripping in lore. Both are valid ways to handle a franchise as long as Disney judges viewing figures accordingly.

I guess the rule is: advertised heavily, it's gonna be a bad show (Kenobi, Ahsoka). Barely anything about it, it'll be good (Andor, Visions).

Yea... that's a problem with most cinematic universes. There's simply so much of story, that you cannot start in the middle. I'm not really sure what you mean by "dead space" between lines. The conversations kinda felt natural to me....

I don't know why people didn't like Dawson's acting. I kinda felt her portrayal of Ahsoka as very faithful continuation of her portrayal in Rebels. She has been through A LOT. I personally have seen people who have had a hard time in life being withdrawn, devoid of emotion and very stoic. In fact, this portrayal of her makes her very believable for me. She's not a happy teenager anymore. She's a middle aged, lonely individual who has a lot of responsibility on her back. She has no family. Rather, she just has a few "accomplices". Plus, she is worried about an impending invasion from one of the most feared and effective imperial Generals.

Why is he more important than stopping a war?

He is important, as he could very well be a part of this war. He is an extremely powerful Jedi Knight. Could he have joined Thrawn? Him not contacting the Rebels back probably means that he is either dead, or has joined Thrawn. This is very dangerous for obvious reasons.

Oh heck yea! Morgan being a Nightsister definitely makes stuff a lot more interesting!

She seemed in keeping with her depiction in Squadrons.

Weeeeell she is a mum now, right? Raising a child can bring a lot of happiness to some people. I found her to be very convincing and comforting as a character. A general with mom energy isn't so unconvincing imo.

Did the new republic uniforms ( particularly the helmets ) look very underdone and flimsy to anyone else?

Honestly, I didn't pay much attention to that. Will try to observe this in the next episode!

Absolutely no way Disney makes Yuuzhan Vong (or anything similar) canon. Too cowardly.

I was thinking that new galaxy will either be a) the Vong galaxy, with all our characters wondering why it's dead and lifeless, setting up the Vong invasion in Rays NJO films or b) the early Jedi come from another galaxy in Disney continuity (technically the Tho Yor could have come from another galaxy in Legends) and this is setting up the Dawn of the Jedi film.

could we get an older Cal Kestis cameo (unsure who the masked inquisitor is)

Yea, the inquisitor is kinda sus, no? Although, I really hope that he is just some random surviving inquisitor. I didn't find him THAT cool for him to turn out to be some character that we know about already.

is this new Galaxy a reference or potential for Yuuzhan Vong?

Honestly, THAT is what I'm hoping for! Is Thrawn the anti-hero working to stop an impending Yuuzhan Vong invasion? Was Palpy preparing for this too by building the death stars? Aside from galactic domination, was defending from a Yuuzhan Vong invasion one of the goals of the Final Order?

Amended the title to also include Ep 2, since they aired at the same time. Good call. 😃

Intergalactic travel could be a big and brave addition to the franchise depending on whats at the other end when they get there.

Honestly I think it'd be great if they introduced a new character rather than yet someone else being resurrected and coming back from the dead. That being said, I did see a theory which would be interesting:

I like the idea of it being a canon version of Starkiller, Darth Vader's secret apprentice from the non-canon Force Unleashed games. It could make for an interesting foil to Ahsoka and "Marrok" isn't far off from Galen Marek and Sam Witwer's in the credits for providing "additional voices."