my concerns after last week feel like they're unfortunately coming true. revealing the past in so much detail lessens the tension in the present. plenty of people pointed out to me that there might be more to that story but i don't think that really fixes the entire problem. at the heart of the first two episodes was this profound unease, that osha's relationship with her father figure sol was doomed to fail because of some unspoken sin he committed. maybe that sin is still on the table, but it's no longer weaved into the way the characters interact. the show is now written in such a way where even if there is more to the story, everyone in the story acts as if what we were told in episode 3 should be taken at face value. there is no longer that tension of the unknown, no slowly pulling back the veil on the failure of the jedi institution. we, the audience, can speculate that more is yet to be revealed, but only from a distant, outside perspective. the most it comes up in this episode is sol insisting he has bigger plans regarding osha and mae. for now, though, osha has no reason to doubt there's more to the story, and we have no context for how significant the missing information is. in my review of ahsoka i talked about using past sins as a narrative sword of damocles. that by repeatedly insisting an otherwise morally good's past hides some messed up secret, we end up fearing the truth and the moment that metaphorical sword finally drops. but no one is here in the show to cast doubt on the story we've heard so far. this episode's ending leaves room for that to change, but only hypothetically. we have no way of knowing. if that happens, i will immediately become invested. but holding off on that leaves this episode in a rather middling place. the personal stakes are still there, but not nearly as gripping as they used to be. it's just a lot of walking through the woods. i hope this show proves itself capable of better things again soon.