Watching Andor and then going back to “Mandoverse” Star Wars is an experience I can only liken to that of eldritch madness. Watching Andor was like having my mind expanded to a higher level of being, showing me that Star Wars could be more than just a series of action figures being slammed together that somehow looks cheaply produced while having the budget of a blockbuster film. That this franchise could somehow ascend to the heights of the best of prestige television if only Disney and Lucasfilm would let it. To return to an “average” Star Wars show makes that idea seem unfathomable. To see the franchise carry on as if Andor never happened, learning absolutely nothing from what made that show great, is frustrating. It makes me feel like I’m losing my mind, trying in vain convince the people who prefer this style of storytelling and filmmaking to what was achieved in Andor that greater things are possible. Ahsoka’s pilot is not bad. In fact, it’s actually quite good. But it is maddening to watch a show that continues the storytelling of two cartoons make the jump to live action while somehow feeling so ashamed of the original medium its characters came from. It desperately wants to have an adult audience, hence the seemingly arbitrary jump to live action and how little the animated shows that led up to it were actually referenced in the promotion for this show. But it’s written no differently from the cartoons that preceded it. Andor showed us what Star Wars growing up with its audience looked like, so as tired as mentioning it in Star Wars discourse might be, it’s frustrating seeing Ahsoka not attempt the same things when on some level it seems to want the same audience. You can really feel Dave Filoni’s pride in finally getting the chance to create his own live action Star Wars project like his mentor George Lucas. It’s impossible to not feel his excitement bleed through the mere existence of an opening crawl of this show. And yet all of it is wasted on a show that should be a cartoon but is afraid to be compared to one. The result is an engaging story that feels at home with The Clone Wars and Rebels, but lacks all of the visual style and substance those shows had due to its arbitrary jump to live action in an attempt to capture an adult audience. It’s insane going from shows that knew how to utilize color and budget to the muted and overly lit aesthetic of modern Star Wars television. This show’s production must have cost hundreds of millions of dollars and yet visually still doesn’t hold a candle to even the cheapest parts of Rebels. What we’re left with is a series that lives in the shadow of both Andor and Filoni’s previous animated shows. It’s a story I want to see more of that unfortunately exists as the worst version of itself. A live action cartoon that is confident in the story it’s telling but embarrassed of the contradiction at the heart of its existence. It does not know what it wants to be. It’s good, but I know Star Wars can be better.