Another bright spot for me: I actually really like how this episode manages to - not justify - but kind of explain why Ahsoka has been so weird and counter to herself. That performance has still been bad and not very fun to watch, but there’s intentionality there that I can respect far more than anything in OWK or Mando.
So like what I got out of this episode was that Ahsoka before this was trying to train a Jedi the way she was most familiar with: as a wartime Jedi / soldier. (She couldn’t parse that out until now I guess).
And she had been treading so carefully (and half heartedly) on it with Sabine because that wasn’t something she believed in. But after everything she’s started to believe that maybe the alternative to that (who her and her Master were) can only lead to more Darth Vader.
Because they were those Jedi maverick types who didn’t quite fit into the dogma, and they were proud of that until it all went bad. Ahsoka chose to leave where Anakin clung on, and Ahsoka calls him on his hypocrisy on the way out. “I know you do, Anakin.” in response to his admission of wanting to leave sometimes is basically Ahsoka reading Anakin out loud. He doesn’t belong there any more than she does.
So when he falls to the dark side, it’s easy for her to extrapolate that it’s who they were in that institution was what was wrong. She blames herself for leaving that behind, for abandoning the commitment, and re-finds her “faith” in Jedi teachings, almost in the way Hell in Abrahamic religions motivates piety.
This episode was about remembering Anakin and The Clone War that brought her up with more clarity. What it was to her to be a Jedi before the war and that Anakin as he was, wasn’t just part of a Vader equation. Basically Ahsoka’s been misreading that history this whole time. Who the Jedi became in the Clone Wars was not all the Jedi can be.
I think we all expected her to progress from TCW as a cool, light-side aligned wanderer but I think this - her baggage about the Jedi Order - is more complex and pretty fun / interesting to untangle.