After reviewing VC219 Death Watch Mandalorian and VC221 Fennec Shand, I would probably be okay with this wave if the other 3 figures were decorative bars of soap.  But Hasbro gave us another gem, with VC222 Ahsoka Tano (Corvus). 

The Mandalorian was already an awesome show in its own right.  But when we learned that Rosario Dawson would be bringing the fan favorite character of Ahsoka from animation into live action, it was another feather in the cap of Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni.  I’ve said this many times, but if you never gave The Clone Wars a chance, especially if your reasoning was because you found the new character of Anakin Skywalker’s new padawan either continuity-smashing or straight up obnoxious, then you missed out on one of the best characters in the entirety of Star Wars canon. Sure she was an annoying kid character at first that made us think Star Wars had jumped the shark, but if you stuck with it, you realized it was all part of her development and maturation that we got to witness in great detail.  And I will further state (again) that the final TCW 4-episode arc of The Siege of Mandalore / Order 66 was some of the best Star Wars ever.  For fans to see Ahsoka make it into live action is a real treat, and of course, she’s getting her own show, which likely will be a time-jump continuation of were Rebels left off.

The figure is another great one.  First of all, the sculpt is amazing.  The face is nothing short of spectacular, and Hasbro has been nailing likenesses at this scale recently.  Ahsoka/Rosario is a new high bar. The paint application - standard and Photo Real, are also tremendous. The lekku are shorter than Ahsoka seemed to have when she was younger.  The reality seems to be that longer lekku were problematic for filming purposes, or so I’ve read.  I have not read an in-universe explanation, so I’m going to assume that Favreau and Filoni are hoping we just let it go.  Anyway, the sculpting details around the outfit are topnotch, from the sleeves/vambraces, down to the pantaloons.  There was probably a bit of a challenge handling the billowy pants, and perhaps the aesthetic isn’t 100% perfect, but it’s pretty great nonetheless.

Very little in the sculpt (except, perhaps understandably, the lekku) interferes with the articulation.  All the joints are have free range of motion.  Even the tassets (the hip guards that hang from her belt - yeah, I had to look that up) and the cords/tassels that decorate them, are sculpted and painted in great detail.  The aforementioned pantaloons didn’t stop Hasbro from having some of the best knee articulation we’ve seen - specifically to how far past 90 degrees they can go.  Ahsoka can achieve a pretty realistic Jedi mediation pose, as seen in the gallery above.  The newest hip joints are used here, along with rocker ankles.  All good stuff.

You’ll notice I didn’t use our patented acronym, JLA, to describe the articulation for this figure.  That’s because, for reasons I can’t begin to guess, Ashoka doesn’t have ball jointed wrists.  She merely has swivel wrists.  This is an affront to the TVC name!  How dare this happen!  Well, seriously, it’s a bit of a bummer.  Particularly since Ahsoka has a unique fighting style - using two blades (one long, one short) and often holding them backwards - having proper ball jointed wrists seems to hinder this figure from achieving the absolute full range of poses that she should be capable of achieving.

For accessories, Ahsoka comes with her two blades, both lit.  One issue with them as that they don’t fit perfectly in her hands - at least the left hand in my sample, as it’s a bit loose in the grip.  But more importantly, Hasbro declined to include unlit blades to hook onto her belt.  I feel this is a miss.  And it doesn’t appear unlit hilts are included with the upcoming deluxe version (with Grogu) either.

The three figures in this wave (that we’ve reviewed so far) have pushed the envelope as far as our expectations for new releases.  Aside from the wrists, hands, this figure is absolutely one of the best yet, and that’s saying quite a lot.  But the lack of ball jointed wrists is kind of an annoying miss, as is the lack of hilts.  I’m reluctantly going to give this figure a 9, which is hard for me to do.  It would be a 9.5 if we did fractions.