6. The Gathering

Complete story — includes the ending

Ahsoka and Yoda take a group of younglings to a cave on Ilum to perform a Jedi rite of passage called "The Gathering", where they will each have to face an internal fear or flaw in order to retrieve a Kyber crystal so they can begin building their own lightsabers. The episode marks the first in the series' Young Jedi arc, the entirety of which was screened at the Star Wars Celebration VI convention on August 25, 2012. Critics praised the episode's animation and imagery, as well as the introduction of the Young Jedi characters to the series. IGN ' s Eric Goldman wrote, "From the devilish mouth around one crystal to the glowing center of the ice [one of the Younglings] traveled to, it was all amazing to look at." Bryan Young wrote that his favorite aspect of the episode was its exploration of Jedi mythology and compared the Youngling's rite of passage to the test Luke Skywalker was given inside the pit on Dagobah in the film The Empire Strikes Back. Jayson Peters of the East Valley Tribune wrote that he appreciated how similar the voice for Yoda in the episode sounded to the original voice-overs done by Frank Oz in Yoda's first appearance in film, The Empire Strikes Back. Eric Goldman wrote in his review for IGN that the episode missed a major opportunity to explore the relationship between Ahsoka and Yoda: the two were left outside of the cave together while the Younglings completed their rite of passage, but the two Jedi's interactions during this time are not featured. Goldman also noted that with six new characters being introduced during the one 22 minute episode, only the very basic aspects of the Younglings' personalities were developed.