I don't in general mind a macguffin hunt - you can do interesting things along the way. I do like the introduction of Ray Stevenson's character. It's the first believable, significant* villain Disney has created since taking over. But now Stevenson's dead, so...
*I'll grant some credit to the dude Bill Burr confronted, but that lasted all of 90 seconds(ish), and I think it was more happenstance than deliberate effort. Hux, Ren, Snoke, et al have been Fern-Gully-level villains.
I wouldn't be surprised if most of Rebels was written prior to the Big D takeover.
RE: the actresses, I see the more as a vehicle to keep Dawson and Winstead employed and relevant than an attempt to do anything creative with SW and the characters.
It's not the worst they've done, but it's not Ahsoka - it's Rosario Dawson in low-effort cosplay. They have figured out that Ro-soka works best when she doesn't have many lines (more physical acting than dialogue), so that's better than they've been doing. But the main characters aren't anything like what they were in Rebels. Rosario's trying to play The Oracle (from The Matrix) in a Star Wars show, not Ahsoka.
If you're looking for "what's next for Ahsoka", I'd skip it. Three episodes in, the characters aren't there, the writing is meh at best, and the plot is getting boring. They're cramming 3 episodes of material into 8.
Almost forgot -they even turned Chopper into an annoying almost-BB8 POS
