Editor’s note: The below contains spoilers for Episodes 1 and 2 of Ahsoka.
The first two episodes ofAhsokahave been great, but they also left a ton of viewers scratching their heads. With lots of references to the animated seriesStar Wars Rebels, there’s a general feeling that this new series may be too dependent on previously existing lore to make itself understood as a story in itself. Some people are even going so far as thinkingAhsokamay as well beRebelsSeason 5, while others are starting to ponderhow much previous knowledge one should have to actually enjoy this new series. So is it really just a sequel toRebels, or could it find its way and become something new and unique?
The Continuation of Ahsoka Tano’s Story Started Before ‘Rebels'
While there are indeed a lot of story elements that come fromRebels,Ahsokais trying to tell its own story in the sense that it’s about one main character, Ahsoka Tano (Rosario Dawson). There are many supporting characters who are just as engaging and complex as she is, of course, and some of them we know fromRebels, but the story isn’t about them. Characters like General Hera Syndulla (Mary Winstead), for example, are great to see, but she has a lot of missing traits that simply have no room for development inAhsokagiven her supporting capacity.
When people talk about the series having too many ties toRebels, they are actually referring to Ahsoka’s relationship with Sabine Wren (Natasha Liu Bordizzo). The two of them have a master-and-apprentice dynamic that is definitely treated as required knowledge, but we didn’t see this develop on-screen duringRebels. In fact, Ahsoka and Sabine barely spoke at all inRebels, and this makes their current dynamic strange, even for diehard fans, because it’s completely new stuff and we’re not yet sure when it took place. We’ve seen Sabine (then voiced byTiya Sircar)train very briefly in the ways of the lightsaberwith Jedi Knight Kanan Jarrus (Freddie Prinze Jr.), but the very idea of her being a Padawan to Ahsoka is strange becauseshe simply has no Force sensitivity(unless Filoni pulls a retcon like the one aboutJohn Boyega’s Finn inThe Rise of Skywalker, but, please, don’t).
Sabine has her own complex backstory inRebels, and knowing it may come in handy, but it’s not necessarily required knowledge because she’s also a supporting character. Her role as Ahsoka’s apprentice says more about the former Jedi, in fact, because we know Ahsoka to have been a Padawan toAnakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen/Matt Lanter). In fact, when we think about the word “apprentice,” it’s usually Ahsoka that comes to mind — because, as she explains it herself, she never finished her Jedi training, a story which is told inThe Clone Warsand is even more crucial to her character thanRebels, but that is revealed in a piece of dialogue that’s more than enough to explain it for now.
Now, Ahsoka, who we see as an eternal apprentice, finds herself in the position of master in what may as well be the culmination of her own story as a rebellious Light Side warrior. Although some of her story does take place inRebels, she was a supporting character back then, while now the roles are reversed, and theRebelscharacters provide support for her development. That’s why the series has her name — because it’s essentially about her journey, which started inThe Clone Wars, briefly continued inRebels, and, now reaches its zenith.
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‘Ahsoka’ Has Its Own Well-Defined Premise
It’s rare for a Star Wars series to have such a well-defined subject the wayAhsokahas. Usually, they have only premises, likeThe Mandalorianwith Mando (Pedro Pascal/Brendan Wayne/Lateef Crowder) trying to deliver Grogu to the Jedi in the first seasons, or Boba Fett (Temuera Morrison) becoming the new daimyo of Mos Espa inThe Book of Boba Fett. ButAhsokahas a premise, a subject it wants to flesh out that’s directly tied to the character’s mission of findingGrand Admiral Thrawn (Lars Mikkelsen)andEzra Bridger (Eman Esfandi), and that’s the dynamic between masters and their apprentices.
There are at least three duos of the sort inAhsoka, and they all explore this subject in their own different ways. For Ahsoka and Sabine,the master isn’t really a Jedi, and the apprentice is not even Force-sensitive, but they are a pair nonetheless. There’s also Baylan Skoll (Ray Stevenson) and his Padawan Shin Hati (Ivanna Sakhno). Baylan is also a former Jedi who now serves the Dark Side, but he’s not really a Sith, either, and Shin even has a Padawan braid, but can’t be one because that’s a Jedi thing.Morgan Elsbeth (Diana Lee Inosanto) is herself a sort of apprentice to the long-lost Thrawn, looking for him for such a long time and even preparing for his return.
Of course, the idea of masters and apprentices has also played a big role inRebels, with Kanan Jarrus overcoming his own challenges to train Ezra Bridger (then voiced byTaylor Grey) as his Padawan — but that was always limited to those two, and never even touched Ahsoka and Sabine. Again, they barely spoke at all. In this sense,Ahsokacould have been Season 5 ofRebelsif it kept the same storylines from the animated series, but it doesn’t. It brings most of its main characters back, yes, but the story itself is completely different, with a new focus on Ahsoka herself and a well-defined subject to analyze.
Even Dave Filoni’s Filmmaking Style Has Changed Between ‘Rebels’ and ‘Ahsoka’
Saying that Dave Filoni is the right person to tell Ahsoka Tano’s story is nothing new. He’s one of the creators of the characteralong withGeorge Lucashimself, so he knows her better than anyone. But, in a way, Ahsoka is also part of his own story as a filmmaker, from starting with animation withAvatar: The Last Airbenderat Nickelodeon and laterThe Clone Warsat Lucasfilm, to making the transition to live-action inThe Mandalorian. The jump between these two formats requires adapting, of course, but we can also attest to how much Filoni has improved as a live-action director and writer, too.
He started off in Season 1 ofThe Mandalorianin the episode “The Gunslinger,” which introduced us to Fennec Shand (Ming-Na Wen) and was packed with Easter Eggs, but still pretty much an okay episode. In Season 2, his skills were already clearly sharper when he directed “The Jedi,“which saw Ahsoka Tano’s debut in live-action in a mission with Mando. Now, he’s in excellent form inAhsoka, taking everything to the next level in a story that’s much more linear and objective than anything he’s ever done.
Filoni always had his filmmaking references very well-defined even as an animator, but his style was still raw when he had his debut in “The Gunslinger.” That episode features a lot of Western-like sequences that could’ve just as easily been made in animation, butAhsokais a story that requires more finesse, in the sense that it’s more serious. In Episode 1 ofAhsoka(one of two he’s directing this season), there are visual callbacks to classicStar Warsinfluences likeAkira Kurosawa, an Indiana Jones-like sequence, references to George Lucas' style in the Prequels, and some excellent visual storytelling — the sort of which just wasn’t there when he was makingThe Clone WarsandRebels, not because of the format, but because those were different kinds of stories that required other approaches to directing.
