I don’t normally write preview pieces. I wasn’t planning on writing this one. But I am so excited about the new series, Ahsoka, which will premiere with two episodes on Disney+ in mere hours, on this “Tano Tuesday” eve, that I can think of nothing else.
Since the passage of time is unrelenting and we don’t have access to The World Between Worlds, there is no way to replace or repeat the moment, the feeling, the existential state of anticipation for a new Star Wars story. There is nothing as electric as being on the precipice of a series that has not yet aired or a film that has not yet been released to the public. And once someone has crossed that threshold, there’s no way to get that feeling back for that particular story.
All this is to say that I realized this morning that this is the last time I will be able to write about the new Ahsoka series not knowing what it’s actually like. I will never have an opportunity like this to reflect upon and distill my thoughts and feelings about this character without considering the new series.
Image Credit: Polygon
[SPOILERS ahead for any past Star Wars stories that include Ahsoka Tano: mainly The Clone Wars and Rebels animated series, and The Mandalorian.]
My anticipation is sky high (some might say Sky Guy, high?) for this series because Ahsoka is my favorite Star Wars character. I have only begun to say that out loud recently because it always seemed like one’s favorite Star Wars characters should come from the Original Trilogy. Surely my answer to “who is your favorite Star Wars character?” must be Han, Luke, or Leia. Even R2 would make more sense than a character that didn’t exist before 2008. The Empire Strikes Back is my favorite Star Wars film, so shouldn’t my favorite character come from that? At the last Star Wars Celebration I attended in Anaheim, my dear friend Jordan, who would identify as a more casual fan, tagged along, and his outside perspective gave me a sense of clarity. He said, “Hey, maybe Ahsoka is actually your favorite Star Wars character. You do get ridiculously excited every time she comes up.” I realized he was right, and ever since this epiphany, I’ve been thinking about why.
Ahsoka has grown along with my fandom of Star Wars over the years in a way that no other character has. When the original Clone Wars film played in theaters in 2008, I had, only a few years prior, rediscovered ways to express my Star Wars fandom when I went to grad school and met some of my best Star Wars friends: always
, usually Tim, and sometimes Tom, Jess, or Brent (hi, guys!). We would chat about the Galaxy Far, Far Away during office hours and make Target runs to do “peg checks” for new action figures. Star Wars is best when shared with friends, and when the Prequel Trilogy had come out in the early 2000s, I was in high school going into college and had amazing, lifelong friends, but they indulged and humored my Star Wars fanaticism rather than shared it. So, in many ways, Ahsoka’s start as a character coincided with the evolution of my fandom into what it is today.Image Credit: IGN
When we meet her in that first film, she’s a sassy, precocious 14-year-old Padawan. I remember neither disliking her nor falling in love with her right away as I walked out of the theater. I liked the idea of Anakin Skywalker having a Padawan, and I really liked the idea of introducing a new, major female character into Star Wars canon. But it was very much a wait and see situation. What would happen after that, however, is, the more I think about it, astounding.
How many fictional characters can we say have had as much time — both real, human time and in-universe narrative time — to develop? My first thought was there must be classic literary characters. Maybe Sherlock Holmes, who appeared in so many serialized stories. The Greatest Detective in the World (sorry, Batman) has been adapted so many times and in so many ways, and over a century. And yet, most of that storytelling has not been continuous. We have not followed Sherlock Holmes’ life since he was a child. We meet him and we adventure with him in one mode, more or less. Even with a character like Batman (ok, he’s the greatest detective too), who has had a lot more time devoted to his formative childhood trauma, has clusters of stories that do not relate or connect. Ahsoka, from the moment we have met her, has had one big story, with every adventure fitting into a cohesive life narrative. That may be unprecedented.
Since 2008, I have followed Ahsoka from sulking as a teen because Anakin won’t let her do enough, to realizing the harsh realities of war as she becomes a more experienced military commander. To becoming a leader and mentor to other Padawans, never giving up hope when everyone else has. She goes through a trial that completely upends her reality, and then she makes the toughest decision — to leave the Jedi Order. Imagine leaving an institution, a place, and a community that you have called home since you were a baby. The right choice for her was the hardest, the most unthinkable, and yet she still made it and never looked back. To me, that shows such self-possession and strength. The Hitchcock-inspired arc of The Clone Wars, in which she makes this life-changing decision, is, to this day, one of the best Star Wars stories of all time.
It is this pivotal moment, to defect from The Jedi Order and strike out on her own, that defines Ahsoka and makes her stand out amongst all light side Force-wielding characters. Because when she leaves, she gains an outside perspective that not even Master Yoda or Obi-Wan Kenobi has because they stayed with the Order until it fell at the end of the Clone Wars. She lives in the in between, the liminal space between the Jedi and the Sith.
Image Credit: Polygon
As a compete story arc, I don’t think the Martez sisters episodes at the beginning of Season 7 of The Clone Wars series hold up to some of Ahsoka’s other arcs — The Siege of Mandalore from The Clone Wars and the Twilight of the Apprentice from Rebels, for example, far surpass them dramatically. Yet upon rewatching the “Essential Ahsoka Tano Episodes” curated by Disney+, presumably to prepare fans or get fans more excited for the new series, I realized that Ahsoka’s experience with the Martez sisters is Exhibit A of her growth and development, affording her a unique wisdom.
After this experience, she possesses an ability to empathize with someone from a very different walk of life than her. She can see how others might perceive The Jedi Order differently. She gets outside of her own worldview and, for lack of a less cliched phrase, puts herself in someone else’s shoes (or Jika-tabi?). Her sense of reality and perspective become so much more pliable than those of other, more senior or more powerful Jedi before her. Even in the Malachor episode of Rebels, she says they are there to find “forbidden” knowledge because, “To defeat your enemy, you have to understand them.” Understanding others may be Ahsoka’s greatest power.
This ability to see and understand outside one’s own perspective constitutes a wisdom and grace that we see in full form when we meet Ahsoka in live action in The Mandalorian. Yes, she does get a little weird about not wanting Grogu to become a Jedi (I wish I had more time to discuss her relationship with Anakin, but all I’ll say is heartbreak! trauma!), and seems to cling to some of the more traditional edicts of The Jedi Order regarding attachment. The episode in which she first appears is called “The Jedi.” The way in which she talks to Mando, and talks to Mando about Grogu, however, shows how she instantly empathizes with both Grogu’s past trauma and how important his relationship with Din Djarin is. She doesn’t question for a second that they would want to be together, despite how oddball their pairing might seem to others (including the audience). Even with Luke, who seems desperate for her mentorship, she does not foist her own views on him. She simply tells him to “trust his instincts.” She is helpful and a force for good without being didactic or dogmatic.
The presence of a light side Force wielder like Ahsoka, who refuses to live within the strictures of the Jedi Order, elevates the entire Star Wars canon because she is proof that the Force is not so binary. As someone not well-versed in the Legends novels, I can’t speak to how the concept of a Gray Jedi maps onto Ahsoka exactly, and I know we’re getting more neutral non-Jedi Order light side Force wielders like the Wayseekers in The High Republic novels, but I think in Star Wars for the screen, at least, Ahsoka is the closest to a gray, ambiguous, in-between hero we have. That is vital to the longevity of the franchise because only then is there room for our understanding of The Force to advance. And expanding our understanding of The Force is one of the only ways for storytelling in the Star Wars universe to innovate.
Image Credit: StarWars.com
In thinking about pop culture more broadly, Ahsoka importantly shows that it’s not just bad guys who are complicated or conflicted. The anti-hero as a general concept has a legacy dating back to the Old West or gangster stories like Bonnie and Clyde, but historians of film and television can point to series like The Sopranos and Breaking Bad as a more contemporary inflection point in which the “anti-hero” trend began. But all those characters, from Walter White to Jaime Lannister, from Loki to The Punisher, (feel free to shout-out your favorite anti-hero in the comments!), and on and on, commit bad acts yet remain likable and kind of sort of at their core “good.” An anti-hero is someone whose behavior and/or morality we cannot condone, yet we empathize and root for them anyway. With this recent age of anti-heroes, we have also ushered in moral ambiguity. What is right and wrong and what are wrong things to do for the right reasons or right things to do for the wrong reasons have all mixed together in the same soup. That makes for great storytelling, but can leave me a little bereft from time to time.
Ahsoka, in many ways, serves as an anti-anti-hero. She makes mistakes. She can be arrogant like Obi-Wan (if you ask Maul) or stubborn and contrary like Anakin. Mallory Rubin and Joanna Robinson have had, unsurprisingly, some superb Ahsoka prep episodes, spanning The Ringer-Verse, their old home, and their new House of R feed. But the most illuminating point they made in those many hours of sublime podcasting was that Ahsoka is so compelling as a character because we see her make mistakes and fail constantly. And then we get to see her learn and grow in direct response to those mistakes.
Through all of that, she is still good. She is still just, and righteous. She is still a hero. And so when I compare her to some of the most infamous anti-heroes of the 21st century, I see that she still creates that complexity and ambiguity. No one knows quite what to do with her. When she confesses to the Martez sisters that she left the Jedi Order, their hilarious reply is, “You can DO that?!” She defies all social and moral convention, and yet is still so clearly good.
How will that all bear on the new series? Ahsoka is the perfect character through which to explore the post-Empire, Mando-Verse era of Star Wars. Because the Galaxy during this time is in an in-between state as well. Familiar institutions have dissolved officially, and everyone has to move on and find a new way. The Empire has technically ended, and yet remnants such as Gideon, the Shadow Council, and Thrawn are active. The New Republic is trying to remake the Galaxy for the better and yet seems to be failing many of its citizens with shaky bureaucracy. Luke Skywalker is in the process of building a new Jedi school, and yet no one knows what shape the New Jedi Order will ultimately take.
Ahsoka’s nobility will ground us in these confusing times, while still having all her unresolved issues and flaws. She’s so resistant to Grogu training at first because she still has not recovered from Anakin becoming Vader, after all. Her outsider status can both create conflict and facilitate resolution. These qualities also make her a free agent, so as members of The Ghost crew, like Hera, may be bound by The New Republic, Ahsoka will be able to operate on the outside and therefore potentially outwit Thrawn.
Image Credit: Collider
Ahsoka herself says in Season 2 of The Mandalorian, “I like firsts. Good or bad, they’re always memorable.” In its original context, many saw this as a meta-textual statement about Rosario Dawson’s first appearance as Ahsoka in live action, revealing some anxiety about porting that character over from animation. Goodness knows the lekku backlash was proof enough that the anxiety was warranted. For me right now, awaiting Ahsoka’s first live action series, these words about firsts remind me that for Star Wars in particular, I always enjoy the start of something new, whether it turns out to be good or bad. Because even if it’s not the best Star Wars I’ve ever seen, I’m always happy to have seen it — to have gotten more from a franchise that I love.
Jen this is such a brilliant and nuanced reflection on Ashoka, and Star Wars in general. I really enjoyed this!
As a diehard Rebels fan, I have been dying for the continuation of this story. And, of course, to get more of the live action Ahsoka glimpsed in The Mandalorian. So excited!