Countdown to Ahsoka: Everything We Do and Do Not Know About the Series

As we enter into the final weeks before the Ahsoka series comes out (the first two episodes are out on August 23), we at Star Wars News Net thought we'd do a bit of a countdown series of daily articles as we head into the series. For The Mandalorian season 3, we looked back at all episodes from the series through its concept art. Now, we'll take a deep dive through memory lane and talk about the history of the character through her animated appearances and her impact on the Star Wars fandom.



But we'll get to that, because for our inaugural piece in the series, we want to talk about the new show and break down everything that's been revealed to us so far, and what's more important, everything that hasn't. To understand the history behind the show, we have to go back in time a few years, to March 2018, when the final episode of Star Wars: Rebels dropped. In it, the Ghost crew was able to liberate Lothal after Ezra called in the purrgil for help and went into outer space with them and Grand Admiral Thrawn. It was the conclusion of the series, but also the beginning of the next adventure.



In the series' epilogue, we find out that Hera was pregnant at the time of Kanan's death, and she's since had a baby, Jacen Syndulla, who is now aboard the Ghost. Meanwhile, in Lothal, Sabine is nostalgic about the old days and misses Ezra; she made a promise to him to find him. Once a white-cloaked Ahsoka shows up on her doorstep, her new adventure begins. Star Trek had the Search for Spock, Star Wars has the 'Search for Ezra', which will be one of the central topics of Ahsoka.



As he revealed in recent interviews, Dave Filoni has been mulling some of the key elements of the Ahsoka story for a few years, but he said to himself that to tell the full story, he would need a new challenge -- live-action. For that, he would start to test the waters in The Mandalorian season 2, when he wrote Ahsoka as a pivotal part of Mando's arc that also helped to plant the seed for her eventual spin-off series, one that would be announced just a couple of weeks after Chapter 13 debuted.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_1EXWNETiI


<h2>The story of Ahsoka</h2>


For now, specifics of the plot remain tightly under wraps, but from the trailers we have been able to gather at least the breakdown of the first act. We know that everyone is looking for Grand Admiral Thrawn, and the key to finding him is Morgan Elsbeth, who is now imprisoned by the New Republic. As hinted at by the trailers, dark side-Force users Baylan Skoll and his apprentice, Shin Hati, break her out of the ship that she's locked up in. But what happens later? We know they go to a mysterious planet and the Magistrate pulls up some sort of map that could lead them to Thrawn; Ahsoka and Baylan are seen fighting later in that same spot. We've also seen Shin fighting Sabine in two different places, but we still don't know how, when, or why.



As far as Ahsoka goes, we know that she reunited with Sabine shortly after Ezra left and trained her as her apprentice. That Sabine will have a huge role to play in the series is something we've seen coming for a long time, as Natasha Liu Bordizzo was announced to be playing the character almost a year before the rest of the ensemble. Judging from the trailer, it seems like after Ahsoka visits some Jedi Temple, her suspicions about Thrawn's return grow stronger, and is compelled to visit her former student. The main timeline of the show seems to take place after Chapter 13 of The Mandalorian, but it's also clear from the trailers that we'll be getting some action all the way back to the Rebels epilogue, which will be recreated in live-action.



The two of them also assemble Hera who, from official LEGO sets, is still aboard the Ghost with Jacen. The three of them will embark on an adventure to look for their friend and save the galaxy, though there are still a lot of missing pieces in that puzzle that the series will fill in.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnzNZ0Mdx4I
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<h2>The cast and characters of Ahsoka</h2>


Rosario Dawson plays Ahsoka Tano, the title character and main protagonist of the series. It is the third time she plays the part, after guest appearances in The Mandalorian season 2 and The Book of Boba Fett. We also suspect there will be more seasons of Ahsoka down the line, as both the actress herself and a story by The Hollywood Reporter have suggested. The character has a long history in Star Wars animation, which we'll be exploring these next few weeks through our 'Countdown to Ahsoka' series.



The new series will also be bringing to live-action the main characters of Star Wars: Rebels, the series that Dave Filoni created and oversaw for four seasons. As we mentioned earlier, the second most important character in the narrative seems to be Natasha Liu Bordizzo's Sabine Wren. It seems likely that we'll get to see parts of her training under Ahsoka, but the series will mostly be focused on her reconnecting with her former master, as well as her searching for Ezra. Depending on when we get to him (we'll throw a wild guess here and say that by the time episode 5 wraps, we'll have found him), we could even see a romantic subplot between them, something that Rebels abandoned after several teases.







Also from the Rebels crew we have Mary Elizabeth Winstead's Hera Syndulla is now a general who 'continues to serve as the captain of her ship while fighting for freedom from oppression as a general in the New Republic during an era of reconstruction', according to the official Star Wars Databank. She's seen debating members of the Senate during the trailer, perhaps trying to warn them about Thrawn's imminent return; among those Senators, we can see Mon Mothma (Genevieve O'Reilly). However, we don't know much else about her part in the story for now, other than along with her, Chopper is also back.



With Kanan no longer around, there are only two members of the Ghost crew left. Zeb already appeared in The Mandalorian, played by Steve Blum, which left the door wide open for her return in Ahsoka. The fact that we haven't seen him yet hints that perhaps he's not a key member of the mission, but rather someone we'll meet down the line. Star Wars likes to keep most stuff outside of the first two episodes out of their trailers.



Finally, we know that Eman Esfandi is playing Ezra Bridger in the series, and we've already seen a quick shot of him in hologram form. But that's about it as far as our knowledge of the character in Ahsoka goes. We assume that the crew will find him hanging out with some space whales, and the trailer already hinted that the Ghost will be navigating through some wild purrgil. It would also be cool if, during his time in Wild Space, he'd learned new Force skills. Here's the big question, though -- if Thrawn is back, why isn't Ezra back? The main question that Ahsoka has to answer is what happened right after the Battle of Lothal.



Sabine Wren (Natasha Liu Bordizzo) in Lucasfilm's AHSOKA, exclusively on Disney+. ©2022 Lucasfilm Ltd. &amp; TM. All Rights Reserved.



Moving over to the dark side of the Force, we have four main villains. Baylan Skoll, played by the late Ray Stevenson, used to be a Jedi during the Clone Wars and survived Order 66; he even knew Anakin Skywalker. However, he's since become a lightsaber-wielder for hire and is now an ally to Morgan Elsbeth (Diana Lee Inosanto), the Magistrate of Corvus who was defeated by Ahsoka Tano in The Mandalorian Chapter 13, and a master to Shin Hati (Ivanna Sakhno). Another (we assume?) minor character on this side is Marrok, the mysterious Inquisitor who had small appearances in the trailers and his own photo from Empire Magazine. The Star Wars Databank confirmed that he's another saber-for-hire working for Morgan Elsbeth, who is probably obsessed with finding Ahsoka before she locates Thrawn.



Everyone is looking for Grand Admiral Thrawn, played once again by Lars Mikkelsen, who has returned with evil plans (we assume?). This is where things get a little fuzzy, because Thrawn's character motivations are very unclear; Timothy Zahn wrote him in the novels as a misunderstood antihero, while Filoni has said he's a straight-up villain in the New Republic era. This can also be an argument of point of view -- the novels are written in Thrawn's, so Zahn would have been more inclined to paint him as the hero of his own story, while both Rebels and now Ahsoka and future projects are set from the other perspective.



Also a part of the show is David Tennant as Huyang, the Mark IV architect droid professor who appeared in The Clone Wars and had small mentions in several novels throughout the years. Reports from almost two years ago said that Hayden Christensen would be appearing in the series, but nobody has dared to confirm as much since then. Rosario Dawson recently said that Anakin is her favorite Force ghost, and dodged a question in another interview earlier this summer about Christensen's involvement; that is as close as we've come to getting official answers. But his involvement also makes sense -- the show will be exploring a lot of the history of the character, and the logo already suggests we may be visiting the World Between Worlds, which opens up so many narrative possibilities.



Shin Hati (Ivanna Sakhno) in Lucasfilm's STAR WARS: AHSOKA, exclusively on Disney+. ©2023 Lucasfilm Ltd. &amp; TM. All Rights Reserved.


<h2>The crew behind Ahsoka</h2>


Ahsoka will be made up of a total of eight episodes, all written by Dave Filoni. Filoni also directed somewhere between two and three of them. The rest of the directing lineup includes Steph Green, Peter Ramsey, Jennifer Getzinger, Geeta Vasant Patel, and Rick Famuyiwa. In addition, Filoni also executive produces along with Jon Favreau, Kathleen Kennedy, Colin Wilson, and Carrie Beck. Eric Steelberg and Quyen Tran were the cinematographers of the, so far, gorgeous-looking show.


<h2>Open questions going into the series
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How about... All of the questions? If we were to restrict this a bit further, here are six burning questions presented both by the trailers and previous Star Wars projects that the show must answer:

• What happened after the Battle of Lothal, when Ezra and Thrawn disappeared into Wild Space? (The answer to this should also address why Thrawn may have returned, but not Ezra)
• Why did Ahsoka stop training Sabine?
• Why does Ahsoka think that Thrawn has returned?
• What does Thrawn want?
• Why are Morgan Elsbeth, Baylan Skoll, and Shin Hati looking for Thrawn?
• How will the events of this show affect the galaxy going forward?

The first two episodes of Ahsoka will start streaming on August 23. Make sure to return every day until then for our new article revisiting the history of the character throughout the Star Wars franchise!



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