Ahsoka might fix one of the Star Wars sequel trilogy’s biggest problems

If watching Ahsoka feels a bit like strolling in on the center of a narrative as an alternative of the start, that’s as a result of it type of is. Whereas it’s not billed as such, the newest live-action Star Wars present could be very a lot a sequel to the animated collection Star Wars Rebels, reuniting its solid to inform the subsequent chapter in a narrative that creator Dave Filoni and his collaborators have been telling, in a single kind or one other, since The Clone Wars premiered on Cartoon Community in 2008. That mentioned, it’s additionally a follow-up to plot threads launched within the second season of The Mandalorian, and, presumably, setup for one among three forthcoming Star Wars movies.

Ahsoka, nevertheless, is modern to the story The Mandalorian is telling, and due to this fact set throughout a time for which there are only a few canonical Star Wars tales: the New Republic period, the nebulous 30-year hole between Return of the Jedi and The Drive Awakens. This implies it’s probably that Filoni is utilizing Ahsoka to do for the sequel trilogy what he’s already well-known for doing for the prequels: to clarify what the films wouldn’t, and make the Star Wars film canon make some type of sense.

That is Filoni’s power. He’s maybe the foremost Star Wars continuity physician, a man identified for utilizing seven seasons of The Clone Wars to rehabilitate the prequel trilogy’s repute by foregrounding and exploring a whole lot of the concepts these films simply breeze by. He’s a fan’s fan, the type of one who has thought that we should always have some clarification for why it was really easy for the Clone Troopers to activate the Jedi throughout Order 66, or how the Jedi discovered to turn into Drive Ghosts. And when Disney’s 2012 acquisition of Lucasfilm led to the canonical slate being cleaned aside from the films and The Clone Wars, Filoni, in his position as supervising director on The Clone Wars, was immediately chargeable for a lot of Star Wars canon that he had led improvement on in live performance with George Lucas.

Picture: Lucasfilm

The primary two episodes of Ahsoka counsel Filoni is popping his eye towards the sequel trilogy as properly. If you happen to’re the type of fan who asks the sorts of questions Filoni requested in regards to the prequels in The Clone Wars, then you definately would possibly be a bit bothered by the seemingly sudden and whole collapse of the triumphant New Republic after The Drive Awakens appeared to erase all the hard-earned wins of the unique trilogy.

Ahsoka suggests it’s heading towards a solution: the looming risk posed by Grand Admiral Thrawn, an Imperial legend thought defeated after the conclusion of Rebels. It’s a neat little answer, a solution to additional reintegrate Thrawn — one of the crucial common villains from the outdated Star Wars Expanded Universe (aka the Legends timeline) — into the present canon and stage a disaster massive sufficient to suffocate the nascent New Republic and depart it weak to the First Order.

It’s a tantalizing thought, however there’s some hazard on this strategy. A power of The Clone Wars was its anthology construction, a roving focus that allowed it to inform tales about characters all around the galaxy, exploring all method of concepts. This gave it a free really feel that, whereas it was canon, didn’t make it really feel prefer it was placing forth the ultimate phrase on something. It was only one imaginative and prescient for the Star Wars universe, given the liberty to outline a selected interval in time.

Picture: Lucasfilm

Ought to Filoni use Ahsoka to increase this logic to the New Republic period and the sequel trilogy, then it turns into an integral hyperlink within the chain, eradicating the most important power of reveals like The Clone Wars and Rebels: They made Star Wars really feel larger. Right here have been characters who might — and did — work together with heavies like Anakin and Obi-Wan, however primarily spent their time in their very own nook of the galaxy, with one other solid of characters unrelated to the movies and their well-trod territory.

It’s an comprehensible impulse to wish to see a whole lot of disparate components of Star Wars lore come collectively to kind a coherent entire, and it’s potential that Ahsoka could possibly be a profitable step in that challenge. It will reward over a decade of fan funding, a substantial quantity of which started with youngsters watching The Clone Wars on TV — seeing the world of Star Wars come full circle in a satisfying means as an grownup could be undoubtedly cool. However a whole lot of the magic of Star Wars is in what we don’t know. And what we might, if we left the dual suns we’ve lived beneath all our lives in favor of the hazard and discomfort of one thing unfamiliar.