Ahsoka Tano is my favorite character in Star Wars, and the Ahsoka series is my favorite Star Wars show. It may not be the most popular choice for favorite, but I found it incredibly fun and engaging. I liked it enough that it got me back into fanfiction, a hobby I haven’t been into for around twenty years.
I liked it so much that I named my new puppy after one of the characters, pictured here with Ahsoka.
I rewatched episode one and thought I’d share my thoughts on the characters as well as throw out a theory on the timeline. What did you think of the show?
Ahsoka Tano, the most Jedi of non-Jedi
The show did not begin with the character it is named after, but she appeared in the second scene on the ancient Nightsisters of Dathomir stronghold on the planet Arcana. She looked amazing in this setting as she quickly found her target, a subterranean room with a puzzle holding a star map.
Ahsoka has previously appeared in several Star Wars shows, including Clone Wars. If you haven’t watched it or anything else other than the main Star Wars movies, it may be a surprise that during the Clone Wars, she was Anakin Skywalker’s Padawan. She walked away from both Anakin and the Jedi Order after she was falsely accused of a crime. Everything in this paragraph helps to explain why she is how she is in this series and why her arc (and everyone who appears in it) is so important. Girl has some issues.
Her story continued with Rebels, where she assisted the show’s heroes and eventually faced her former master. Tales of the Jedi covered other parts of her story, including her childhood, training with Anakin, and joining the Rebel Alliance. There’s also a book covering some of the same material.
Ahsoka Tano is my favorite Star Wars character. She is not the typical Jedi, and no longer even claims to be part of the Jedi Order. She’s also not a Sith and does not follow the Dark Side. Some might call her a Gray Jedi, which is far more relatable to real life. In this series, the character and the actress who portrays her are both in their 40s, which I also find relatable.
She isn’t perfect, which I think we see in this episode. One has to assume she used some less than ideal interrogation tactics on Morgan, given her response to Huyang. She did seem to manipulate Sabine, leading with the idea of finding Ezra, which she didn’t even bring up with Hera until the other woman mentioned it.
Ahsoka has some hang-ups as well, which we also saw. The mood of her conversation with Hera switched when Hera brought up Ahsoka’s master, and she talked about walking away from him, the Order, and Sabine. She’s been through a lot.
Also, she has two very cool lightsabers. Why are they white? She defeated a Sith Inquisitor while she was unarmed and then purified the crystals in his lightsaber and took them for her own. As one does.
Sabine Wren, the Mandalorian and Jedi Padawan
Sabine Wren was up next, fleeing a ceremony to honor the heroes of Lothal, which included her. She wanted none of it and displayed her abilities by evading the patrol sent to return her to the festivities. Sabine returned to her home in a communications tower and met her CAT. We love her cat. I was a little concerned if she didn’t put the lid back on the food, the cat would eat it all while she slept. Sabine watched a recording of Ezra.
This communications tower is Ezra’s old home, and you can see his history all around her. I can’t imagine that’s great for her mental state, aside from everything else she’s been through. Like Ahsoka, she’s been through a lot.
She started off as a cadet in an Imperial academy, where she unintentionally created a weapon that would be used against her people. She worked as a bounty hunter next and then joined the rebel crew of the starship Ghost. She was still a teenager during this time – let that sink in. She found, wielded, and ultimately handed off the Darksaber to Bo-Katan.
As part of the Rebellion, she saw a close friend die and also lost her friend Ezra when he summoned space whales called Purgil to drag the ship which carried him and Grand Admiral Thrawn away to somewhere unknown. After all that, her home planet was destroyed by the Empire in their last days, killing her family in the process. Oh, and her Jedi Master Ashoka apparently walked away from her at that point as well. Girl also has some issues.
This woman also happens to be a Mandalorian, though, so she wasn’t exactly barely scraping by before Ezra gave her that lightsaber. This is the same culture that led another Mandalorian to note weapons are their religion. She’s an expert in explosives, deadly with blasters, and far better than any of us would naturally be with melee weapons, including the space wizard laser sword type.
So how did she lose to Shin? She was out of practice, at the very least. She hadn’t been practicing much, if at all. She got into a fistfight with an armed robot and won, though, so that latent skill is still there. During the fight, she did not back down. She kept fighting, even after Shin skewered her with her lightsaber.
The internet lists her as having 50,578 kills throughout Star Wars Rebels. One could argue she just had a bad day with Shin.
Hera Syndulla, Star Wars Mom
We met Hera Syndulla when Ahsoka flew to meet her and tried to figure out the identity of the two Force-wielding attackers. Hera is a literal mom, and we’ll meet her son Jacen later. But she also served as the leader and mom figure of the Ghost crew, including Sabine Wren and Ezra Bridger. I love that Wookieepedia lists her as a mother to both of those characters. We see this maternal instinct play out in this episode as she encouraged Ahsoka in both the mission and with Sabine.
Although she is a motherly figure to her crew and friends, she is also a fighter and a leader in the Rebellion, which is why she’s a General in the show. The Empire devastated her home planet, and she has never stopped fighting them. She seemingly doesn’t care for politics, and I feel the same. That is going to get her in trouble someday.
Her partner and father of Jacen was Kanan Jarrus, a Jedi and master to Ezra. Together they led the Ghost crew across the four seasons of Rebels, facing inquisitors, Thrawn, and even Darth Vader. Kanan is not in this series as he died during those events, Force-controlling a giant fireball to save Hera and his friends.
I’m not saying she doesn’t have issues as a result, but if we compare her to our last two heroines, she seems to be handling it better.
Huyang, the droid who Knows Things
There are so many titles, witty or otherwise, we could give to Huyang. The droid was built over 25,000 years before the events of this series. I can’t begin to capture all of the history he could report, but it is safe to say he Knows Things. He claims his role was to help Jedi younglings create their lightsabers for over a thousand generations, but I have to think he went on at least a few adventures.
He is absolutely perfect in this series and in this episode. I love his banter with Ahsoka and Sabine. He is voiced by David Tennant, who truly brings the character to life.
Baylan Skoll, Jedi, General, and ???
I want to start with the actor here. Ray Stevenson passed away before the airing of this show, and that is very sad indeed. May he rest in peace.
His character is absolutely epic in the Ahsoka series. Baylan Skoll kicked off the first episode with the rescue of Morgan Elsbeth from a New Republic ship. Do you remember the scene in The Phantom Menace when Qui Gon and Obi Wan almost make it into the bridge of the Trade Federation ship? It made me feel like that, only Baylan’s apprentice does make it to the bridge and wipe everybody out. Throw in the same vibes of Darth Vader’s hallway scene in Rogue One and add outstanding music, and this has to be one of my favorite character introductions of all time.
We don’t find out a lot of detail about the character or his history throughout the series, but that makes him all the more interesting. He was a Jedi Knight and a general in the Clone Wars. Huyang said he disappeared after the war. We know he took on an apprentice at some point as she’s with him still. He did a good job training her, as we also see in this first attack. He is clearly a father figure to her, and as the series progresses, we want to believe he’s truthful and will turn back.
Shin Hati… she scares me
Whereas her master seems more precise and controlled, Shin Hati is aggressive. She gives off far more of a dark side feel than Baylan. Her introduction was almost as grand as his, and the brief scene of her arrival on the bridge is my favorite. You know everyone there is dead, even though they don’t show it.
We know even less about this character. She was born after the fall of the Jedi Order and has been with Baylan long enough to take on Republic forces alone and battle a Mandalorian, albeit one out of practice. She is very intense to the point I find her disconcerting.
I liked she has the Padawan braid. Her master doesn’t seem to hate the Jedi Order and maintains at least a few of its traditions. It is also an easy way to explain to the audience their roles without talking about it too much.
Morgan Elsbeth, Witch Survivor
We met this character first in The Mandalorian. She was a brutal dictator until Ahsoka and Din Djarin destroyed her forces and took her captive. If you saw that episode, you already do not like Morgan Elsbeth. She is not a nice lady.
She comes off as slightly more sympathetic in this series, and we learn in the first episode she is a Nightsister witch and calls herself a “survivor.” The Nightsisters of Dathomir were another Force-wielding group in the galaxy but did not use the Force as either the Jedi or Sith. Their magick appeared as green energy when used, and usually tapped into the Dark Side more than the Light. Many were massacred during the Clone Wars.
Diana Lee Inosanto plays this character, and she is in her late fifties. It is so awesome to see other women still kicking ass, and motivates me to keep my health up. I probably will never take on somebody with a lightsaber in combat, but I certainly have decades of hiking left in me.
Theory on Timeline
I’m writing a long fanfiction around the Ahsoka season, which led to asking far too many questions about part of the timeline. She found Morgan Elsbeth on Corvus and asked where Thrawn was. Later, she went to Ossus and visited Luke. At the start of this series, Morgan is being transported by a New Republic ship while Ahsoka finds the map on Arcana.
Where was Morgan between her capture on Corvus and her rescue by Baylan? Why didn’t Baylan rescue her at that location? If Morgan told Ahsoka the map was on Arcana, why didn’t Ahsoka go there instead of to Luke? If Morgan knew the map was on Arcana, why hadn’t Morgan gone there herself to get it?
Here is my head canon, and how I’m writing it into my fanfic. Ahsoka didn’t take Morgan to a New Republic facility after Corvus but found some other, less hospitable host for the prisoner. Morgan didn’t know the map was on Arcana and needed some piece of information to figure out the location. Ahsoka left her there while Ahsoka connected the dots and returned, finally sending Morgan for an appropriate trial. The “freedoms” a prisoner of the New Republic might enjoy on pickup could include the ability to send communications to friends, family, loved ones, and mercenaries in code.
Thoughts?
Other Thoughts
- It really seems like there should be more incidents at the points where ships enter and leave hyperspace.
- I think they should have taken more soldiers to meet the “imposter” Jedi.
- I love their capes are frayed at the bottom like they would be in real life if you wore one all the time.
- The coolest music.
- Why did they hide the star map? Why there?
- Hera knows it is a star map. Do all star maps look like that?
- Sabine’s intro was cool but a little excessive to go try to hunt down a war hero to return her to a ceremony she doesn’t want to be at, probably after the crowd has left anyway.
- No sympathy for Ahsoka that Sabine ran off with the map. She should have seen that coming a mile away.
- Check out this cool video analyzing the map in the end credits by New Rockstars:
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