Star Wars Rebels is going to air its last few episodes next week and the series needs to finish everything possible in a nutshell to link with the events of Rogue One and the original trilogy. Therefore, this week’s second episode made it even more fun when it brought back Ahsoka Tano and disclosed her fate.
Among all the characters featured in the Star Wars history, Ahsoka is the one with the most happening origins. When Lucasfilm endeavored to further expand the prequel trilogy, they released a CG movie for Clone Wars in 2008, and Ahsoka was the character who played the part of Anakin Skywalker’s apprentice. The film didn’t find much favors with the audiences, and a lot of fans considered Ahsoka to be a disturbing character, and it didn’t make her any lovable when the CG Clone Wars series arrived on Cartoon Network after a few months. A section of fans disliked her as she appeared immature, and others for her dress or for whatever reason they felt. The outcome was that she stepped into the saga on the wrong foot courtesy that film.
Over a period of time, Clone Wars series made Ahsoka become one of the most lovable characters. Looking through her eyes, the show managed to delve into the more important moral issues related to Jedi, their creed and the Clone War in a way that wasn’t done by the prequel films until Revenge of the Sith which released in 2005, and then also, those sequences were brief and unclear. Revisiting Clone Wars, seeing her grow and become a matured person is an intriguing aspect of character development, and it brings forward the positives of Clone Wars style of the anthology based multi-episode storylines.
During the five years of the series’ run, from being an audience point of view character, Ahsoka morphed into a key element of the Clone Wars timeline, and she remained on board for long enough and undertook so much that you can’t really imagine a universe without her. At least one thing is sure, in her absence, there would be none of those cool multi-kills in the Star Wars.
The series turned out to be so awesome that you even overlooked the great conflict that her character was. There is no clue what the heck was she doing during Order 66 and when Anakin was disgraced? All the viewers were unanimous about her dying at some point during the series. On the contrary, Clone Wars revealed the answer in its last episode that was aired on Cartoon Network: when she faced allegations of a terrorist attack and slaughter and was revealed to be innocent, she abandoned the Order for good.
Since it was Star Wars, it couldn’t have meant the end of the road for Ahsoka, just because the series had ended. The only question was not about whether she would be back, but, only about when she would be back. A lot of fans believed that a solo movie from the Anthology series would be a fitting finale for the character. Although that’s still not ruled out, her real return happened not too long after Clone Wars was over, courtesy Star Wars Rebels. Since both the shows had Dave Filoni as the driving force, it wasn’t surprising to see her return at the end of Rebels Season one, looking older and wielding a pair of white lightsabers.
Similar to the way the latest Star Wars trilogy movies address the impact of legacy and taking charge of your destiny, Clone Wars and Rebels showed that despite their different approach, they were wrapped around Ahsoka Tano. While she is not as prominent in Rebels as she was in the Clone Wars, the show took her story forward and displayed her growth from Padawan to a Jedi master. The brief sequences during season two when we saw her teach Kanan and Ezra are proof of her maturing. Clone Wars displayed the impact she made on Anakin and how he became disenchanted with the Jedi Order. Rebels used her character to display the fact that you have to move on rather than harp about the past, and that’s what we had seen with Darth Maul and his long-term obsession about exacting revenge from Obi-Wan Kenobi and Palpatine after his come back.
The latest episode, “A World Between Worlds,” displays this concept by showing Ezra rescue her from her last battle with Darth Vader on Malachor in the second season. Ezra picked her out of the timeline and put into the portals connecting the whole of time and space in the Star Wars universe. Ezar was certain that he could also get his late master back from the explosion which had killed him a few episodes back. It was only due to Ahsoka that Ezra came to terms with Kanan’s death and moved on in life, realizing that everyone has a moment which needs them most.
Now that only three more episodes are left before the end of Rebels, Ahsoka is alive and sent back to her own timeline. Each character will have to play a role, and now Ahsoka is enriched by close to two years of knowledge about what transpired, which suggests that her epic moment will come in the series’ finale alongside Ezra and the remainder of the Ghost crew. It is yet to be seen whether it will be through Rebels or another animated series which will come to Star Wars universe, but, Ahsoka’s transition from Padawan to a surrogate Master has been fascinating as it unfolded over ten years of adventures and lightsaber duels.