Anna Daniels
Ahsoka Tano is one of the most popular new characters to emerge from the Star Wars animated universe — with one of the coolest character designs. So why hasn’t she made it to the big screen? Well, she sort-of has with a sight unseen cameo in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, but in a way that devastated fans of the character. However, Dave Filoni, Ahsoka’s creator and the mastermind behind the acclaimed Star Wars animated series like The Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels, suggests that Ahsoka’s apparent fate as hinted by her voice cameo in The Rise of Skywalker doesn’t spell out her doom, as many had assumed.
Toward the end of The Rise of Skywalker, just as Rey is about to defeat Palpatine, she reaches out to the Force and hears the voices of several Jedi. The voices she hears are Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Mace Windu, Luminara Unduli, Aayla Secura, Yoda, Adi Gallia, Kanan Jarrus, and Qui-Gon Jinn — all of whom we know to be dead. But then another voice unexpectedly turns up: that of Ahsoka Tano, voiced by Ashley Eckstein. This led fans to conclude that Anakin Skywalker’s former apprentice was dead, like the Jedi whose voices spoke to Rey. But in an interview with io9, Dave Filoni suggested that may not be the case.
“It doesn’t really have any big implications to what I’m doing with the character, to be honest. I just thought it was a really fun thing. I thought J.J. [Abrams]’s instinct to be so inclusive with all these various elements of Star Wars and characters [was great]. And I thought it would be a great thing for the actors involved to be a part of something that was just really this celebrating moment of the Star Wars saga. So I didn’t think of it in a literal story [way]. The film, to me, is like a different area.”
Basically, you’re reading too deep into it, Filoni says. Filoni still has stories in store for Ahsoka, who appeared in Filoni’s Star Wars Rebels, which takes place five years before the events of A New Hope. She will appear in The Clone Wars again as well when it returns on Disney+ this Friday.
Filoni also suggested that all the characters who make a voice cameo in The Rise of Skywalker scene aren’t necessarily dead. “I have to wonder with Star Wars fans,” Filoni added. “They seem to watch the movies but they don’t take all the lessons. They deal a lot in absolutes, which is very much a Sith thing. I remember in The Empire Strikes Back Luke speaking out through the force to Leia. Vader also does this at the end of Empire Strikes Back. There’s no absoluteness that these people are dead. I mean, some of them we know are dead.”
Star Wars: The Clone Wars returns for its final season on Disney+ on February 21, 2020.
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