Late on Tuesday, Ahsoka premiered with a pair of episodes that indicated that this was indeed going to be effectively a continuation of Dave Filoni’s animated series Rebels, much to the delight of fans of that show.
However, given the state of Disney Star Wars projects, it’s more than that. What it feels is that Ahsoka is effectively leading the entire Disney Star Wars universe, and may be doing so for quite a while. Like Luke led the OG trilogy, like Anakin led the prequels, like Rey led the sequels.
The current era of Star Wars is a weird one. After mixed reactions to the deeply disorganized sequel trilogy, and Solo not making enough money, Disney essentially shelved all future movies, or at least pushed them deeper into the future. Now, things are nebulous, and it seems like Ahsoka really only has the big, mainline, universe-altering, Jedi-starring story in existence now, or in the near future. Let’s go through what’s going on elsewhere, and why Ahsoka is the main attraction now:
Past/Current
Obi-Wan Kenobi – Though it pleased some, it was more of a neat little experiment to see the characters return rather than something meant to be an ongoing series, as much as Ewan McGregor may be up for that.
Andor – An incredible series. Also one with a very strict time limit. Only one more season is coming and we already know the ending in the form of Rogue One.
The Book of Boba Fett – This exists because Pedro Pascal had to film The Last of Us and didn’t have time to do a full Mandalorian season. It is bad. We may see Boba Fett himself again in this timeline, but no second season of this show, I’d imagine. And he’s been demoted to third string past Mando and Ahsoka.
The Mandalorian – Obviously the biggest “competition” here is The Mandalorian, though I sort of view him as a Han Solo-type character in this new era, one that is one of the only projects that exists alongside Ahsoka. We know they will reunite for a big film covering both stories later, but it feels like Ahsoka, who is continuing an 11 season journey from Dave Filoni’s animated shows, and dealing with Thrawn, the biggest Expanded Universe threat from the pre-Disney days, is the bigger deal now.
Future
The Acolyte – This does sound like a fascinating series, but this is going to the Disney-created High Republic era, way, way back in time, and will be disconnected from all these other projects. Yes, Disney may try to turn the High Republic into its own big thing, past all the books they’ve already released, but that remains to be seen.
Skeleton Crew – This one talks place in the Mando/Ahosoka timeline, so it may cross over, but it will obviously be subservient to them if so. Ahsoka is obviously the bigger deal.
The Lando Show – Allegedly this is happening with Donald Glover, but I will believe it when I see it. And the pre-OG timeline doesn’t match up with much else here except Andor.
The Movies
Things are just all over the place here, we’ve had cancelled projects from the Game of Thrones showrunners, Rian Johnson, Kevin Feige, Matt Owens and Patty Jenkins. The “surviving” ones appear to be a Taika Watiti film, a James Mangold “ancient Jedi” film and a Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy Jedi Order movie which will see the return of Rey. But none of these have firm release dates and the strikes will push them all out even further for a while. So it’s really Ahsoka steering the ship here. And she will also do that in the form of this upcoming Dave Filoni crossover movie. Though I’m not clear on how many seasons will exist before then.
I think this situation is what many fans wanted, to see Ahsoka finally given her live action due. They seem to be mostly happy with the premiere, and will ride this wave as long as it lasts.
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