Last month, Lucasfilm revealed the trailer for Ahsoka, which is basically a huge live-action sequel to Star Wars Rebels that features Thrawn as the villain and dares to utter the words “heir to the empire.” We’ve known that the show will arrive in August, but a hastily pulled Disney web page may have gotten more concrete with the Ahsoka release date, briefly listing a date of August 31, 2023. It’s uncertain if it was the real date or just a placeholder.
To back up a little, the Disney Movie Insiders website offers a program to earn points from eligible movie tickets and purchases, which are then redeemable for various rewards. Earlier today, there was a listing for a “Star Wars: Ahsoka Teaser Poster” redeemable for 750 points, and the description for the poster stated, “Star Wars Ahsoka is coming to Disney+ on August 31, 2023!” The listing has since been removed, but it isn’t clear if the poster was simply posted too early or if it was removed due to leaking the actual Ahsoka release date.
August 31 is a Thursday, but both The Mandalorian season 3 and Andor aired on Wednesdays. That doesn’t necessarily mean anything — unless it does. In any case, it can’t be too long before we find out the final date for sure. Meanwhile, there is a (very unconfirmed) rumor floating around that the Dave Filoni Star Wars movie will be outright called Heir to the Empire, which would be a pretty incredible feather in the cap of Timothy Zahn, who wrote a novel of the same name and originally created Thrawn.