Finally, we’re on the cusp of the live-action Star Wars: Ahsoka series, and expectations among veteran fans are through the roof (like always). After a divisive third season of The Mandalorian – which I personally really enjoyed – and the critical home run of Andor on the other side of the Star Wars tonal spectrum, the Dave Filoni-led series has to both set up the event film he’s directing in the near future and continue the story that was put on pause back in 2017, in the final Rebels episode.
Yeah, we can instantly tell there’s a lot riding on this one, especially with Filoni making the jump to the big screen sooner rather than later. He’s come a long way since his strictly-animated days and remains a more consistent Star Wars writer than Mando honcho Jon Favreau in this fan’s humble opinion. It’s hard to imagine him messing up what’s essentially his dream project – a live-action series that follows his own, favorite characters – but he still has to become a remarkable director outside the animated realm (he won’t be alone though).
While Ahsoka Tano and the rest of the leading women – Sabine Wren and Hera Syndulla – appear to have made a spot-on transition to the live-action side of the universe, we don’t know much about the new bad guys beyond the usual pre-release chatter and previews, much less about the big boss in the shadows: the mighty Grand Admiral Thrawn, a character first created by writer Timothy Zahn in the early 1990s.
Image via Marvel
Thrawn’s surprise return last decade was one of the new Star Wars canon’s first few “rescues” of Legends material. Lucasfilm considered a villain as great as the Chiss-turned-Imperial that made the original heroes’ post-Return struggles much harder to overcome couldn’t be left behind. He resurfaced in the pre-original trilogy era through both Rebels and a new set of novels penned by Zahn himself. There was no one better suited for the job of adapting the blue-skinned, red-eyed bastard into the new canon without losing the traits that made him a memorable foe.
Of course, there are many differences between the Thrawn older fans met in the Heir to the Empire trilogy and the more cooperative evildoer – still part of an active Empire – found in both Rebels and Zahn’s new Thrawn novels. But I found the contrast between the two latter versions of the character much more striking despite the fact those works rowed in the same direction. Dave Filoni, probably because of the obvious limitations of writing for a younger target audience, refused to capture many of the villain’s biggest intricacies, instead painting him as a highly effective planner and a tactical force to be reckoned with, but rather straightforward.
Image via Lucasfilm
The approach to the character seen in Star Wars Rebels is perfectly fine, especially with Lars Mikkelsen’s exquisite performance across seasons 3 and 4 elevating the material, but Ahsoka has to appeal to a wider audience and make a convincing case about Thrawn being the right ultimate villain for the Mando-era shows and the upcoming film. Now the question is whether Filoni can distance himself from the simpler Thrawn he cooked for Rebels and incorporate many of Zahn’s nastier elements into the Chiss’ live-action debut.
Even though some fans have been doubting Filoni’s ability to juggle all the different plot threads going on in the New Republic era alongside Jon Favreau, almost no one considered Lady Tano’s debut in season 2 of The Mandalorian less than notable. It wasn’t just about Rosario Dawson’s looks and physical performance, or the adequate Kurosawa DNA found all over the overall plot of the episode. Ahsoka had evolved as a character, becoming this rugged, Gandalf-like figure (an inspiration that’s been cited time and again for the older Togruta Jedi).
We’ve yet to see what she’s exactly been up to between Ezra Bridger and Thrawn’s purrgil-related hyperspace disappearance and her Rebels epilogue return, which may take place after her two appearances so far in The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett. All that time – on top of the consequences of being isolated somewhere in deep space – also applies to Ezra and Thrawn. The Jedi Padawan’s current condition is a complete mystery going into the show, but it seems that Thrawn has somehow been communicating with the known galaxy and building towards a terrifying comeback.
Image via Lucasfilm
After Ahsoka’s first trailer and Chapter 23 of The Mandalorian, the New Republic-era arc is sounding very much like a reinterpretation of Heir to the Empire. That could be a great way to make relative newcomers to the franchise interested in its EU past. But it also means Grand Admiral Thrawn needs to be meaner and bite our heroes harder when they falter.
In Timothy Zahn’s six recent Thrawn books (two entire trilogies), we get a full picture of the Chiss leader’s mind, and it’s a complex one. In summary, he’s a ruthless military leader that acts coldly and is always three steps ahead of the competition. Sometimes, we failed to see the latter trait in the Rebels iteration of the character, and that must be regained in order to make him a worthy heir to Palpatine’s empire. Of course, we know he ultimately doesn’t get away with it – and we are pretty sure even he wasn’t aware of the Sith Lord’s B plan on Exegol – but he could still make a pretty big dent on the weak New Republic we met in The Force Awakens. He’s probably the key to the First Order’s rise in the distant future, no matter how much sequel deniers try to dodge every sign that Lucasfilm is bridging it all together with these shows and the upcoming film.
Going into Ahsoka, it’s probably not very smart to expect Thrawn to have a massive presence (he’s probably more of an objective for both our heroes and the secondary antagonists) during this season, but if he’s indeed the “final boss” in the making and has danced with new powers while he was stuck in the middle of nowhere, the Empire’s fall and his failure to return before it happened should have shaped him into a scarier individual.
