There’s a lot of excitement surrounding Lucasfilm’s upcoming live-action Star Wars: Ahsoka series. I’d say that most of that excitement is coming from Star Wars fans who have watched The Clone Wars and Rebels, but if you haven’t watched those animated Star Wars shows, don’t worry… Dave Filoni says you don’t need to watch them to understand the Ahsoka series. During a recent interview with IGN, he said:
“We never want to create a situation where you feel like you have to have seen these things because then you’re missing out. I don’t know how fans feel, but – do you have to have seen The Clone Wars to understand Ahsoka? No, you don’t have to have seen that.”
However, he goes on to explain that watching it will help and it will help you understand it more:
“Does it help, will you know more and understand more? Sure. But it’s not – if you haven’t checked it out, but you can, thanks to Disney Plus, it’s right there. We picked up A New Hope at Episode 4, right? So Star Wars, to us, we came in in the middle of it. So there is a kind of history in Star Wars of just diving right into the story. So I really do dive right into the story with Ahsoka, but I know more about it because of the work of The Mandalorian.”
If you haven’t watched The Clone Wars yet, I say you 100% should watch it! I didn’t watch it until after the final season was released, and I was completely blown away by it and the Star Wars storytelling. The final season especially is one of the greatest things ever produced for Star Wars! I absolutely love The Clone Wars, so if Filoni isn’t going to tell you that you have to watch it, I will!
The series expands the story and lore in such awesome ways and it also helped me appreciate the prequel trilogy a lot more. But, on top of that, some of the characters from The Clone Wars and Rebels are now making their way into live-action thanks to The Mandalorian, and it’s good to know the past story arcs for these characters. So, just watch the animated shows if you haven’t already.
Ahsoka is set after the fall of the Empire, and “follows the former Jedi knight Ahsoka Tano (Rosario Dawson) as she investigates an emerging threat to a vulnerable galaxy.”
Ahsoka and Sabine (Natasha Liu Bordizzo) are on the hunt for Grand Admiral Thrawn (Lars Mikkelsen) in hopes that it will lead them to find the lost Ezra Bridger, the young Jedi who disappeared with Thrawn many years ago. The series directly follows up on several threads from the animated series Star Wars Rebels.
Mary Elizabeth Winstead is playing Hera Syndulla, Chopper is also back Hayden Christensen returns Anakin Skywalker, and the rest of the cast includes Ivanna Sakhnoand as Shin Hati, Eman Esfandi as Ezra, and Ray Stevenson as Baylon.
The limited series is written by Dave Filoni who executive produces along with Jon Favreau and Kathleen Kennedy. The series will debut exclusively on Disney+ in August 2023.
