ALL THE JEDI HAD BEEN SLAUGHTERED. WELL... NEARLY ALL OF THEM. NOW, ANIMATED ICON AHSOKA IS HEADLINING HER OWN LIVE-ACTION SERIES. WELCOME TO THE REVOLUTION

WORDS AMON WARMANN

ALWAYS TWO THERE ARE.

Rosario Dawson is getting her kicks playing former Jedi Knight Ahsoka Tano

No more. No less. A master and an apprentice.

It was 2005, and with the release of Revenge Of The Sith, former Padawan Anakin Skywalker had been fried to a crisp by one mentor and turned into a mechanical maniac by another. He and Obi-Wan Kenobi were no longer compadres. But soon we would get to see Skywalker brought together with a brand-new hero — and this time he would be the master.

“I want Anakin to have a Padawan,” George Lucas told Dave Filoni. It was just a few months on from Sith’s premiere and Lucas and his then fledgling director were working together on animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars, set three years before that film. And just like that, Ahsoka Tano was born. “It was taking Anakin

— who is young and brash — and giving him a responsibility,” says Filoni now of Lucas’ missive. “He could learn that she could protect and defend herself and be a strong individual, and he didn’t have to be so overprotective. We pitted her between Obi- Wan and Anakin. That was something that George had laid out and then I developed.”

Over the course of The Clone Wars and its follow-up, Star Wars Rebels, Ahsoka (voiced by Ashley Eckstein) — the franchise’s first lead alien, a Togruta from the planet Shili, and one wielding two lightsabers — transformed from an impulsive and immature Jedi to a highly skilled and thoughtful warrior, an instantly iconic addition to the Star Wars family. And within time, Filoni began thinking of Ahsoka’s next move. “This has been in the works in some form or another over the course of ten years,” says Jon Favreau, creator of The Mandalorian and a producer on Ahsoka’s upcoming solo show. “To have Ahsoka in live-action as a story that could stand alongside all the classic Star Wars cinema was something Dave had wanted to do.”

Ahsoka with Mandalorian warrior Sabine Wren (Natasha Liu Bordizzo)

Twi’lek rebel leader Hera Syndulla (Mary Elizabeth Winstead).

Eighteen years after the creation of the character, everything is proceeding as Filoni had foreseen. Rosario Dawson is Ahsoka, having at first embodied her in an episode of The Mandalorian, and then The Book Of Boba Fett, and now — in the franchise’s first live-action show to grow from an animated series — Ahsoka.

“I love how confident she is,” says Dawson of the character then and now, explaining her appeal. “She’s not fearless, but she never hesitates. She is so willing, but she does have worries, she does have stress and she’s gone through a lot of anxiety. She’s had some really tough crises and traumas in her life. I really dig how complex she is. Even her moments of just finding her way, and butting heads, and being stubborn, and being wrong, having to deal with the pain of what that is when soldiers are dying under her command.” No wonder the character has endured. There’s a lot to unpack with Ahsoka.