Ahsoka‘s focus on the relationship between the titular ex-Jedi and her reluctant padawan Sabine was one of the most surprising, and yet paradoxically frustrating aspects of the series. On the one hand, it helped broaden Star Wars‘ vision of the Force, and who could wield it, pushing back on narrow-sighted Jedi doctrines of the prequel era to give us a Force-wielding character with more parallels to Luke’s journey with the Force across the original trilogy. On the other, for as much as some of those Jedi doctrines were pushed back on in making Sabine Force sensitive, at the end of the day, Ahsoka turned master and apprentice into pretty much the same kind of Jedi we already had, with the same kind of teaching methods and understandings—teaching methods we’ve spent the prequel era engaging with the failings of, and being told in the sequel era that they must be let go of to allow a new generation of Jedi, free from the Order’s dogma, to truly flourish.
But one writer who helped shape Sabine’s journey in Rebels disagrees that it should’ve ever happened in the first place.
“It was absolutely not the plan… we really felt that not only did it step on Ezra’s story… it was a weak retread, we already did this,” reflected Henry Gilroy, a senior writer and executive producer on Star Wars Rebels, in a recent episode of Pod of Rebellion, the Rebels cast’s own rewatch podcast series. According to Gilroy, the potential of Sabine discovering her Force sensitivity was an idea floated during Rebels, but ultimately dismissed by the writing team. “The idea of Sabine training as a Jedi when she is already this fantastic warrior of her own type, we felt like, ‘This is overkill.’”
Sabine undergoes a parallel to Ezra’s own Jedi tutelage in Rebels when she has to wrestle with the mantle of the Darksaber, the ancient Mandalorian lightsaber that became a mythical symbol of the right to rule Mandalore—attempting to reconcile her own trauma relating to the work she did in the process, work that ultimately allowed the Empire to oppress her people as a student at its military academies. But although she trains to wield the weapon, she ultimately passes it on to others to lead the Mandalorians… so imagine Gilroy’s surprise then when Ahsoka comes along and Sabine’s swinging a lightsaber around again.
“I had nothing to do with the Ahsoka series, so I was shocked,” Gilroy continued. “What I love about the story with the Darksaber is that you don’t have to be a Jedi to have Jedi ideals… I think that’s what’s really the more important thing, rather than Force pushing Ezra a hundred feet when she’s never used the Force before.”
Although Gilroy does raise some interesting points, his commentary also serves as a challenge Star Wars has by and large struggled to grapple with in recent years, especially as storytelling within the galaxy far, far away slowly moves further into the post-originals, post-sequels era: the separation of what it means to be a Jedi from a philosophical and moral standpoint, and what it means to be a Jedi in taking on the mantle as a follower of the Jedi Order as an institution.
The afterglow of the prequels and their own nascent commentary on the Order’s twilight has seen much Star Wars ink spilled on the profound failures and flaws that allowed it to be subsumed by Palpatine’s machinations: a legacy of institutional rot and dogmatic busybodying that blinded the light of the Jedi’s most profound beliefs as a force for good. But at the same time, we have seen Star Wars‘ heroes—even some like Ahsoka Tano herself, a victim of the Order’s most profound flaws—and the broader franchise itself wrestle with attempting to revive the Jedi and either seeing them making the same mistakes or not being willing enough yet to make the distinction between Jedi ideals and Jedi Order doctrine and make that separation.
Maybe with time, that will change. Ahsoka season two will see Ahsoka and Sabine closely bonded once more, and the potential for that discussion between them to arise. At some point we are still meant to get a movie about Rey attempting to revive a new Jedi Order, and see how she blends the lessons she learned from Luke’s failures with the ancient texts she helped preserve after his death. Whatever vision of being a Jedi Star Wars eventually takes on going forward, a separation between it and what once was arguably means that we’ll need more characters following in Sabine’s footsteps, and helping to broaden the franchise’s understanding of the Force in the process.
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