The new Ahsoka trailer is here: let’s get into it

Luca Fontana

13/7/2023

Translation: Julia Graham

The Ahsoka series is only a few weeks away. No sooner had Lucasfilm released the new trailer than I’d already leapt straight into wild analysis and speculation. Let’s get stuck in.

It’s just over a month to go before the eagerly awaited Star Wars series Ahsoka hits screens on August 23 with a double episode. It’s what the latest trailer revealed. But that’s not all. What can we decipher so far? What are people asking, and what kind of wild theories are going around?

Let’s take a look at it together, one step at a time. Image by image.

Who are the baddies? What’s their plan?

As far as we know, Ahsoka is set in the Star Wars era of the New Republic. About five years after Episode VI: Return of the Jedi, to be precise. In other words, when the Empire was defeated, but remnants of it want to build a new military power to rule the galaxy again. Ever since The Mandalorian, Chapter 23: The Spies, we also know who’s meant to lead this new force: Grand Admiral Thrawn.

And after having seen this trailer, we finally have our first real look at Lars Mikkelsen, who not only voices Thrawn in the animated series Star Wars: Rebels but also plays his live-action version in Ahsoka.

How exactly he ends up in the series is a mystery. Because Thrawn has been considered missing since the end of Rebels, which is set 15 years before Ahsoka. If he came back, it would be pretty bad news for the New Republic. One thing you need to know is that Thrawn is the greatest military genius the galaxy has ever known, especially if you’ve never seen Rebels. To defeat him, young Jedi Ezra Bridger, hero of the Rebels series, used purrgil to catapult himself and the Grand Admiral into the unknown regions in an act of self-sacrifice. Somewhere they’d never be found again.

However, someone seems to know a way to track down Thrawn (and by extension, probably Ezra too). And that’s Morgan Elsbeth.

We first saw her in The Mandalorian, Chapter 13: The Jedi. That’s when Morgan faced Ahsoka in a duel and lost.

But she’s not dead. At least, not as far as we know right now. Which is why it’s hard to work out if the scenes with Morgan shown in the trailer take place before or after her duel with Ahsoka. The only thing that’s certain is she found a map of the galaxy in a place that looks like an archaeological dig. My guess is the map shows a path to the unknown regions. So, where Thrawn is.

In the trailer, Morgan speaks to two allies who haven’t appeared in any other series: a man and a woman. Baylan Skoll and Shin Hati. We know their names because they’re revealed in the trailer subtitles. Other than that, all we know is Baylan and Shin aren’t Jedi or Sith. Not any more. You see, Baylan was once a Jedi who survived order 66 and has been making his way around the galaxy as a mercenary ever since. Meanwhile, young Shin is his student.

What’s also interesting is that the colour of their lightsabers is neither the typical Sith-red nor the blue or green associated with Jedis. Instead, it’s orange. Even more interesting is a conversation snippet in the trailer. Baylan tells Ahsoka that Anakin Skywalker spoke of her «in high terms» – at that point, Baylan and Anakin obviously knew each other well. And just at that moment, we briefly hear Darth Vader’s breathing.

Goosebumps, anyone?

My guess is that Morgan Elsbeth hired them to protect her from Ahsoka Tano and find Grand Admiral Thrawn before Ahsoka does.

Who are the heroes? And what’s their plan?

First of all, there’s obviously the eponymous Ahsoka Tano. In the trailer, you see her in a kind of temple at first, examining a stone statue with a golden ball. What does this represent? A whill, perhaps?

Whills are ancient, immortal and nearly omnipotent beings who write the journal of the whills. In the same vein as the Star Wars chronicles. It’s not unlike what the Watchers from Marvel comics do if that’s more on your wavelength. In fact, an early version of creator George Lucas’s first Star Wars script from 1975 was called The Adventures of Luke Starkiller as taken from the Journal of the Whills. Lucas wanted to establish that the entire story is told from the point of view of these whills. An idea that he later discarded.

The whills finally found their way to the galaxy far, far away. The first time was when Jedi Master Yoda confronted them during an episode of The Clone Wars. In fact, they were the ones who taught him to manifest himself again as a force spirit after he died. It’s a technique they’d also taught Qui-Gon Jinn before him. Later, in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, we meet the characters Chirrut Îmwe and Baze Malbus, from the order of the Guardians of the Whills, responsible for protecting a Kyber temple on Jedah.

It’s quite possible that this whill statue is associated with the archaeological site where Morgan Elsbeth activated her map to the unknown regions. This could’ve been how Ahsoka tracked Morgan down, which in turn led to them coming head to head in the aforementioned duel.

Another heroine of the story is Hera Syndulla. She’s also an old acquaintance from Rebels. At that time, she led the rebel cell that Ezra Bridger was part of. Hera seems alarmed at Baylan and Shin’s goings-on. The New Republic doesn’t care as much. In Rebels, it was Ahsoka who commanded a lot of rebel cells, including Hera’s. My theory is that Hera turns to Ahsoka for help. Or vice versa.

There’s something about Sabine

And then there’s Sabine Wren. Sabine isn’t just any Mandalorian. In fact, she wielded the famous Darksaber, the symbol of Mandalore’s power, for a short time before handing it over to Bo-Katan Kryze. It was also suggested in Rebels that Sabine might be force-sensitive. The trailer reinforces this theory when Sabine addresses Ahsoka as master in one scene. Incidentally, Sabine would be only the second Mandalorian to become a Jedi. The first was Tarre Vizsla, who created the Darksaber.

The trailer also implies that the end of Rebels isn’t set immediately after the fall of the Empire, as we all previously thought. Instead, it suggests that it takes place five years later, after The Mandalorian, Chapter 13: The Jedi.

My theory is that when Ahsoka has finally found a way to track down Thrawn – and thus Ezra – after her duel with Morgan Elsbeth in The Mandalorian, she goes in search of Sabine. This would make the scene from the trailer fit nicely into the series, which is an almost 1:1 recreation of the ending of Rebels.

It’s quite possible that Sabine will play a bigger role in Ahsoka than we think anyway. She was also Ezra’s best friend and therefore the one hit hardest by his sacrifice. She therefore has a very personal interest in joining Ahsoka in the search for Thrawn. Even if her master-Padawan relationship with Ahsoka seems to be on the rocks if the trailer is anything to go by.

Unsurprisingly, there’s a scene in the trailer where Sabine duels Shin Hati with a green lightsaber. We know from the first teaser trailer that she kept Ezra’s homemade green lightsaber. Another indication that Sabine is going the way of the Jedi is Ezra’s lightsaber.

Purrgil, Chopper and the ghost

So, those were the most important things we gleaned. But what else did the trailer show? There’s a purrgil, for instance. The first one we get to see in the flesh. Ezra catapulted himself and Thrawn into the unknown regions using a creature like this. That’s because purrgil are huge and whale-like, equipped with tentacles and the seemingly impossible ability to naturally traverse hyperspace.

If this sounds familiar, we already caught a first, vague glimpse of purrgil in The Mandalorian, Chapter 17: The Apostate. We only saw their shadowy outlines amid the swirling blue of hyperspace.

What else? Ah yes, Chopper, the scatterbrained and cheeky C1-series astromech droid, also known from Rebels and part of Ezra Bridger’s crew.

I think that’s it. Did I miss any exciting details? Let me know in the comments.

Luca Fontana

Senior Editor

Luca.Fontana@digitecgalaxus.ch

I'm an outdoorsy guy and enjoy sports that push me to the limit – now that’s what I call comfort zone! But I'm also about curling up in an armchair with books about ugly intrigue and sinister kingkillers. Being an avid cinema-goer, I’ve been known to rave about film scores for hours on end. I’ve always wanted to say: «I am Groot.» more

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