Who Is The Villain In The Final Episode Of Star Wars: Tales Of The Jedi?
This post contains spoilers for "Star Wars: Tales of the Jedi."
At the end of "Star Wars: Tales of the Jedi", Ahsoka Tano — former padawan of Anakin Skywalker — faces off against a nasty, double-lightsaber-wielding villain. This monster has set ablaze the farm where she was hiding and captured those who were harboring the fugitive Jedi. This character, voiced by the great Clancy Brown, is definitely a member of the Imperial Inquisitorius, but the clues to his actual identity are a little bit confusing.
Let's get to the bottom of who this could be.
The Sixth Brother?
In E.K. Johnston's 2016 novel "Ahsoka", the titular former Jedi takes to the distant farming planet of Raada to hide from the Empire and try to find some kind of peace after the events of "Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith."
She finds herself working on a farm, and quickly sees that the Empire is increasing its presence and making life difficult for the locals. Ahsoka has left her lightsabers on a distant moon, as we saw in the final episode of "Star Wars: The Clone Wars," and has no weapons to defend herself. When an Inquisitor known as the Sixth Brother arrives on Raada, she has a confrontation with him. She's able to destroy his lightsaber and kill him with it. She then takes the red kyber crystals from the remains and heal them enough to make new lightsabers: the white sabers she uses from that point forward.
The Sixth Brother has a different design from what we see in "Tales of the Jedi," both in the "Ahsoka" novel and in the Marvel comic books that document the work of the Inquisitorius. However, the story flourishes in this episode of "Star Wars: Tales of the Jedi" are similar enough to "Ahsoka" that they could be a retelling of what had already happened. The Lucasfilm story group has said that "Star Wars" stories will vary depending on the medium they appear in, which lends credence to the idea that this villain could very well be the Sixth Brother.
A new Inquisitor entirely?
On the other hand, there are enough differences between these two iterations of the story and key details from the Ahsoka story missing that we could entertain another possibility altogether. Could this be a completely separate event and a different Inquisitor? Ahsoka could very easily have gone to ground on a second farming planet at some point and faced an Inquisitor elsewhere at a different spot in the timeline. This Inquisitor could be entirely new and these might not be the crystals she used to build her lightsabers.
Whatever the explanation, either a retelling with slightly different details to account for the length and compression of the medium or a second encounter with a different Inquisitor, it was so great to see this scene animated. But it's also great to have E.K. Johnston's book on hand as well. It's a fantastic yarn, one that shows us Ahsoka in an entirely new light, and I'm happy to let it live alongside "Tales of the Jedi," even with so much overlap.
A definitive answer as to who this villain is will have to wait, though, as there is nothing definitive in the episodes of "Star Wars: Tales of the Jedi." But this is "Star Wars," a universe where every character gets a backstory. We'll probably learn more soon enough.
All six episodes of "Tales of the Jedi" are now streaming on Disney+.