Can You Watch Ahsoka Without Seeing Star Wars Rebels Or The Clone Wars?
One of the most highly-anticipated "Star Wars" shows in the Disney+ era is about to premiere, and chances are fans fall into one of two categories. There are those who've been anxiously awaiting the epic sequel to the final season of the animated series, checking in on Hera Syndulla, Sabine Wren, Ezra Bridger, and the rest of the "Star Wars: Rebels" characters years after we last saw them. And then there are the more casual fans who'll be watching "Ahsoka" with absolutely zero frame of reference for who several of the supporting characters — and even the main character, at that — actually are.
So goes the fickle nature of crossing the (digital) streams these days on major blockbusters, as Lucasfilm follows in the footsteps of Marvel's #ItsAllConnected branding campaign to officially unite the two divergent branches from the main "Star Wars" tree: Animation and live-action. Although this arguably began with bringing "The Clone Wars" and "Rebels" character Saw Gerrera into "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story" (played by Forest Whitaker) and continued with various other appearances by rogues such as Cad Bane in "The Book of Boba Fett," "Ahsoka" marks the most extreme example yet of Dave Filoni's grand plan to bring all corners of the vast "Star Wars" universe together. With well over a decade of lore to deal with and hundreds of episodes preceding it, the stakes couldn't be higher for "Ahsoka" — not just for its characters, but for the future of the franchise's interconnectedness.
Which brings us to the matter at hand: Can viewers skip "The Clone Wars" and "Rebels" and still understand "Ahsoka"? While we highly recommend our /Film recap summing up most of those events, the answer is undoubtedly no — despite what those in charge have said. Here's why.
Ghosts of the past
"Star Wars" has always favored expansive world-building where characters spring fully formed from crowded cantinas or a dystopian metropolis, with the sense that an entire history has taken place before they appeared on-screen and will continue on long after. "Ahsoka" is no different in that regard, although it comes with the added complication that such history between main characters has been told before — both in "The Clone Wars" and especially "Rebels." It might seem strange to hear that a show titled "Ahsoka" is actually more of a sequel to those shows rather than a story as laser-focused on a self-contained storyline as, say, "Andor" was, but that speaks to how much the one-time Jedi Padawan became intertwined with the scrappy band of rebels based on the planet Lothal and their shared roots going back to the Clone Wars.
Ahsoka herself (voiced by Ashley Eckstein) first arrived on the scene in 2008's rather poorly-received "Star Wars: The Clone Wars" animated feature film, overcoming the initial wave of fan backlash to become one of the most popular "Star Wars" characters ever throughout her run on the spin-off animated series. Rising from an inexperienced Padawan to a military commander to ultimately spurning the Jedi Order and forging her own path altogether, Ahsoka eventually transformed into a mentor figure to young Jedi-in-training Ezra Bridger (Taylor Gray) in "Rebels." There, she became an integral part of their efforts to disrupt the Empire, fight Imperial Grand Admiral Thrawn (Lars Mikkelsen), and unlock the mysteries of the Force.
By the time "Ahsoka" begins, our hero is older, jaded, and has some making up to do with would-be apprentice Sabine Wren — but all of this crucial setup assumes viewers are familiar with the broad strokes of "The Clones Wars" and "Rebels."
The devil in the details
To be entirely fair, "Ahsoka" at least seems designed to appeal to both newcomers and diehards alike, though the execution may be another matter entirely. The first two episodes take a very deliberate approach to pacing, allowing viewers to progressively get a handle on each major character while balancing the more nuanced character details pulled straight out of "Rebels." But then there are the many moments that are doomed to fall flat. Certain scenes mimicking the epilogue of "Rebels" and used to reestablish the dynamic between Sabine and Ahsoka, for example, likely won't mean much to those who haven't seen a lick of the animated series. Neither will the symbolism of Sabine's haircut, nor the conflict stemming from Ahsoka's time away, nor, for that matter, the entire central mystery surrounding the disappearances of Ezra Bridger and Grand Admiral Thrawn.
Audiences will likely be able to coast by despite missing such important story notes ... but should they?
This was the risk creator Dave Filoni took when the Disney+ streaming platform allowed a greater degree of freedom to integrate animated shows that general audiences may or may not have been familiar with. Your extremely offline friends and family likely didn't even blink twice at Saw Gerrera in "Rogue One" or the references to Quinlan Vos in "Obi-Wan Kenobi," both of which did fairly good jobs of explaining each of those character's respective deals without needing to rely on distracting Wookieepedia entries laying out their past history in canon, but that breaking point sure seems like it'll arrive once uninitiated viewers try to figure out who Sabine (Natasha Liu Bordizzo) and Hera (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) actually are.
Ready or not, the two-episode premiere of "Ahsoka" debuts on Disney+ tonight at a new time: 6PM PT/9PM ET.