Star Wars Fans Were Convinced That Ahsoka Would Have A Deadly Fate
Perhaps the biggest obstacle prequel-era "Star Wars" storytelling has always had to deal with is that it has a fixed outcome. At worst, it's led to stuff like "Obi-Wan Kenobi," which ends with Obi-Wan just sort of ... awkwardly letting Darth Vader go after defeating him in combat because the plot said so. However, on the opposite end of the spectrum, you have Ahsoka Tano, a character who's successfully cheated death more often than a protagonist in a "Final Destination" film, yet never in a way that strains credulity or feels unearned. Even so, it's difficult to recall a time when "Star Wars" fans weren't predicting her imminent demise.
In point of fact, from the moment a wide-eyed Ahsoka showed up proclaiming herself Anakin Skywalker's new Padawan in the "Star Wars: The Clone Wars" film (much to Anakin's confusion and, amusingly, that of director Dave Filoni), she's always seemed to have a target on her back. During Vanity Fair's 2020 oral history about the character, a group that included Ahsoka voice actor Ashley Eckstein and E.K. Johnston — author of "Ahsoka," the 2016 novel that fills in the blank spaces in Miss Tano's backstory — confessed that they, too, were constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop.
"It was terrifying," said Johnston. "Yeah, you don't want to fall in love [with her] [...] Ahsoka keeps running off into danger." She cited one particular episode from early on in the "Clone Wars" show's run where Ahsoka charges in alone to face General Grievous (a villain who we know won't die until much later). "You're just like, 'No! Please, someone, protect this child!' And, of course, she can take care of herself, and she gets better and better at it as the series progresses. But, it's definitely that level of, 'Please don't hurt me!'"
'Fans would say, 'Ahsoka is going to die.' It wasn't even a question'
Due to her absence in the prequel trilogy, Filoni and friends were forced to get creative when it came to explaining why Ahsoka wasn't around for some of the most pivotal moments in Anakin's life in the "Clone Wars" series. To their credit, the show's writers had a knack for not only coming up with organic reasons for the two to be apart, but also ones that served to evolve Ahsoka as a character while affording some much-needed depth to Anakin. Not that fans ever stopped expecting the Sword of Damocles to come crashing down on Ahsoka's head. As Eckstein told Vanity Fair:
"That movie threat has been with me from the beginning, because fans would say, 'Okay, well, she's not in 'Episode II,' and she's not in 'Episode III,' so therefore she must die.' I remember at convention after convention, fans would say, 'Ahsoka is going to die.' It wasn't even a question. I always said, 'How do you know she has to die? What if something else happens?'"
Even when Rey heard Eckstein's voice as Ahsoka in "Star Wars: Episode IX — The Rise of Skywalker," this would-be triumphant moment for "Star Wars" animation fans instead had them taking this as confirmation that poor Snips had finally kicked the bucket by the time the film takes place. In fact, despite Filoni's denials and her role in his New Republic storyline, it seems that so long as Ahsoka draws breath, people will predict her premature demise. Yet, just as she's gone from being one of the most hated additions to the "Star Wars" franchise to one of its most beloved players, she keeps defying the odds like a YT-1300 light freighter navigating an asteroid field.