All the great ones had to get their start somewhere, and Ahsoka Tano’s big break came when she was chosen as the apprentice of Anakin Skywalker…the “Chosen One,” or at least believed to be at the time. Hitching a wagon so close to the Man Who Would Be Vader could have ended badly for Ahsoka, but she bailed his company just in time and has followed her own path ever since.
Ahsoka’s own show is fast approaching Disney+ at light speed, and the first full trailer was released this morning. It makes clear what executive producer Dave Filoni has been implying this whole time: the show is an outright sequel to Star Wars Rebels.
After George Lucas wrapped up his theatrical Star Wars movies “forever” with Revenge of the Sith, he turned to animation to tell some stories that occurred in between the prequel trilogy. The Clone Wars was the result, a CGI cartoon that debuted its pilot on the big screen and, there, revealed a new character that had not made any appearance in any of the movies: Ahsoka Tano.
People have….passionate opinions about Star Wars, if you haven’t noticed from poking around online. It seems the worst thing a human can possibly do is to make a bad movie or TV show set in the Lucas universe, and since taste is objective, everybody has different opinions on what stinks and what doesn’t. But there is one recent Star Wars product from the last 25 years that I haven’t heard a single complaint about. It’s Star Wars Visions.
Star wars: Young Jedi Adventures is an animated series coming to Disney Junior and probably Disney Plus. This Animated series is a way to introduce Star Wars to preschoolers without traumatizing them. Characters like Darth Maul and Jabba the Hut are enough to traumatize children. This spin-off is a more cute and family-friendly take on Star Wars. This series is a prequel as it is centuries before the events of the movies. It is probably after the events of Mandalorian because Yoda already trains younglings to be Jedis.
Disney could release information on their upcoming Star Wars things one at a time, like most other companies, but instead they usually cram everything into these big conferences two or three times a year, forcing us poor reporters to rush around and get everything up before everyone else does. The “Star Wars Celebration” conference took place this morning and Lucasfilm laid out all they have planned for the next year, and a few years after that.
It’s hard to know where Disney+ would be without scoring an instant hit on Day 1 with The Mandalorian. It put the days-old streamer on the map, spawned a mountain’s worth of “Baby Yoda” merchandise, and (as the trailer repeatedly reminds us) put the words “This is the way” into the public consciousness. The irony is that same year, “The Rise Of Skywalker” would be released in theaters and would not gain nearly as much attention. It pretty much convinced Disney confining Star Wars to television was the way.
Lucasfilm’s latest Star Wars television presentation is Andor, a prequel series to Rogue One that details how the title character got involved with the Rebellion. It’s available to anyone with a Disney+ subscription, but if that somehow isn’t you, an alternate way to try out the show is coming.