Star Wars Just Put the Sequel Trilogy’s Biggest Mistake in Bold & Underlined It

Star Wars: Ahsoka, like its titular character, has always been a show that serves to pull together previously-disparate aspects of the Star Wars universe. While the events of Ahsoka‘s first season catch up with its protagonist directly after of appearance in The Mandalorian— a live-action series set nine years after the Rebel Alliance’s first major victory against the Galatic Empire at the Battle of Yavin IV— most of the characters she goes on to interact with are picking up their own story arcs years into the after math of Star Wars: Rebels, an animated series that ran from 2014-18 and was set roughly five years prior to the battle of Yavin IV, during the height of Imperial power. The villains of the Ahsoka series, meanwhile, draw their backstories and motives from both the events of The Mandalorian and and those of Star Wars: Rebels. In the 5th episode of Season 1, Ahsoka had a near death experience during which she encountered Anakin Skywalker. Anakin, while his age, clothing and personality all placed him within the timeframe covered by the 3D-animated 2008-13 Star Wars: The Clone Wars TV series where Ahsoka made her debut, is played by Hayden Christensen, the actor who portrayed Anakin in Attack Of The Clones and Revenge Of The Sith— yet another tangled and layered series of interconnections in a larger story arc that seems dead-set on bringing the whole Star Wars universe together.

This last connection seems certain, after the recent release of the Ahsoka Season 2 trailer, to become a central plot point in the second season— and that intensification may well reawaken old debates regarding bring yet another facet of Star Wars canon. Anakin will be walking beside Ahsoka in spirit form through the upcoming season, and this fact has led fans to draw comparisons to another force-sensitive figure chasing the legacy of Anakin Skywalker in the aftermath of the Galactic Empire’s fall— Kylo Ren. If Anakin can appear as a Force ghost in the living world to guide Ahsoka, why would he not do so for his own grandson?

Anakin’s Force Ghost Will Serve As A Recurring Source Of Guidance For Ahsoka In Season Two

Ahsoka’s encounter with Anakin in Season of 1 of the 2023 series initially seemed set up as a self-contained incident. After falling from a high cliff during a recon mission gone wrong on the planet Seatos, Ahsoka wakes up in the World Between Worlds— a pocket of liminal reality introduced in Star Wars: Rebels, where events and people from different times may be visible to, and interact with, one another. There, she encounters her former master, who engages her in a brutal lightsaber battle that takes them through a memory-scape of Ahsoka’s younger days on the warfront (events originally depicted in Star Wars : The Clone Wars(2008-13)), seemingly all in an attempt to force her to come to terms with her complicated and bloody past as a soldier and to continue to fight for her life regardless. Meanwhile back on Seatos, Ahsoka’s body is recovered from the water, and, having beaten Anakin’s challenge, she wakes back into the more grounded reality of Star Wars canon.

It was more than reasonable to assume that, having been returned to the present and carrying new wisdom and self-awareness from her experience, this would be the conclusion of Ahsoka’s interactions with Anakin (flashbacks aside, of course). However, the final episode of Season 1 would prove this to not be the case, as Anakin’s force ghost quietly watches Ahsoka adjusting to life on the planet Peridea. Now, the Season 2 trailer makes it clear that Anakin’s role in the series, and his influence on Ahsoka, will continue to grow despite Anakin having been a force ghost for five years by the time of the events of Star Wars: Ahsoka — and that capacity for presence and influence has reopened discussion on what has long been considered one of the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy’s most interesting unexplored possibilities.

Anakin’s Presence In The Ahsoka TV Series Brings Up A Long-Unanswered Question From Fans About The Sequel Trilogy

As Anakin prepares to step back into the role of mentor for his former Padawan (despite having been dead for five years), fans are left wondering about another young force-user who tried to reach out to Anakin’s spirit after after his death — Kylo Ren. While his baseline goal is to revitalize the Galactic Empire using the power of the Dark Side, Ren, as the grandson of Anakin Skywalker, also obsesses over his bloodline connection to Vader, believing himself to be Vader’s successor and that he has made contact with the spirit of the Sith Lord, and regularly speaking— or perhaps praying— to the melted and crushed remains of Vader’s helmet.

Given Ren’s truly unsettling and worshipful behavior towards Vader and the canon fact that Anakin went on to exist as a Force Ghost after the events of Return Of The Jedi, it was a common sentiment among the fandom during the years of the Sequel Trilogy’s airing that Anakin’s spirit should show up to berate Kylo, telling him the truth both about his own life and about the evils of the Dark Side. However, while passionately held across much of the fandom, this desire was also widely understood to be highly unlikely to come to fruition, if not impossible, due to the (at-the-time) relative detachment of Force Ghosts from the more physical struggles they left behind. Now, this explanation has now been cast into doubt as Anakin himself shows his capacity for longterm and direct interaction with a living person in Ahsoka season 2, re-opening the question: Why didn’t Anakin intervene in Kylo’s rage-fueled descent into the Dark Side?

Star Wars Lore Brings Up Multiple Possible Explanations For Why Kylo’s Prayers To His Grandfather Would Remain Unanswered

Where the explicitly stated canon of film and TV fail us, however, the Star Wars universe’s rich lore provide a wide base of existing lore (both in official canon and within what is now deemed Star Wars: Legends) in which we may seek out solutions to plot holes, unfinished stories and unanswered questions. The first and simplest of these is that Anakin just does not want to talk to him. Being the preserved consciousnesses of dead Force-users manifesting visible form through the Living Force, Force ghosts are not obliged to answer any call or serve any family, duty, or mission. They are free, meaning that guiding Kylo’s development, an eventually dealing with his rage, is simply not Anakin’s job. Force ghosts interact with those they deem worthy, and it makes sense that for Anakin, that would be his former Padawan Ahsoka, not a disillusioned and cynical grandson that he never met. Anakin Skywalker is dead, and as such he moves through Star Wars‘ narrative in the same enigmatic manner as other force ghosts (at least for now…)

However, digging a bit deeper into the lore of The Force, Force ghosts and identity in Star Wars canon, some other more complex theories emerge. One factor that may be important to understanding this situation is the fact that Kylo obsessed over, and prayed to, Darth Vader specifically. It is possible that, due to the drastic difference between the Light and Dark sides of The Force, Vader is considered a separate person from Anakin. This theory is tenuous at best, being heavily inferred in some Legends comics, and seemingly alluded to through Anakin’s force ghost appearing as his 22-year-old pre-fall self after his sacrifice in Return Of The Jedi (in editions released after Revenge Of The Sith‘s filming, at least). However this theory is also strongly refuted in several instances including s1 ep5 of Star Wars: Ahsoka, where Anakin shifts repeatedly, and often incompletely, between his light- and dark-side forms during their battle.

Whether the Vader identity still exists within Anakin, and whether or not the two are distinct entities or simply a man with an alter ego, it remains true that Anakin had renounced the identity of Vader, and the Dark Side as a whole, before his death— meaning that Kylo’s desperate prayers for an answer from the masked Sith Lord may have been the equivalent, to use a more earthly metaphor, of calling a telephone number from which the original owner had long since moved on.

Anakin’s Actions Going Forward May Provide Some Answers

It should also be noted that, while we are unlikely at this point to get any clear answer on this subject in particular, Anakin’s expanded role in Ahsoka Season 2 has only just been revealed— we do not know, as he attempts to continue Ahsoka’s training and mentorship from beyond the realms of the living, what Anakin may reveal about the nature and limitations of force ghosts. However, until that happens, we have the rich body of Star Wars canon to inform our theories, to test the basis and merit of new additions to the canon against, and to give solid foundation to those of us who wish to construct their own explanations for Anakin’s absence from Kylo’s life.

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