Star Wars: Ashley Eckstein Addresses Fan Backlash to Ahsoka’s ‘Boring’ First Arc in Clone Wars Season 7

Ahsoka Tano has become a fan-favorite, iconic character in the Star Wars canon. Her story continues in the final season of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, streaming on Disney+. Her story picked up first with a four-episode arc about her meeting the Martez sisters and becoming involved in their dealing with the Pyke Syndicate. Some fans aren’t entirely into the arc and are eager to get to the long-awaited Siege of Mandalore. Ashley Eckstein, who voices Ahsoka, spoke to ComicBook.com’s Comic Nation podcast about her new book I Am a Padawan. She says that the arc with the Martez sisters is vital to Ahsoka’s story.

“These first four episodes in the final season, the arc with Trace and Rafa, I’ve been reading a lot of people’s comments and everyone wants to make the jump to the Siege of Mandalore,” Eckstein says. “I understand why everyone wants to jump straight to it but I will say these first four episodes where she goes on this journey with Trace and Rafa are so important to her own journey and so they should definitely not be skipped over.

She goes on to explain that, “Ahsoka, we see her very lost. She’s so confused. Everything that she believed in, she’s questioning now and in many ways no longer believes in. Her trust was just completely shattered but being a Jedi is all she knows. You know Plo Koon found her at such a young age and brought her to the Jedi Temple. She doesn’t know a life that’s any different, so these first four episodes, of course, you’re still going to see her using her Jedi ways because she kind of doesn’t know how else to be. But then she doesn’t really want to act like a Jedi because she’s no longer a Jedi. She gave that up. But I think Trace and Rafa give her a bit of a new purpose. The line that’s most important to me in the whole season… Rafa asks Ahsoka, she says, ‘Why are you helping us?’ And Ahsoka says, ‘In my life when I find people who need your help, you help them no matter what. I guess it’s just who I am.’

“When I recorded that line, I knew that that was going to be my own personal motto for 2020. But little did I know, none of us knew, about the coronavirus and that these episodes would be airing in the middle of a worldwide pandemic and truly the only way we’re going to get through it is by helping each other no matter what. So I think these episodes are very important.

New episodes of Star Wars: The Clone Wars debut Fridays on Disney+