Star Wars: Ahsoka Star Teases How Series Is “Stand-Alone” From Rebels

Star Wars: Ahsoka star Natasha Liu Bordizzo is teasing how her upcoming Disney+ series is both attached to the legacy of the Star Wars Rebels animated series, but also separate from it. In a new interview, the live-action versions of Ahsoka Tano (Rosario Dawson) and Sabine Wren (Bordizzo) elaborated (a bit) about what the Disney+ series will be all about – and how it connects back (or not) to the legacy of Rebels. In Bordizzo’s own words: “A lot of people have not seen Rebels… It’s great for them to have seen it, but we’ve got a standalone chapter as it is.”

Star Wars has been playing an increasingly-complicated game ever since the Star Wars TV Universe exploded into the mainstream with The Mandalorian. The creative team behind the series (Dave Filoni, Jon Favreau, Deborah Chow, etc.) is pulling together continuity featured in the movies, as well as the canonized comics, animated series, games, and novels. Viewers are coming to these TV programs with widely varied frames of reference, depending on what Star Wars content they do or do not consume. Therefore, series like The Book of Boba Fett and Obi-Wan Kenobi have had to find the balance of giving enough info on certain characters and stories to make them intriguing to casual viewers – with enough deeper nods to satisfy hardcore fans that know the backstory of every comic book or animated character that’s (finally) getting a live-action debut. 

Rosario Dawson all but encompasses the struggle of the modern Star Wars franchise in her own response to Empire Magazine: 

“Dave and Jon [Favreau] are continuing Star Wars in a way where it can be standalone, but it also makes you hungry for more… there have been two instances where [Ahsoka] shown up on a mission, you see how she’s interacting with folks, but you don’t really get her, per se. Even fans who’ve lived with her for so long don’t know where she’s at now in this journey.”

Star Wars Rebels reached a climactic storyline where early the Rebel cell known as The Ghosts (including Ahsoka and Sabine Wren) got locked in a chess-like battle with Imperial Grand Admiral Thrawn. That fight ended in a stalemate: young Force user and would-be Jedi Ezra Bridger used his power to trap Thrawn on his Star Destroyer vessel, which was lost in the deep regions of hyperspace. 

The Mandalorian Season 2 set up the premise that Ahsoka (and possibly Sabine Wren) is still looking for Thrawn and/or Ezra in the post-Empire era – as Dawson says, the rest of that story is waiting to be filled in.

Ahsoka is in production for 2023 release on DIsney+.