Star Wars: Ahsoka's Thrawn Teamed Up With Anakin Skywalker During the Clone Wars

Star Wars: Ahsoka brings together several eras of the Star Wars saga. The titular character is best known from Star Wars: The Clone Wars and was the apprentice of Anakin Skywalker, who also appears in the series. She's teaming with Sabine Wren and Hera Syndulla, who are trying to find their lost friend Ezra Bridger, all characters from Star Wars Rebels. In that animated series, the rebel heroes had to battle against Grand Admiral Thrawn, who had been pulled over from the old Star Wars Expanded Universe and into the new post-Disney buyout canon. A character from the original Star Wars trilogy even stopped by in the most recent episode to lend a helping hand.

Ahsoka contacted her now-deceased master via The World Between Worlds, and Sabine has come face-to-face with Thrawn. What Ahsoka and Sabine may not know, and many casual Star Wars may also be unaware of, is that Anakin Skywalker and Thrawn have met, having teamed up during an unsanctioned mission to the Unknown Regions of the Star Wars galaxy during the Clone Wars.

Thrawn and Anakin Skywalker Teamed Up During the Clone Wars

The Star Wars novel Thrawn: Alliances by Timothy Zahn (Thrawn's creator) tells how Anakin and Thrawn met. It began with a mission undertaken by Padmé Amidala, the Galactic Republic senator and secretly Anakin's wife, sometime after Ahsoka left the Jedi Order but before Order 66 and Anakin's fall to the dark side of the Force.

Padmé went into the Unknown Regions searching for a former handmaiden who had gone missing while on a secret mission. When Padmé similarly went missing, Anakin went searching for her. Padmé's trailer led him to the planet Batuu. Before he could land, a ship carrying Thrawn on a reconnaissance mission for the Chiss Ascendancy (where Thrawn is originally from) made contact. After some confusion (explained later), the two agreed to work together, beginning their search in Black Spire Outpost (yes, the same outpost tourists can visit at Galaxy's Edge in Disney's theme parks). Following Padmé's trail, they uncover a Separatist conspiracy afoot.

In Star Wars: Ahsoka Episode 7, "Dreams and Madness," Thrawn recalls Anakin being dangerous and unpredictable. He learned that during his time working with Anakin in the Unknown Regions. Anakin would frequently look to take a direct, headstrong approach to their problems, chafing against Thrawn's insistence on a more measured, deliberate, and tactically thought-out approach. However, Thrawn's strategic brilliance was vital to finding Padmé and foiling the Separatist plot, earning Anakin's respect.

At one point, Thrawn seemed to have abandoned Padmé and Anakin to their fates. Thrawn had a specific mission from the Chiss Ascendancy that involved gaining intelligence about deflector shield generators. Having found the technology he sought, he left to return it to his ship, telling Padmé, in response to her pleading with him to stay and continue helping her and Anakin, that his mission came first. Padmé misinterpreted this to mean that the mission was all that mattered. While practical and with clear priorities, Thrawn is not without a sense of loyalty. As Padmé and Anakin had helped with his mission, Thrawn returned to aid them, proving vital to their escape and return to Republic space.

As for that destructive streak Thrawn alludes to in Star Wars: Ahsoka, he saw it as they departed the planet Mokivj, where they discovered a Separatist factory where the Separaists are making Clone Trooper armor laced with a mineral called cortosis that is capable of withstanding lightsaber strikes. Anakin suspects that the Separatists plan to infiltrate the Republic army to attack the Jedi from within. Despite Thrawn's suggestion that they should allow the Separatists to continue wasting resources on this plot, having already sabotaged the production process, Anakin resolves to destroy the factory, earning the group the anger of the locals who depended on the factory for their livelihood. Despite the scorn, Anakin doesn't stop at the factory. Instead, he goes one step further, destroying the local cortosis mine, which causes an eruption that burns the nearby farmlands and poisons the water. It would take years for the local ecology to recover.

Emperor Palpatine Forced Thrawn and Darth Vader To Work Together

Years later, Emperor Palpatine ordered Thrawn and Darth Vader to work together on a seemingly unrelated mission. At the time, Thrawn and Vader had a tense relationship. Vader kept up the façade that he was not, and had never been, Anakin Skywalker, only referring to his past self even in his internal thoughts as "the Jedi." He resented anyone who may pull his master's favor away from him, including Thrawn, who had found his way into the Empire's service and the Emperor's good graces despite being an alien from a distant world.

Thrawn was in a power struggle with Director Orson Krennic as they competed for the Emperor's favor regarding their pet projects. As the head of Project Stardust, Krennic supported pouring funds into the Death Star. Thrawn wanted to divert those resources into developing the TIE Defender, a new type of fighter/bomber ship that, unlike other TIEs, came equipped with shields and hyperspace drives.

Vader always felt that the Force was the one real power in the galaxy and mostly stayed out of the group's partisan bickering. However, that changed after Palpatine paired him up with Thrawn to investigate a disturbance emanating from the Unknown Regions. The mission brought Thrawn and Vader back to Batuu and Mokivj, which still bore the scars of Anakin's actions from years earlier. There, they discovered a plot by the Grysk Hegemony, a mysterious but dangerous galactic state in the Unknown Regions, to kidnap and study young Chiss girls. These girls are the only individuals among the Chiss who can use the Force and are gifted with precognitive abilities that allow them to navigate the dangerous jumps through hyperspace. These Force-sensitives are compulsorily enlisted into the Chiss armed forces, where they become "sky-walkers" (hence the confusion when Thrawn first met Anakin Skywalker), allowing the Chiss to navigate the Unknown Regions' dangerous stellar terrain.

The situation puts Thrawn's loyalty under Vader's scrutiny: does he fight for the Empire, or is he using the Empire for the Chiss Ascendancy's interests? Thrawn insists that there is no conflict since the Grysk's immediate threat to the Chiss represents an eventual, potentially long-term threat to the Empire.

While Vader remained skeptical, he saw enough logic in Thrawn's words to continue working with him on the mission instead of turning him into the Emperor on suspicion of treason. Eventually, Thrawn – who had tried to keep the truth about the Chiss girls a secret, knowing it might invite unwanted interest from the Emperor – told Vader the whole truth. He also confirmed that he knew Vader was truly Anakin Skywalker, which he'd hinted at previously. Vader made it clear that they'd never speak of Anakin Skywalker again.

Combining their forces and skills, Thrawn and Vader stopped the Grysk's plans. Thrawn walked Vader through using the Force to navigate hyperspace, and Vader led a squadron of TIE Defenders to victory against the Grysk. They performed admirably enough to gain Vader's support for additional funding -- a slight that did not sit well with Director Krennic, as seen in the book's sequel, Thrawn: Treason -- and Thrawn earned Vader's respect, much as he'd earned Anakin's previously.

What Does Thrawn's Familiarity With Anakin Skywalker Mean for the Star Wars: Ahsoka Finale?

Thrawn already revealed his familiarity with Anakin Skywalker to Morgan Elsbeth. However, he's yet to come face-to-face with Ahsoka Tano. If they meet in the flesh in the finale, one has to wonder if he'll leverage his familiarity with Anakin to throw her off her balance. She is, presumably, unaware that Thrawn and Anakin met since she was no longer Anakin's apprentice by the time her master went to Batuu. One then has to wonder if whatever newfound peace she made with her master in The World Between Worlds will come into play and fortify her resolve. Star Wars: Ahsoka's finale debuts Tuesday, October 3rd on Disney+.

Fan-favorite Star Wars hero Ahsoka Tano returns in the brand new series on Disney+. Rosario Dawson stars in Star Wars: Ahsoka, which premiered on August 22nd on the streamer. The series picks up after the events of The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett, in which we saw the former Jedi searching for Grand Admiral Thrawn (Lars Mikkelsen) and helping Luke Skywalker train Grogu. Ahsoka will be joined on her new mission alongside longtime allies Sabine Wren (Natasha Liu Bordizzo) and Hera Syndulla (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) as they attempt to track down Thrawn, who was last seen disappearing to the far reaches of space after a confrontation with Ezra Bridger (Eman Esfandi). Star Wars: Ahsoka is the latest live-action series from Lucasfilm's creative duo of Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni.