Some changes are coming for Ahsoka Season 2, and two villains won’t be returning, at least not with the actors who played them in the first season. Sadly, Ray Stevenson won’t be back, as he died in May 2023. Stevenson played Baylan Skoll in Ahsoka, a Jedi who survived Order 66 and has been seeking a new power. With Stevenson gone, Rory McCann was cast as his replacement in the second season of the show. However, it now turns out a second villain won’t be back, and it is for a very different reason this time around. It appears Disney couldn’t afford her for the filming.
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Claudia Black, who played Great Mother Klothow in Star Wars: Ahsoka, said that she had to turn down the role for the second season because Disney couldn’t afford to pay her what she needed. In an interview with Bleeding Cool, Black said, “I’m going to be transparent. They picked up season two, picked me up with it, and then Disney, which is structuring things differently these days, could not pay me what I needed to be paid as a single mother to keep all my responsibilities going at home in Los Angeles, because they were filming in London. It was not something that they could make happen, and therefore, I had to bow out for season two.”
Black went on to talk about how much she loved the Star Wars franchise, and how her role was a big deal for her son, who discovered Star Wars through the Clone Wars series. She also said she emailed Dave Filoni and thanked him for the role in Season 1. She finished up by saying that she was sad she couldn’t continue to do it, but she had to do what was best for her family financially. “They call it ‘show business’ for a reason. It’s like 90 percent business and 10 percent show,” Black said. “They could not, sadly, support a single mom, and I’m very sad about that, but I also understand market forces being what they are, and the very delicate time in the business to even be able to afford to make anything at all.”
Ahsoka Season 1 saw Claudia Black’s Great Mother Klothow returning to Dathomir with Grand Admiral Thrawn, and it seemed she would be the new leader of the Nightsisters. They planned to set up a base of operations on Dathomir, where they agreed to load crates from the catacombs onto the Eye of Sion. From the sound of it, though, these crates had dead bodies that the Great Mothers could resurrect as part of their greater plan. It seems that Black’s character was supposed to play a significant role in Ahsoka Season 2.
What This Means For Ahsoka Season 2
Claudia Black was a recurring cast member for Ahsoka Season 1, so it is unclear what the second season will do about her absence. There were other Nightsisters, with Diana Lee Inosanto playing the main one, Morgan Elsbeth, but the Mandalorian teamed up with Ahsoka to help in overthrowing her rule of Calodan. With Morgan dying, there is no word on what the Nightsisters will do in Season 2, and the series might replace Great Mother Klothow with someone else, rather than recasting the role.
However, Great Mother Klothow was last seen with Grand Admiral Thrawn returning to their home planet of Dathomir. She was being set up as the leader of the Nightsisters and was Thrawn’s confidante. That makes her seem a little too important to disappear or die off-screen. Most of the cast from the first season is set to return, with Rosario Dawson as Ahsoka, Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Hera Syndulla, Hayden Christensen as Anakin Skywalker, David Tennant as Huyang, and Lars Mikkelsen as Grand Admiral Thrawn.
As for Black, things continue to look up for the actress. While she turned down Ahsoka Season 2 for financial reasons, she has a new series coming up that she is starring in. In fact, her interview with Bleeding Cool concerned her return to Spartacus: House of Ashur for Starz. This is a sequel series with Steven S. DeKnight returning to run the show. Nick E. Tarabay is also back as Spartacus. Claudia Black plays a character called Cossutia on the series, as Starz seemed to be able to afford to pay her what Disney couldn’t.
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