Star Wars: Ahsoka Villain Says Wielding a Lightsaber Isn't Easy (Exclusive)

By Adam Barnhardt

Few props in pop culture are more popular than lightsabers, the choice weapon for the Jedi and Sith alike within the Star Wars canon. Though Ahsoka is technically set in an era where far fewer Force-wielders exist than other places on the timeline, the series will be featuring at least two characters donning red lightsabers, a hallmark of Sith warriors. As seen in the first teaser for the Disney+ show, Ray Stevenson's Baylan Skoll and Ivanna Sakhno's Shin Hati are the ones wielding the scarlet blade, and the latter says using such a prop is as powerful as can be.

"It's craftmanship, like everything else with our costume department and hair and makeup," Sakhno tells us at this year's star Wars Celebration. "There's a story to every object on set. It's incredible. It's heavy and it's not easy to fight with it, but once you allow the flow of it all to lead you, you forget about the hardness of it all. It's very special—it is what I think you imagine it to be.

She adds, "It's part of the character. That red light is the darkness within the Force and it comes from within."

When Does Ahsoka Take Place?

According to Lucasfilm mastermind Dave Filoni, Ahsoka takes place in the same general era as the other Star Wars shows such as The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett, and Skeleton Crew.

"It's an interesting way to think about it," Filoni told The Wrap earlier this year. "I tend to think, as we've been working on The Mandalorian and then writing Ahsoka, and then Jon Watts came in with Skeleton Crew, there is an entire time period that is post-Return of the Jedi. And I look at that time period, which before The Force Awakens, is around 30 years of time. When you look at the original trilogy, it's a much less significant amount of time that those three movies take place in. And so, what I like is that we're really building very slowly an ecosystem of characters and politics and events in the post-Return of the Jedi time period. And that may or may not expand in a bigger way as we add more shows to it and add more characters to it." 

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Star Wars: Ahsoka is expected to debut on Disney+ at some point in 2023. If you haven't signed up for Disney+ yet, you can try it out here.

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