Star Wars Celebration Europe is on and already delivering the goods with the first proper teaser trailer for Ahsoka. Our favorite Togruta Jedi is back, and this time Ahsoka Tano (Rosario Dawson) is preparing to save the galaxy from a threat that could very well mean the fall of everything the Original Trilogy heroes fought so hard to build. So, without further ado, let's jump in and see what's behind every bit of this teaser, shall we?
Ahsoka and the Jedi
As it's known, Ahsoka Tano actually left the Jedi Order in its waning years, a victim of a conspiracy depicted in The Clone Wars animated series. So her true status now is a mystery, as she was never properly knighted and never rose above the rank of Padawan. But we've seen her after all that in Star Wars Rebels, The Mandalorian, and in The Book of Boba Fett, and she appears to be working with Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), so it's safe to assume she can be called a Jedi again.
In the trailer, she's wandering the ruins of what seems to be an ancient temple, perhaps even an old Jedi building. As she says, the Jedi fell a long time ago, so every bit of knowledge about them should be accounted for and protected. She could also be looking for leads about the World Between Worlds, a nexus of the Force that allows one to move through the blurred lines of time and space. She visited it in Rebels, and now we see her battling Ray Stevenson's character in a location visually similar to this realm, meaning she likely managed to go back.
A familiar Jedi face we see is Huyang (David Tennant), although we don't know if he's talking to Ahsoka or to someone else. He was the lightsaber smith for the ancient Jedi Order, whom we met back in The Clone Wars, and trained thousands of generations of Jedi in the arts of crafting their weapons, even the likes of Yoda (Frank Oz) and Mace Windu (Samuel L. Jackson).
The 'Rebels' Crew Is Back
Seeing the Rebels characters in live-action was an old dream of fans, and now it's finally happening. The teaser shows Natasha Liu Bordizzo replacing voice actor Tiya Sircar as Mandalorian warrior and artist Sabine Wren, and Mary Elizabeth Winstead taking over the role of ace pilot and Rebel general Hera Syndulla from Vanessa Marshall. We are also going to get a live-action version of Jedi Ezra Bridger, who was voiced by Taylor Grey and will now be played by Eman Esfandi. And, of course, we also see droid C1-10P, who goes by "Chopper," a veteran who, despite his short temper, has a heart (or a core?) of gold.
There are two members of the Rebels crew that weren't shown in the teaser, though: Lasat muscle-turned-pilot Zeb Orrelios (Steve Blum) and young Jacen Syndulla, Hera's son with her old lover, Jedi Kanan Jarrus (Freddie Prinze Jr.). It's currently unknown if we'll see those two, but Zeb being a New Republic pilot now implies even the possibility of a cameo by Captain Carson Teva (Paul Sung-hyung Lee), so fingers crossed!
Ray Stevenson and Ivanna Sakhno
Watching videos with the captions on can be really helpful. Thanks to this, we know that Ray Stevenson's character is called Baylan, who seems to be what Legends lore would define as a Dark Jedi — a Dark Side wielder who's not necessarily a Sith, but not a Jedi anymore, too. Stevenson is a renowned actor, and seeing him in Star Wars is great.
Baylan could be an adaptation of Joruus C'Baoth, a Dark Jedi from the Heir to the Empire trilogy of novels by Timothy Zahn. In that storyline, he was an ally of none other than Grand Admiral Thrawn himself, who dreamed of courting Luke Skywalker as an apprentice and dominated ancient cloning technology, going so far as even creating a clone of the Jedi Master, weirdly called Luuke Skywalker. Really. If you're connecting the dots, cloning technology has been a recurring subject throughout Star Wars, both in The Mandalorian and in the animated series The Bad Batch — the latter even recreating an important Heir to the Empire location, the Mount Tantiss facility on the planet Weyland. You see where this is going, right?
Unfortunately, Ivanna Sakhno's character's name wasn't shown in the captions, but she appears to be Baylan's apprentice, wielding a red lightsaber akin to the one used by the Inquisitorius of old. She's fast, and skilled, and blonde... so let's hope she's not an adaptation of Luuke, right? That would be weird. But also a little cool. We're conflicted.
Thrawn and Morgan Elsbeth
We only see Grand Admiral Thrawn from behind, and couldn't make out who is playing him, unfortunately. If the Force heard us, it will be by his voice actor in Rebels, Lars Mikkelsen, but let's keep an open mind about this. The Imperial warlord has immense respect for the late-but-not-really Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid), so his conducting the efforts to bring back the Empire and to gather cloning technology makes complete sense.
In live-action, Thrawn's name was first mentioned by Ahsoka in her debut episode of The Mandalorian Season 2, "The Jedi." She was fighting Magistrate Morgan Elsbeth (Diana Lee Inosanto), who enslaved the world of Corvus and the city of Calodan, probably diverging natural resources to Thrawn's Seventh Fleet. We see Elsbeth again in the teaser for Ahsoka, meaning she will be back, and now knowing more about Ahsoka Tano and her allies, like Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) and Grogu. The droids she used on Calodan are once again seen in the teaser fighting Ahsoka, bearing the sigil for the Seventh Fleet in their heads. In the teaser, Elsbeth appears in the same room as Thrawn, but in different moments. She's an original character, but her role could be similar to that of Captain Pellaeon, Thrawn's right-hand man in the Heir to the Empire novels. Pellaeon was name-checked in Rebels, but that doesn't mean he will necessarily have a role of his own in Ahsoka.
Ahsoka is slated for an August 2023 premiere on Disney+.