Introduced in The Mandalorian episode “Chapter 13: The Jedi,” Rosario Dawson’s live-action version of Ahsoka Tano has quickly become a fan favorite. As many fans suspected, that episode turned out to be a backdoor pilot for a spin-off series, which has since been confirmed for a Disney+ release. Ahsoka will take place in The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett’s continuity, which has been established by Lucasfilm as a mini MCU-style universe inside the larger Star Wars universe. After The Book of Boba Fett took the franchise crossovers a step too far, it’s worrying that Ahsoka could make the same mistake.
The most egregious thing about The Book of Boba Fett is that it wasn’t really Boba Fett’s show after all. In its last three episodes, it might as well have been The Mandalorian season 3. Above all, Ahsoka needs to live up to its title. It’s Ahsoka’s show, and it needs to follow her from the beginning of its run to the end. There were far too many detours in The Book of Boba Fett, including an episode set at Luke Skywalker’s Jedi academy that could’ve been a whole spin-off of its own. By the end, Boba’s storylines felt like an afterthought. Ahsoka deserves the spotlight that Boba didn’t get.
Ahsoka is being spearheaded by Dave Filoni, who co-created the character with George Lucas. Unless the show has an ulterior motive in the larger Mando-verse, Filoni will guide Ahsoka’s limited series with a singular vision. Jon Favreau’s passion for his own original Star Wars creations, Din Djarin and Grogu, has been a big part of what makes The Mandalorian so special. Over the years, Filoni has taken great care with how Ahsoka’s story is told, so he certainly won’t phone in this series. He’s been working on a standalone Ahsoka story for a while and the rise of the Mando-verse has finally given him the chance to tell it. Hopefully, this will make Ahsoka more of a passion project than a money-grubbing franchise expansion designed to please shareholders.
Ahsoka Needs More Focus Than The Book Of Boba Fett
The biggest problem with The Book of Boba Fett was its lack of focus. For better or worse, the show told Boba’s story exclusively for its first four episodes. And then, all of a sudden, it became a random jumble of disparate Star Wars narrative threads in its final three episodes. Ahsoka needs to have more focus than that. It can have standalone episodic adventures like The Mandalorian – those are a lot of fun – but, at the same time, it shouldn’t lose sight of its overarching storylines.
Side quests are a great way to gradually move serialized plotlines along while giving each episode its own identity and self-contained story arc, but they can feel repetitive and inconsequential. The first half of The Mandalorian’s second season suffered from this problem. It has some awesome standalone narratives like the standoff with the ice spiders, but the season’s ongoing narrative arc (Mando’s quest to reunite Grogu with the Jedi) initially moved at a snail’s pace. Mando spent the first few episodes doing mission after mission to move the story forward ever so slightly with tiny pieces of information.
If Ahsoka is only going to last for one season, then it can’t waste a second. It needs to tell a razor-focused, action-packed, Ahsoka-centric Star Wars story with a beginning, middle, and end. It’s important to limit the legacy cameos. Live-action versions of characters like Sabine Wren and Grand Admiral Thrawn – not to mention Hayden Christensen’s Anakin Force ghost – are confirmed to appear alongside Ahsoka in her spin-off series. Ezra Bridger and the Mando-verse’s CGI Luke are also rumored to appear. If familiar icons do show up in Ahsoka, they need to serve Ahsoka’s story, not distract from it.
The Mandalorian’s backdoor pilot for Ahsoka teased the search for Thrawn as the overarching narrative for the series. This could tie into The Mandalorian’s ongoing Imperial Remnants storyline, revealing Thrawn to be the superior of a now-imprisoned Moff Gideon (and the blue-skinned big bad of the Mando-verse). But above all, the series needs to focus on Ahsoka. It can’t just use its Imperial Remnants ties as an excuse to paper over the plot holes from the sequel trilogy. Some fans are worried that the Grogu cloning storyline in The Mandalorian is being used to explain Palpatine’s resurrection in The Rise of Skywalker. Ahsoka should, as the title suggests, tell its story from Ahsoka’s perspective.
Ahsoka Needs To Take An Interest In Its Own Title Character
The Book of Boba Fett was ultimately a lot more interested in telling Mando’s story than Boba’s. This could be an ominous sign for how Favreau, Filoni, and co. will handle The Mandalorian’s handful of concurrent spin-offs. The Mandalorian works best as a straightforward Star Wars adventure following the intergalactic antics of a masked gunslinger and his infant sidekick. All the other upcoming Star Wars shows need to figure out their own identity and what makes them unique in the way that The Mandalorian is, not just vehicles for more Mandalorian episodes.
Putting crucial Mando plot turns in The Book of Boba Fett was both an insult to Boba in his own series and an insult to Star Wars fans who are now required to watch a whole new show just to follow the storylines of an existing show they already like. The Book of Boba Fett completely lost the plot halfway through its run. Ahsoka needs to be its own thing. It can’t just be another extension of The Mandalorian. Mando can appear, but he needs to support Ahsoka’s journey (like she did when she appeared on his show), not steal the spotlight and continue his own.