When Ahsoka Tano first debuted in The Mandalorian's second season, most fans were not only excited but also relieved—it was about time one of Star Wars' best characters finally got her due in live-action. Lucasfilm seemed to agree, as it didn't take long for Rosario Dawson's former Jedi to get her own streaming series.
It's not clear what Ahsoka will be about specifically, but it does look to be following the plot threads left hanging by the animated fan-favorite series Star Wars: Rebels. This means that fans can expect to see familiar faces, including Ezra Bridger, who was missing the last fans heard of him.
But how might Ahsoka feel compared to all of the other Star Wars projects out there? Will it be the galaxy-spanning adventure of The Mandalorian? Or maybe something closer to The Book of Boba Fett?
Well, now, thanks to the franchise's key creatives, fans might have a better idea of what to expect from Ahsoka Tano's solo project.
The Genre of Rosario Dawson's Ahsoka
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly at D23, Star Wars creatives Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni talked about the future of the franchise and what the upcoming Ahsoka series will be like.
Favreau was quick to talk about Jon Watt's upcoming Skeleton Crew, mentioning how "it focused on young people" and that he convinced the director to give it an official pitch while they were both working on Spider-Man: No Way Home:
“Skeleton Crew is great because, you know… me and Jon Watts while we’re on the set of Spider-Man, I was just sort of sniffing out if it’s something he might be into doing. He’s like, ‘I have a whole idea for what I would do.’ And we were just talking on the set and I called Dave from… I was out in Atlanta, like, ‘Dave, this sounds really good. You want to listen to this idea that sounded good?’ We hopped on a Zoom call. They pitched through what it was, just the very basic strokes. I was like, ‘This is great’ It focused on young people. It’s always good to have new characters coming in and there are so many different tones now in Star Wars."
He continued, expressing how the various Star Wars projects are all different. Favreau pointed to Andor, calling it "intrigue and a thriller," then referring to the Mandalorian as "adventure," and finally coining the upcoming Ahsoka series as "samurai-adventure:"
"You know, you have Andor that is intrigue and a thriller. You have adventure… with The Mandalorian. You know, samurai-adventure with Ahsoka. So to have this young, Amblin-feeling movie with young people seeing it for the first time, who grew up in the Star Wars world, and are exposed to adventure, the puppets, the costumes, the visuals, the world that’s being expanded upon. And now, I get to write the next season of Mandalorian with all these new characters, and new locations, and new creatures, so it just keeps adding more, and more, and so, where there’s this cohesive group of stories that are being told thanks to all these filmmakers that are contributing."
Filoni mentioned how "[he] want[ed] [his] episode of Ahsoka in Mando season 2 to be like Yojimbo," which is a famous Japenese samurai film from 1961:
“Luckily, you know, I think we like the same type of stories. When he was talking about Westerns at the beginning of Mando, I’m like, ‘Yep, I know these.’ And I’m like, ‘I want my episode of Ahsoka in Mando Season 2 to be like Yojimbo.’ He’s like, ‘I love Yojimbo.’ And so we just talk in that language too and that’s the way George [Lucas] and I always talk. We talked about movies. There’s a love of cinema and film that’s part of Star Wars’ DNA, so we keep a lot of that alive as well.”
Ahsoka, The Samurai
So what exactly does a Samuari-adventure look like? Well, it's very much the same tone and feel that Ahsoka's debut episode in The Mandalorian has to it.
The story may also lean into a one-against-the-world type of situation—even though the likes of Sabine Wren, Hera Syndulla, and Ezra Bridger will all be showing up to aid their ally.
One thing that also comes with a project labeled as a Samurai adventure is sword fighting. So for fans of lightsabers, which is likely a good majority of the Star Wars fanbase, audiences will undoubtedly be pleased.
But who might she be fighting so often? After all, there aren't many bad guys running around with lightsabers at this point in the timeline.
Thrawn is also rumored to be the big villain of the show, and he's not one to carry around a sword, either. Though, maybe that's changed after whatever he's been through following Star Wars: Rebels.
Ahsoka is likely to debut sometime in 2023, but it does not have an official release window yet.
