After three decades of storytelling and developing Anakin Skywalker's character arc in a very specific way by following a particular formula, Dave Filoni is changing the way Star Wars is approaching the Chosen One. It is no secret that Anakin Skywalker is at the center of the Star Wars universe. No matter how many projects are created and what era Lucasfilm decides to explore next, the basis of the galaxy far, far away will always come back to Anakin since he was at the heart of the original story, the Skywalker Saga.
While Anakin Skywalker has been handled extremely carefully throughout Star Wars history, and Lucasfilm has always followed a fairly specific formula when it comes to Anakin, Lucasfilm president Dave Filoni is about to completely change everything with Ahsoka Season 2, in which Anakin will play a major role. Specifically, for the first time in three decades (or even five decades, if you count Darth Vader's role in the original trilogy), Anakin Skywalker will not be the central character to a Star Wars project that he is involved in.
While Hayden Christensen will reprise his role as Anakin in Ahsoka Season 2, and the upcoming show's official trailer showcased him quite a bit, Anakin is clearly going to take a backseat to Rosario Dawson's Ahsoka Tano regarding character exploration and character development.
In the past, anytime Anakin has been featured in a Star Wars title, he has been treated as the main character. The prequel trilogy is entirely centered around Anakin's rise as a Jedi and the prophecy of the Chosen One, before exploring his fall and turn to the Dark Side. No one can argue that Anakin was the main character of those movies. They were three chapters that made up his story.
The Clone Wars continued to follow this same format. That show had more of an ensemble than the films did, as it also showcased Ahsoka, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Captain Rex, and other clones, but Anakin was still the main character. At the end of the day, that show mostly existed to further justify Anakin's turn to the Dark Side and show moments that weren't in the films that made it more believable for him to turn.
Even in Disney's two streaming projects that Christensen's Anakin has been in (Obi-Wan Kenobi and Ahsoka Season 1), Filoni and Lucasfilm mainly focused on the Chosen One, despite being named after other characters. Obi-Wan Kenobi essentially gave viewers an internal look at Obi-Wan and his psyche following Anakin's turn to the Dark Side. It also literally featured Anakin in flashbacks, and as Darth Vader, making Anakin just as central a character to that story as Obi-Wan.
While Anakin may not have had as much screen time in Ahsoka as he did in Obi-Wan Kenobi, his inclusion in the first season of that series was still the most notable part of the show. Multiple episodes feature Anakin, revealing that he was in the World Between Worlds, and proving that he could traverse galaxies as a Force ghost. One could absolutely make an argument that, when fans go back and think about Ahsoka Season 1, Anakin is the first aspect that comes to mind.
So, for the past three decades, Lucasfilm and Star Wars have followed a very specific formula when it comes to Anakin and his inclusion in Star Wars projects. Essentially, he has always been the central character, and the project that he has been in has furthered his character arc. That will not be the case with Ahsoka Season 2, though, at least according to Dave Filoni.
How Anakin Will Be Handled in Ahsoka Season 2
According to Lucasfilm president Dave Filoni, Anakin Skywalker will not be treated as the main character of Ahsoka Season 2, and the upcoming show will not do anything to further his character arc or flesh him out as past projects have done in which he has appeared.
Specifically, Filoni has gone on record saying that "George resolved everything about Anakin," and that Filoni is "not trying to add anything to that:"
"My feeling about Anakin is that George resolved everything about Anakin. I don’t think I have anything to do there. I’m not trying to add anything to that."
This means that Ahsoka Season 2 is not going to revolve around Anakin, and will not treat him as the main character, even though he is going to have a substantial role in that project.
Instead, according to Filoni, Anakin will be "there in more of an Obi-Wan role" from the Original Trilogy, as "everything Anakin's involved with is about (Ahsoka):"
"Everything Anakin’s involved with is about her. It’s about her point of view on Anakin. It’s about what Anakin taught her. He’s there in more of an Obi-Wan role that we saw in the old movies."
When Filoni discussed Anakin's role in the first season of Ahsoka (in an interview with Entertainment Weekly's Dagobah Dispatch podcast), he talked about how he and Christensen discussed that Ahsoka "really isn't a story about Anakin." Most notably, he revealed to Christensen that Anakin's "story was already told in George's saga," and that it is "done:"
"So he had done a lot of watching and he’s talked about that, and we just discussed this isn’t really a story about Anakin, but it’s important how Ahsoka sees Anakin - because this is her lived experience. Your story was already told in George’s saga, that’s done."
So, in Ahsoka Season 2, fans can expect Anakin Skywalker to make multiple appearances throughout the show, but there will likely not be any character development for him or any new revelations regarding what he has been doing. There also likely won't be any major adventure that he is going to go on, and especially not one that is going to change anything that the Prequel Trilogy and Original Trilogy established.
As Filoni mentioned, Anakin's role in Ahsoka will probably look similar to Obi-Wan's role in the Original Trilogy, specifically in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, since Obi-Wan was a Force Ghost in those films and acted as a mentor to Luke.
