Looking back on Ahsoka Tano’s darkest hour

When you watch Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge Of The Sith today, given the decades of Star Wars content that’s bombarded screens big and small, it’s difficult not to feel the conspicuous absence of Ahsoka Tano, Anakin Skywalker’s padawan apprentice from Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Of course, Ahsoka (voiced by Ashley Eckstein) couldn’t possibly appear in the film; her debut wouldn’t happen until 2008, three years after Sith. But after 15 years of watching Ahsoka grow alongside her former Jedi Master, seeing such a pivotal moment in the Skywalker saga play out without her feels wrong—at least retroactively.

The uncertainty of Ahsoka’s role during the events of Sith left a big dramatic beat for the saga lingering in the background longer than the brain trust at Lucasfilm likely intended. Because we’ve been spared a cobbled-together “Special Edition” of the third prequel installment (à la those dreadful rehashes of the original Star Wars trilogy), wherein Ahsoka would presumably get her due in at least one live-action scene or shout-out in regards to her whereabouts during the execution of Chancellor Palpatine’s Order 66, the story about how she survived the horrors of the Jedi purge would take over a decade to tell.

Season seven of The Clone Wars is a minor miracle in that regard. When these new episodes finally arrived on Disney+ in 2020, it provided a fleeting sense of closure for those invested in the life of Ahsoka Tano. Where did she go after leaving the Jedi Order? Did she feel a great disturbance in the Force when her former Master succumbed to the Dark Side? Answers had arrived at last. More than simply showing us where Ahsoka was when Palpatine ordered the clone army she’d long fought beside to execute the Jedi, it showed this ultimate betrayal through her eyes, making the fall of the Republic—and, crucially, the fall of her mentor—all the more poignant.

Ahsoka becomes a Star Wars legend

Thanks to the circuitous narrative backtracking that has become so essential to the proliferation of the franchise, Ahsoka’s animated life gave a new context to Skywalker’s transformation into Darth Vader. It’s also given the saga one of its most beloved characters; as The Clone Wars progressed, so did Ahsoka, who we watched grow from a naive padawan nicknamed “Snips” to a war hero, from someone who renounced her Jedi status to a bona fide rebel against the Empire. By the time she miraculously appeared in the season-one finale of Star Wars Rebels in 2015, she’d become a Star Wars legend in her own right.

Such is the power and lasting appeal of Ahsoka Tano. We’ll soon discover how her role in this galaxy far, far away has evolved as her profile reaches critical mass this month: The live-action Disney+ series Ahsoka stars Rosario Dawson and will see the former Jedi and current freedom fighter reunited with her comrades-in-arms from Rebels (in fact, this is shaping up to be that show’s de facto fifth season) to finally confront that series’ big Imperial heavyweight, Grand Admiral Thrawn (Lars Mikkelsen). For fans of the larger Star Wars saga, Ahsoka may prove to be the character’s most dramatic chapter yet. Think of it as her comeback tour, righting the wrongs brought about by the Jedi’s failure and her role in the rise of Vader and the Empire. Even with that dramatically loaded itinerary, Ahsoka still has much to live up to.

After all, we’ve already seen this character’s darkest hour, which took place during the climactic final arc of The Clone Wars season seven. And it begins so cordially, too. If we weren’t quite prepared for the saga’s last reunion between Ahsoka and Anakin before he fell into the clutches of Palpatine (secretly the Sith Lord Darth Sidious), Ahsoka seemed even less ready. The episode “Old Friends Not Forgotten” shows the former padawan in a state of wariness as she’s brought on board a Republic star destroyer. As a sign of respect, clone troopers still salute her in the ship’s corridors, even though she’s no longer a part of the Jedi Order. “Loyalty means everything to the clones,” Anakin says, in one of the season’s many cruel twists of the knife.

That loyalty is represented by Commander Rex (Dee Bradley Baker), who, alongside General Skywalker, presents Ahsoka with a special clone battalion to aid her in the pursuit of the war criminal Maul (Sam Witwer). To show how much Ahsoka meant to the clones during her many campaigns during the wars, they paint her distinctive facial markings on their helmets. Anakin is also quick to show there are no hard feelings between him and Ahsoka and gives her the twin lightsaber blades she abandoned when she quit the Jedi life. “I’ve made some adjustments,” he says. She fires them up: Now they glow blue, like his blade.

There’s never a question of camaraderie between Ahsoka, Anakin, and the clone battalion. They treat each other as equals, though Ahsoka is clearly working through some complicated emotions. Those doubts are later exploited in Mandalore, where Maul draws comparisons between her as an outsider in the Jedi Order and his present status as a renegade Sith. After all, he tells her, they were both cast aside by their masters (a bleak but honest point of view concerning her Jedi murder trial during season five), becoming tools used by greater powers. Even Anakin is being groomed by the Sith in ways the Jedi can’t begin to fathom, Maul reveals. With the Republic in shambles, Ahsoka gets her Empire moment: “The Jedi cannot stop Sidious,” Maul says. “But, together, you and I can.”

Ahsoka’s biggest miscalculation

Maul invokes Ahsoka’s mistrust of the Jedi, which triggers a miscalculation on her part. While she defeats Maul and imprisons him as a means to unearth Sidious’ grand scheme, Ahsoka omits one critical piece of information during her conference with Master Yoda (Tom Kane) that might have changed the war’s outcome: She doesn’t tell him about Sidious’ plans for Anakin Skywalker. Why does she do this? That’s for future Star Wars stories to unpack. What remains is her shaken faith in the Jedi, which doesn’t stop what’s about to happen to the galaxy but ensures that Sidious’ victory becomes a certainty.

We know what happens next. Skywalker is on Coruscant committing unspeakable violence to the Jedi Temple, with his trusted ally lightyears away helping the people of Mandalore because she believed that was the right thing to do. If only Ahsoka had made it back to Coruscant before Palpatine gave the order to his clone army, if only Anakin had been with her instead of spying on the Chancellor on behalf of the Jedi, if only she had told Yoda about Sidious’ plans for Skywalker, much might have been different.

The Clone Wars season seven ends on a heartbreaking note, as it must. In “Victory And Death,” the clones who once trusted Ahsoka’s leadership have been compelled by Order 66 to assassinate her, culminating in a fiery crash that kills the soldiers who once proudly wore her standard. Instead of seeking out her fallen teacher, she has to run for her life. But before she makes her escape, Ahsoka deliberately stashes her lightsaber in the crash because she knows who will eventually find it. And so, later, when Darth Vader ignites this discarded saber, we’re reminded of all the great things this former Jedi pair accomplished in the war—all the triumphs and laughs and hopes they shared—before everything went wrong.

During this episode’s last moments, we more keenly feel Ahsoka’s absence in Revenge Of The Sith. In time we discovered that this wasn’t the most tragic thing to happen to her—that would come in Rebels when she inevitably crossed laser swords with Vader—but her loss in The Clone Wars finale is undoubtedly her darkest hour. With Ahsoka primed to reveal the next chapter in the life of Ahsoka Tano, her path seems to be heading toward a sense of finality. Through her pursuit of Thrawn, Ahsoka may finally bring balance to an injustice done to her, her friend, and the galaxy, a closing of a circle that began 15 years ago.