Warning: this article contains full spoilers for Ahsoka: Episode 3! If you haven't already, be sure to check out IGN's review of "Time to Fly."
Star Wars: Ahsoka serves as the live-action debut for many fan-favorite characters from the animated series Star Wars Rebels, including Nastaha Liu Bordizzo’s Sabine Wren, Mary Elizabeth Winstead’s Hera Syndulla and Lars Mikkelsen’s Grand Admiral Thrawn. But it’s not just the main characters from Rebels making the hyperspace jump to live-action. Case in point, Ahsoka: Episode 3 reintroduces a character who only briefly appeared in Rebels, Jacen Syndulla (played by Evan Whitten).
He may have only briefly appeared in the series finale of Rebels, but Jacen is a significant character who could wind up playing a major role in the Star Wars saga. In fact, his appearance in Episode 3 could be the show’s way of laying the groundwork for the upcoming Star Wars: Skeleton Crew. Let’s take a deep dive into Jacen’s Star Wars lineage and how he fits into the New Republic era.
Who Is Jacen Syndulla?
Jacen is a character with a great deal of significance despite only appearing for a handful of seconds in Star Wars Rebels. He’s the son of Hera Syndulla and Jedi Knight Kanan Jarrus. The reveal that Hera became pregnant before Kanan’s death is one of the more surprising and welcome twists in the final episode.
For those who didn’t watch Rebels (we’ve broken down the essential episodes to watch here), Kanan dies in the fourth and final season, sacrificing himself to save the rest of the Ghost crew. The reveal that he fathered a son before his death is a way of carrying on Kanan’s legacy into the era of the original trilogy and beyond.
Jacen is an interesting example of something we don’t see often in the Star Wars universe - a human/alien hybrid character. He’s half-human and half-Twi’lek. However, Jacen could mostly pass for human if not for his distinctive hair color. His green hair and ear tips are the only clues that Jacen isn’t fully human.
He may not look much like his mother, but Jacen definitely takes after Hera. He’s spent his life in and around starships. He even has an official callsign in his mother’s crew - Spectre-7. He’s also practically joined at the hip with Hera’s mischievous droid Chopper.
While the Star Wars franchise hasn’t really delved into this topic yet, it also stands to reason that Jacen has inherited his father’s affinity for the Force. His very name hints that Jacen could become a powerful Jedi Knight when he reaches adulthood. That’s because Jacen is named after Jacen Solo, a major character in the pre-Disney Star Wars Expanded Universe. That Jacen is actually the son of Han Solo and Princess Leia, a character similar in many ways to Ben Solo in the Star Wars sequel movies. The original Jacen may not exist in Disney’s Star Wars timeline, but there is another.
Will Jacen Be in Star Wars: Skeleton Crew?
We don’t necessarily expect Jacen to play a major role in Star Wars: Ahsoka. His appearance in Episode 3 is likely more a nod to fans of Rebels and a reminder that Hera is dealing with being a single mother in addition to trying to defend the growing but still fragile New Republic.
However, this cameo could be setting up bigger things for Jacen Syndulla. It’s worth noting that his live-action debut comes just as Disney is preparing to further expand the franchise with the upcoming Star Wars: Skeleton Crew, which is expected to hit Disney+ sometime in late 2023 or 2024.
Skeleton Crew is another series set during the same general time period as The Mandalorian and Star Wars: Ahsoka, putting it roughly five or so years after the events of Return of the Jedi. The series follows a group of children who become lost in deep space and must find their way home. The series has often been compared to films like The Goonies and various Amblin Entertainment-produced films from the ‘80s, implying a fairly lighthearted Star Wars adventure with an undercurrent of darkness.
We don’t know much about the main characters in Skeleton Crew, apart from the actors involved. The series stars Jude Law as a Force-sensitive prison escapee, Jaleel White as a space pirate and a cast of younger actors that includes Ravi Cabot-Conyers, Kyriana Kratter, Robert Timothy Smith and Ryan Kiera Armstrong.
Whitten isn’t among the cast revealed so far, but could Jacen be one of the characters featured in Skeleton Crew? Law is playing an older Jedi character, so it stands to reason that the children featured in Skeleton Crew are budding Jedi themselves. The series may be about a group of Jedi Padawans (either from Luke’s new Jedi Academy or elsewhere) who get in over their heads while seeking out adventure. Given what we know of Jacen and his headstrong nature, it makes sense that he would be a part of that group.
All of the live-action Star Wars shows set during this post-Episode VI era are intertwined. The Mandalorian directly set the stage for both The Book of Boba Fett and Ahsoka. It only makes sense for Ahsoka to in turn set up the next major live-action series by introducing a major protagonist.
Whether or not Jacen shows up in Skeleton Crew, Star Wars: Ahsoka creator Dave Filoni does seem to have big plans in mind for the character. When asked about the significance of Jacen’s name, Filoni confirmed that it was a very deliberate choice to invoke one of the most significant Expanded Universe characters.
“It seemed, in a very small way, naming him ‘Jacen’ was a way to honor the expanded universe character of Jacen Solo who just really isn’t there anymore as the timelines have changed,” Filoni told io9 in 2018. “I thought that’s a little bit of a wink to people that I know that was an important character. And maybe, in some way, that lives on through this character. I don’t know yet.”
Even at that early stage, Filoni hinted that Jacen’s journey could mirror that of his namesake in some ways. In the EU novels, Jacen becomes one of the most powerful and valiant members of his Uncle Luke’s Jedi Academy, playing a key role in saving the galaxy from the invading Yuuzhan Vong in the New Jedi Order series. Unfortunately, Jacen then succumbs to the Dark Side in later books, killing Luke’s wife, Mara Jade, and eventually meeting his end in battle with his sister, Jaina.
Is Filoni hinting that Jacen Syndulla could be facing similar struggles in the new Star Wars timeline? Is he also a Jedi with great potential to either save the galaxy or damn it? Featuring Jacen in Skeleton Crew would be a great way of kicking off Jacen’s character arc, leaving room for the character to play a big role in Filoni’s upcoming live-action Star Wars movie. Why should Luke, Ahsoka and Sabine be the only Jedi who get to shine in this era?
For more on Star Wars: Ahsoka, learn about the history of the Witches of Dathomir and find out why Ezra Bridger is so important to the plot.
Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.
