Warning: this article contains full spoilers for Star Wars: Ahsoka - Episode 4! If you haven’t already, be sure to check out IGN’s review of “Fallen Jedi.”
Star Wars: Ahsoka is a real dream come true for Star Wars Rebels fans. The series is the first to star Rosario Dawson as the titular former Jedi, and it also serves as the live-action debut for fan-favorites like Nasha Liu Bordizzo’s Sabine Wren and Mary Elizabeth Winstead’s Hera Syndulla. For better or worse, Ahsoka is as much Rebels: Season 5 as it is a standalone Star Wars series.
Nowhere is that connection more apparent than in Episode 4, which features a moment of truth for Sabine and the surprise appearance of a true Star Wars icon. Hayden Christensen’s Anakin Skywalker is back, and his return is exactly what Star Wars: Ahsoka needed as it reaches the halfway mark. Let’s take a closer look at why Anakin’s appearance is so meaningful for the series and how it ties back to one of the biggest loose ends from Rebels.
Ahsoka and Anakin’s Reunion
Things aren’t exactly going Ahsoka’s way by the end of “Fallen Jedi.” This episode ends with Sabine caving to Baylan Skoll’s malign influence and Ahsoka herself being knocked off a cliff. The final scene shows that Ahsoka isn’t quite dead, but she’s close enough that her consciousness has returned to a place with special significance for Rebels fans - the World Between Worlds.
We’ll get to the importance of the World Between Worlds shortly, but the biggest surprise here is that Ahsoka is greeted by none other than the spirit of her old master, Anakin. It’s a moment fans have been waiting for ever since Christensen’s involvement in the series was first teased.
Ahsoka is an unusual character in that she’s among the most popular Star Wars heroes despite never having appeared in a live-action movie (we’re not really counting Ashley Eckstein’s vocal cameo in The Rise of Skywalker). Up till now, Ahsoka’s story has mainly unfolded in the animated realm in shows like Rebels and The Clone Wars. The Clone Wars shows the integral role Ahsoka played in the massive conflict between the Republic and the Separatists, but the series was always forced to dance between the raindrops of the prequel movies. As far as Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith would have us believe, Anakin never had a Padawan of his own.
Seeing Ahsoka make the jump to live-action has felt like a validation of the character and her integral role in the saga. But even so, something was always missing. Her transition from animation to live-action was never going to be complete without an acknowledgment of her all-important relationship with Anakin. Seeing her communing with Anakin’s son Luke in The Book of Boba Fett was a start, but it wasn’t quite enough. This series needed a scene between Dawson’s Ahsoka and Christensen’s Anakin to complete her whirlwind journey.
Thanks to “Fallen Jedi,” we finally have that scene. We’ve now been able to see Dawson and Christensen give life to that crucial Ahsoka/Anakin relationship. We even get to hear Christensen’s Anakin use Ahsoka’s nickname, Snips. For The Clone Wars fans, that moment alone may justify the entire series. It invokes seven seasons’ worth of triumph, failure and heartbreak in just a handful of words.
Best of all, Christensen’s appearance at the end of Episode 4 is clearly just a prelude to a larger reunion sequence between the two characters. This is no mere cameo, but part of something bigger and very meaningful for Ahsoka. Force Ghosts tend to appear only when they’re needed most, and Ahsoka clearly needs Anakin right now. Ahsoka telling Baylan Skoll that she doesn’t want to dwell on the past is ironic, because that’s clearly all she does. She’s still haunted by the outcome of the Clone Wars and her failure to save her master. Even years after the fall of the Empire, she won’t allow herself to settle down and put up roots anywhere. She’s simply a wandering ronin, locked in a one-woman quest to stop a war that may or may not ever come.
Anakin’s presence here is a way of forcing Ahsoka to confront her past and come to terms with their shared failures. She can finally make peace with what happened to Anakin and learn to live in the present again. The Ahsoka/Anakin reunion is bound to be one of the emotional throughlines of the entire series, much like how Vader’s “unmasking” in the Obi-Wan Kenobi series anchored that show. It’s no coincidence that both scenes center around bringing Christensen’s character back into the fold. Ahsoka, like Obi-Wan, is a character who can only move forward after putting the fall of Anakin Skywalker behind her.
The World Between Worlds
As much as Anakin’s return is a pivotal and necessary development for Ahsoka, this scene is also significant because it brings back the World Between Worlds. Ahsoka’s brush with death has somehow allowed her to return to this strange realm that was first introduced in Rebels Season 4.
For those who need a refresher, the World Between Worlds is a mystical, Force-infused realm that exists outside of time and space and contains many doorways to different points in time. Ezra Bridger traveled there and succeeded in pulling Ahsoka into the World Between Worlds just before what would have been her death on Malachor. Together, the two battled Emperor Palpatine, who was attempting to tap into the power of the World Between Worlds, and then returned to their respective timelines. Thanks to this realm, Star Wars has opened the door to time travel.
The World Between Worlds is easily the biggest loose end from Rebels. It’s introduced toward the very end of the series and never fully explained. Moreover, there’s a lot we don’t know about Ahsoka’s story in between returning to the temple on Malachor and resurfacing in The Mandalorian. Where did she go? Was she still out of commission during the height of the Rebellion? When exactly did she first meet Luke Skywalker? What is the exact nature of Ahsoka’s connection to the World Between Worlds?
Clearly, a lot of questions still remain unanswered, and Star Wars: Ahsoka has the opportunity to put them to rest. Episode 5 will not only give us more of the Ahsoka/Anakin reunion, but hopefully address some of the burning questions surrounding the World Between Worlds and what it means for Star Wars to embrace the concept of time travel.
The return of the World Between Worlds also reveals just how connected some of the concepts in this series are. If Anakin can manifest in this realm, then it suggests that Force Ghosts are somehow intrinsically linked to the World Between Worlds. It’s a realm outside of time, so those Jedi powerful enough to retain their consciousness after death can travel there.
The imagery of the World Between Worlds is pointedly similar to the star map Morgan Elsbeth is using to chart a course to another galaxy. The “witchcraft” practiced by the Nightsisters seems fundamentally connected to the World Between Worlds. That’s seemingly why the Nightsisters can accomplish feats even Darth Sidious couldn’t, such as reanimating the dead (like poor Marrok). The World Between Worlds promises to add a whole new layer of mythology to the Force, and Ahsoka is finally tapping into that potential.
For more on Star Wars: Ahsoka, find out how the series could be setting up Star Wars: Skeleton Crew and learn what makes Ezra Bridger so important to the series.
Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.
