When last we saw Ahsoka Tano, it was in the epilogue to Rebels, where after the fall of the Empire Ahsoka traveled to Lothal to recruit Sabine Wren to head off in search of Ezra Bridger.
That was the last we had seen of her until Chapter 13 of The Mandalorian, when Din Djarin and Grogu found her on the planet Calodan and help her liberate the city. As she defeated the magistrate in a duel, Ahsoka demanded to know where her master was: Grand Admiral Thrawn. And with that, all sorts of speculation was put into motion on how this fits with that Rebels epilogue.
Many people wondered if the epilogue was actually further ahead than we thought and was actually set after this episode of The Mandalorian, and it seems that Dave Filoni isn’t ruling that out. In typical Filoni fashion, playfully staying coy with his answers, he said this in an interview with Vanity Fair’s Anthony Breznican on how it fits together:
“Right. But no, it’s an interesting one… That’s not necessarily chronological. I think the thing that people will most not understand is they want to go in a linear fashion, but as I learned as a kid, nothing in Star Wars really works in a linear fashion. You do [Episodes] Four, Five and Six and then One, Two, and Three. So in the vein of that history, when you look at the epilogue of Rebels you don’t really know how much time has passed. So, it’s possible that the story I’m telling in The Mandalorian actually takes place prior to that. Possible. I’m saying it’s possible.”
So the most notable part that first stands out – and that I’ve used for this headline in fact – is that Filoni says it’s possible that the Rebels epilogue in which we see Ahsoka takes place after this episode of The Mandalorian. But what he says before that seems to give more credence to that possibility, as he says that it’s not necessarily chronological and not in a linear fashion. He pulled in past history of Star Wars to illustrate this point.
And he’s right. There is nothing in that epilogue that suggests it has to be set immediately after the Battle of Endor, so maybe it’s actually five years later and after this episode. I’m quite confident that’s not what Filoni intended when he made that finale of Rebels, but at the same time, he never did put a timetable on it in the episode itself. So it’s very easy then to go back and say that it happens afterward, and nothing would be contradicted whatsoever.
In my opinion, this does make the most sense. It sounds like Thrawn has returned, and so perhaps Ahsoka wants to find out his whereabouts to provide a clue as to Ezra’s whereabouts. I would guess that if Thrawn is back and operating with some Imperial remnants, he and Ezra have parted ways by now, but maybe finding out Thrawn’s location could provide Ahsoka with the clue she needs to go find Sabine and begin their search for Ezra.
And maybe that will lead right in to the Rebels sequel series that has long been rumored.
Star Wars Thoughts 