The fourth episode of Ahsoka ended with the main character in the mysterious World Between Worlds, face-to-face with her former master, Anakin Skywalker, once more. With it came a lot of questions, however, and we don’t have answers to them right now. Like, for example: how is Anakin there? Or, another one: is Ahsoka dead?
We don’t know answers to those questions yet, but it will be revealed in episode five. Yet I don’t think we need to wait until then to to be able to talk about whether Ahsoka is dead or not. We don’t know what the technical truth is, and it’s more likely that she’s still alive (no one else we’ve seen in the World Between Worlds before has been dead), but I think we do know this much: this is supposed to be a kind of “death” experience for her narratively in the show. And the reason I say that is because of The Lord of the Rings.
Showrunner Dave Filoni has compared Ahsoka to Gandalf for a long time, and as far back as the second season of Rebels (which concluded in 2016) Filoni publicly hinted at how a journey from Ahsoka the Gray to Ahsoka the White was in the works. That’s something that was made even more explicit earlier this year when Rosario Dawson, in an interview promoting Ahsoka, mentioned conversations she had with Filoni about the character’s transition into Ahsoka the White.
Here’s where it gets especially interesting: the second episode of Ahsoka re-created a scene from Rebels almost exactly, where Ahsoka arrives on Lothal to get Sabine and head off together in search of Ezra. The sequence plays out a lot like it does in its animated counterpart, with one major difference: whereas in Rebels Ahsoka dons all-white robes, in Ahsoka she dons gray robes. That change isn’t coincidental. The change was made because this series is about Ahsoka’s journey to Ahsoka the White.
If you’re familiar with The Lord of the Rings, Gandalf the Gray is a powerful wizard in The Fellowship of the Rings who, in fighting the Balrog, is defeated. The Fellowship presumes him dead, and indeed Gandalf did die… but was then sent back to Middle Earth to aid the heroes in the fight against evil during the War of the Ring. When he returns, he returns as Gandalf the White. But here it’s important to note that J.R.R. Tolkien didn’t view the color change as being about additional powers, but as a personal growth denoting a particular role. Previously, we saw Saruman the White as the head of their wizarding order, but in The Two Towers, as Gandalf meets his friends again he says, “Indeed I am Saruman, one might almost say, Saruman as he should have been.” So there are two primary aspects to the journey: Gandalf’s personal growth as a character, and Gandalf’s rise to be what Saruman should have been in this fight.
What’s interesting is that back in 2016, when Filoni was talking about Ahsoka in relation to Gandalf, he mentioned specifically reading Tolkien’s writings about what was going on “beneath the surface” with the characters, and then when asked about seeing Ahsoka the White, he acknowledged that was on the right track – but said to go back and think about all it would mean for her character in the process.
So what I think we will see is Ahsoka’s personal growth as a character through these events, but I also could see that part of it will be Ahsoka growing beyond her master in fighting for the light in a way that Anakin didn’t. As Yoda told Luke, “we are what they grow beyond. That is the true burden of all masters.” Ahsoka the White would be more than just an epic wardrobe change, and it wouldn’t just be about a more powerful version of the character. It would be a representation of personal growth and deepened purpose.
And to get there, the character must traverse through “death” on the way toward a “resurrection” of sorts. Whether that’s a physical, literal death remains to be seen, but I think we can know what the narrative purpose behind it is.
Star Wars Thoughts 