We recently celebrated the one-year anniversary of the season finale of Ahsoka, which included several very important developments for future stories.
Grand Admiral Thrawn returned to the known galaxy to reclaim Imperial control, Ezra Bridger made it back as well and reunited with old friends, Ahsoka Tano and Sabine Wren were left behind on Peridia, and Baylan Skoll headed off in search of a mysterious calling. The series clearly was set up for a second season.
But the next chapter has yet to begin filming. Its renewal was publicly announced within months of the finale, but it appears production won’t begin until 2025. Let me repeat that: a series that aired in the fall of 2023 will not begin production on the next season until 2025, at least a year and a half later. And that’s just for production to begin! That will likely make it closer to three years before we get the next chapter in the Ahsoka story, which is, frankly, absurd.
This isn’t a problem unique to Star Wars but is endemic to the streaming age, where longer gaps between shows have become standard. For instance, Amazon’s Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power series endured a two year gap between its first and second seasons. It’s crazy to remember how the norm used to be for shows to turn out 22 or 24 episodes every year; now, for these shows, we’re lucky if we get 8 episodes every other year. Granted, the time needed for the production of shows like this (especially with the heavy visual effects needed) will be longer, and these shows are produced increasingly more like movie quality than TV shows in the past were. That is not a bad thing. But it’s hard to imagine such a long gap between seasons as sustainable long-term.
For a show like Ahsoka, a big part of the reason for the delay is that the crew behind the series is also responsible for The Mandalorian, and the related shows. With the theatrical film The Mandalorian & Grogu filming currently, the crew is tied up and therefore will shift to Ahsoka once filming on the movie is done. Having these connected projects would, in theory, help to alleviate a gap between seasons by continuing to further advance the story, much like The Book of Boba Fett (controversially) did in-between seasons of The Mandalorian. But even this timeline of stories has slowed down considerably; after Skeleton Crew premieres in December, it looks unlikely we’ll get any project from this crew until the movie premieres in 2026.
Ultimately, Star Wars fans should be grateful that we’ve received so much streaming content over the last several years, including Ahsoka, and that Lucasfilm actually decided to renew the series for a second season. But the larger issue is an industry-wide one, where the gap between seasons is widening – and just how long it can go before audiences start losing interest will remain to be seen.
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