Has this key ‘Ahsoka’ character been digitally de-aged or not?

This article contains spoilers for Ahsoka episode 4.

Ahsoka episode 4 was a noted improvement on previous weeks, delivering some excellent lightsaber duels and teasing the imminent arrival of Ezra Bridger and Grand Admiral Thrawn next week. But what’ll really set tongues wagging are the episode’s final moments. After falling off a cliff, Ahsoka wakes up in a dreamy afterlife-looking place, where she hears a familiar voice say “Hello Snips”.

Yup, it’s Hayden Christensen as Anakin Skywalker, making his second appearance in a Star Wars Disney Plus show after Obi-Wan Kenobi. To those following Ahsoka‘s production, Christensen turning up won’t be a surprise as he was confirmed to be shooting scenes as far as back October 2022. It seems we’re going to get more of him next week, but even this brief glimpse has fans wondering whether Disney and Lucasfilm have slapped on a dollop of the ol’ digital anti-aging cream.

So, let’s examine the evidence. Here’s Hayden Christensen in November 2022 around the same time as he was shooting Ahsoka:

As you can see, at the age of 41 (he’s now 42) Christensen is aging like a fine wine. He still looks remarkably like he did twenty years ago while making the prequel trilogy so, unlike Mark Hamill’s Luke Skywalker, should be able to play a younger version of the character without any CGI assists and not break our suspension of disbelief.

But could Lucasfilm resist a CGI facelift? Here’s Anakin Skywalker in this week’s Ahsoka:

We can’t say for sure what’s been done here, but just based on how this looks we strongly suspect that the same VFX tech used on Christensen in Obi-Wan Kenobi has returned here. There’s a strong whiff of the uncanny valley in this still but it’s especially evident in motion and our guess is that they’re deep-faking Christensen’s younger face onto his older self. But why?

We’re baffled as to why Lucasfilm would go to all this trouble and not leave Christensen’s face as it is. The end result is far from convincing, which detracts from the emotional impact of the reveal and must have cost a lot more to achieve.

Even more of a headscratcher is that there’s no reason that this Ghost Anakin couldn’t look older than he did in Revenge of the Sith. The rules around Force Ghosts are still very vague but, for example, the Qui-Gon Jinn ghost at the end of Obi-Wan Kenobi was visibly older than when he died in The Phantom Menace.

Presumably, we’re going to see more of this digitally altered Anakin next week, but let’s hope and pray that they just let Christensen act without screwing with how he looks for no reason.