Star Wars: The Clone Wars finally got a proper ending when season 7 aired on Disney Plus earlier this year. In the last episodes, we got to see how Ahsoka Tano and Captain Rex lived through Order 66. The thing is, though, we’d already got some info about how they survived over on Rebels and TCW‘s dramatization of it didn’t quite match up.
In Clone Wars, Rex’s inhibitor chip activated along with the rest of the Clones, and Ahsoka had to work out how to remove it herself. In Rebels, though, Rex told Kanan Jarrus that he removed his chip himself prior to the Order being initiated. Fans have been trying to make the two accounts fit together ever since.
Showrunner Dave Filoni has now addressed the retcon though while speaking to Nerdist, providing a decent answer to the issue. In true Star Wars style, the EP gave an explanation that suggests Rex was telling Kanan the truth “from a certain point of view.”
“I think when you reach [Rex] in Rebels and he says, ‘I took out my control chip’ to Kanan as a way of explaining that we all can make a choice,” Filoni says. “I think he sees that as true and I think it’s one way that he’s coped with things. He did get it removed. Kanan doesn’t need to know the minute details of Rex’s life.”
Filoni went on to say that the reason the alteration was made was because he thinks you have to put the needs of the story and the characters’ journeys before continuity. He did also say, though, that Rex probably told Kanan the actual facts at a later point.
“I think that’s where you can get hung up on continuity so much that you don’t actually tell a story that’s about real people. So Rex at that moment tells Kanan the point of view Kanan needs to understand who Rex is and what he’s really about. Later on, do they have a scene where they get into the truth of it that was a lot scarier? Probably, but I think Kanan also knows that. So I think it takes them [Ahsoka and Rex] a long time to cope with everything. The life they knew is gone. It’s tough. It would be hard because with The Clone Wars, I know where it ends. I don’t get to have the parade in this one unless it’s the ‘Imperial March.'”
Ahsoka and Rex were last seen honoring the dead clones controlled by the Emperor, with Vader eventually finding their tracks, setting up the Sith Lord’s final confrontation with his former Padawan in Rebels. There may be slight discrepancies in the telling of it, then, but at least we now have the whole story laid out across those two shows.
Not that Star Wars: The Clone Wars will be the final time we see Ahsoka, mind you. She’s due to make her live-action debut in The Mandalorian season 2 this fall.
