A lot has been said about Ahsoka and its main star Rosario Dawson, but few people have stopped to wonder just why her take on the titular Clone Wars character is different from what they’re familiar with in Ashley Eckstein’s performance.
The new show by Dave Filoni has, alas, joined the ever-growing list of Disney Star Wars projects to receive a mixed reaction from the fandom. While many were thrilled to see Snips in her own proper outing and even enjoyed the cameo appearance of characters like Hayden Christensen’s Anakin Skywalker, others thought that the overall plot was a bare-minimum excuse of a narrative, simply there to justify the fanservice-y return of these characters to the small screen.
Moreover, many were quick to point out that Dawson couldn’t capture the energy of Eckstein, who lent Ahsoka her voice in animated format for over a decade. While those are all valid criticisms, at least at first glance, one comedian well-versed in Star Wars lore has come forward to explain why it makes sense for this version of Ahsoka to be worn and world-weary.
As Troy Bond reasons, the Ahsoka we see in the new series is almost 50 years old, so she’s hardly the child-soldier we knew from Star Wars: The Clone Wars. What may initially come off as a “wooden portrayal” is simply Ahsoka showing her years, resembling a character like Qui-Gon in wisdom as opposed to young lively souls like Sabine or Ezra.
As one fan further expanded on this point, Ahsoka has been jumping from conflict to conflict since she was a small kid. That kind of experience is bound to wear even the best of us down.
Then again, the mere mention of Ahsoka in live-action was always bound to open a can of worms, so some Star Wars fans are arguing whether or not Dawson’s portrayal actually reflects someone who’s “beaten down” and not someone who’s simply unsure of what they should do with the role.
Besides, for some reason that only the most die-hard Star Wars fans can articulate, you can’t really go comparing Ahsoka to someone like Qui-Gon.
My biggest personal gripe with Ahsoka was its shabby, makeshift narrative, and I’m sure that we would overlook any possible shortcomings on Dawson’s part if Filoni somehow managed to get the story right in the second season, confirmed to be in production as of January 2024.
