WARNING: The following contains spoilers for this week's Star Wars Rebels episode, "A World Between Worlds."
As Star Wars Rebels approaches its final trio of episodes next week, the series will have to wrap up everything possible in a nice little bow to coincide with the events of both Rogue One and the original trilogy. That makes it all the more surprising when this week's second episode, "A World Between Worlds," brings back the fan favorite character Ahsoka Tano and reveals her fate.
Of all the new character additions to the Star Wars history, Ahsoka has one of the most eventful histories. In Lucasfilm's first effort to expand on the prequel trilogy history, a CG film for the Clone Wars was released in 2008, and Ahsoka was the audience surrogate character who also served as Anakin Skywalker's apprentice. The movie itself was...not received too well, and many found Ahsoka to be just an annoying character, which certainly didn't endear her when the CG Clone Wars series debuted on Cartoon Network months later. Some disliked her for her immaturity, others for her outfit--whatever reason people had, she got off on the wrong foot thanks to the movie.
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It took time, but Clone Wars the show soon turned Ahsoka into one of its best characters. Through her viewpoint, the show was able to dig into the bigger moral complexities about Jedi, their creed, and the Clone War itself that the prequel films didn't really dig into until Revenge of the Sith in 2005, and even then, those moments were brief and somewhat confusing. Going back through Clone Wars, watching her grow and mature is an interesting focus in character development, and highlights the benefit of Clone Wars' approach to anthology-based, multi-episode arcs.
Over the course of five years, she went from just being an audience POV character to a vital part of the Clone Wars history, and she's been around long enough and done so much that it's truly hard to believe what the universe would be like without her. For one thing, we certainly wouldn't have one of the coolest multikills in Star Wars history.
The show was so good that it made you forget the giant contradiction that was her whole character; where the heck was she during Order 66 and Anakin's fall from grace? Everyone was certain that she would end up dead at some point in the series, but instead, Clone Wars answered that question in its final episode on Cartoon Network: after being accused of a terrorist attack and murder and found innocent, she left the Order in its entirety.
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This being Star Wars, there was no way that Ahsoka's story would just end after the series had wrapped. The question wasn't "if" Ahsoka would ever return, but "when," with many figuring that a solo film in the Anthology series would give us our closure on the character. While that may still happen someday, her true return came not long after Clone Wars' finale, thanks to Star Wars Rebels. Given that both shows shared Dave Filoni as a creative force, it came as no surprise that she would show up at the end of Rebels' debut season, older and rocking a pair of white lightsabers.
Just as the new trilogy of Star Wars films are about the impact of legacy and taking control of one's destiny, both Clone Wars and Rebels have shown that they're, in their own different ways, all about Ahsoka Tano. Though she takes more of a back seat in Rebels as compared to its predecessor, the show is still continuing her story and evolution from Padawan to Jedi master. The brief moments of the series' second season where she's teaching both Kanan and Ezra show her increased maturity. Clone Wars showed the effect that she had on Anakin and how he would come to be disillusioned with the Jedi Order. Rebels uses her to show that more than anything, you have to keep moving forward rather than wallowing in the past, something we saw with Darth Maul and his decades-long obsession with getting vengeance on Obi-Wan Kenobi and Palpatine following his return.
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The most recent episode, "A World Between Worlds," illustrates this idea by Ezra rescuing her from her final encounter with Darth Vader on Malachor from season 2. Plucked from the timeline by Ezra and placed into the passageways connecting all of time and space in the Star Wars universe, Ezra becomes convinced that he can simply grab his dead master from the explosion that took his life mere episodes ago. It's only because of Ahsoka that Ezra decides to let Kanan die and go on with life, understanding that everyone will have a moment where they're most needed.
With three episodes left before Rebels concludes, Ahsoka is now confirmed to be alive and dropped back into her own timeline. Everyone will have their part to play, and now that Ahsoka has about two years of knowledge about what happens, that means she'll get her big moment in the series finale along with Ezra and the rest of the Ghost crew. Whether it's through Rebels or the next animated series to eventually arrive in the Star Wars universe, Ahsoka's story from Padawan to surrogate Master has been enthralling to watch play out over a decade of adventures and lightsaber battles.