Dave Filoni explains how Ahsoka brought Anakin back with Hayden Christensen

It was a moment Star Wars fans were waiting for: the reunion of Ahsoka Tano (Rosario Dawson) and her former master, Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen). Who better to direct this episode of Ahsoka as Dave Filoni, who created the main character (alongside George Lucas) of the animated series The Clone Wars? For Filoni, who also wrote the episode, it was crucial to find a way to please longtime fans while educating new viewers. Bringing Anakin in Ahsoka was part of this process.

“I wanted to find a way to do some of these things that I had done in live-action animation beyond the current versions of the characters of Ahsoka, Ezra and Sabine, who were older,” Filoni said. about the animated film Star. War characters brought to life in this series. “So in my mind, bringing Anakin back was something to give context to Ahsoka’s character. If you had never seen The Clone Wars, how can I give you this context? And so pitting her against her mentor, for the average person to understand that her mentor was Darth Vader, which is very important, made a lot of narrative sense. But also, of course, the fan in me thinks, “This will be really cool.” »

A little story for the uninitiated: a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, Anakin Skywalker, a Jedi knight, received an apprentice, Ahsoka Tano, during the Republic’s fight against the Separatist Alliance, known as name of the Clone Wars. Throughout the seven-season animated series, Ahsoka studies under Anakin as a Jedi Padawan, is betrayed, leaves the Jedi Order, and ultimately escapes Order 66, which is Emperor Palpatine’s directive to kill all Jedi. Ahsoka appears in another animated series, Rebelsbefore first taking real action in The Mandalorian then his own series.

The episode “Shadow Warrior” was widely praised by the Star Wars fanbase – a community known for being among the franchise’s harshest critics – and featured live-action recreations of two battle sequences from The Clone Wars, showing a much younger Ahsoka (played by Ariana Greenblatt) fighting alongside Anakin before later turning to the dark side. The episode also gave Christensen and Dawson the opportunity to engage in a lightsaber battle in the World Between Worlds, which was first introduced in the animated series. Rebels – not to mention the first live-action appearance of the beloved Captain Rex clone.

“At the end of the day, it all comes from the same imagination, it all comes from the same love of Star Wars and adventure,” notes Filoni when asked about the differences between directing animation and film. real action. “In live-action, however, everything is going to happen right in front of you, right now. You can do a lot of things digitally later, but you have to be ready to capture that moment. And in animation, [you can control] every pose, posture, blink, expression, everything: if I…