11 episodes to watch to get primed for Ahsoka
These key installments of Star Wars shows will fill you in on what you need to know before Ahsoka hits Disney Plus
TV Features Mando
The Star Wars universe, with all its movies, television series, books, comics, games, and everything else, can feel intimidatingly vast, even for the most devoted fans. That’s especially true of the newest series in the franchise, Ahsoka, which premieres August 23 on Disney+. The show’s central character (portrayed in live-action by Rosario Dawson) has been around since the original animated film The Clone Wars was released in 2008, and has been subsequently depicted in many shows, books, and games. Ahsoka will arrive in her first solo live-action series fully formed, shaped by the meaningful moments and life experiences we’ve seen play out on other shows like Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Star Wars Rebels, Tales Of The Jedi, and The Mandalorian.
Once a Padawan assigned to train under Anakin Skywalker, Ahsoka Tano walked away from him and the Jedi Order but still maintains a strong moral compass that guides her in everything she does, including fighting alongside the rebellion against the evil Empire. If you’re not caught up with her story so far, or if it’s been a while since you’ve seen these shows, you can still jump into Ahsoka without any prior Star Wars knowledge. But if you really want to get into the show on a deeper level, you may want to do some homework. To help with that, we’ve created a crash course of 10 key installments from various series that should provide some crucial context. We recommend starting with these 10, and if you enjoy them you can always go back to the 2008 movie that started it all and continue your journey from there.
58 Comments
I watched the last season of Clone Wars and seasons 2-4 of Rebels to prep and also because they’re friggen awesome.
I love Ahsoka (the character), so I’m perfectly primed to be majorly disappointed by this series!
That’s one way to go through life I guess…
thank you, it’s hell! i’m suffering 😛
I mean, it’s not like Star Wars nor Disney conversions from animation to live action haven’t earned his comment over the last decade or so. The only SW I’ve watched more than once since episode 7 are Rogue One, Andor, and a bit of the beginning of The Mandalorian after I realized many of that show’s 3rd season spaceship scenes are basically nods to the game Galaxy on Fire 2, which was, itself, full of nods to the SW original trilogy (and Hitchhiker’s Guide, and a few other things here and there, but SW was the big influence.).
I, for one, respect someone smart enough to keep their hopes on the low side of good. It means they’ve been paying attention and will actually be hard to disappoint because of it.
Ok…? I’m not sure what difference Mando making nods to a space sim from 10+ years ago means, maybe they liked the game? I’m more of an X series fan, never played Galaxy on Fire, looks pretty cool though I may check it out.
I actually tried to watch Rogue One over again since I liked Andor so much and I still don’t like it: The editing is way too choppy and it still doesn’t make me care about the characters at all. Even Cassian Andor himself, who the series actually made me really like as a character, is just flat in the movie. I’ve been pondering it lately and I think a lot of it is down to there not really being any scenes in R1 that make you go ‘Fuck yeah, screw the Empire(or other bad guy, Jabba for example)!’, whereas Andor had at least 2 really memorable ones.
The amount of episodes I’m going to watch to get primed for Ahsoka is 0, because if the writing isn’t able to tell a complete story without all that homework, it’s a failure by the creative team.
Big ol’ yep. A lot of this Filoni stuff just feels like franchise maintenance, trying to make the OT, prequels, and cartoons into a single, cohesive blob of content. It’s unexciting if you’re more interested in SW as entertainment than as a brand.
“It’s unexciting if you’re more interested in SW as entertainment than as a brand.”What does that even mean? Filoni is one of the only people who’s made actually good post RotJ Star Wars stuff. I’m very interested in Star Wars as entertainment and am very excited to see the Rebels crew in live action.
I guess I’d voice it like this: with The Mandalorian I got this sense of “this isn’t typical Star Wars storytelling;” it felt like Star Wars could be several things (I got a similar feeling from Rogue One and Last Jedi, and it’s been part of why Andor works so well for me: I feel more a sense of playing in the sand than concerns about the architecture of the sandbox itself). As the series wears on, it’s felt more and more like it’s getting sanded down to the One Thing and made to fit in with the Filoni project. It’s not very exciting for me, and with shows like Boba Fett and the introduction of live-action Ahsoka, it feels more and more like fan service and franchise architecture, and not storytelling. I don’t feel excitement to see the Rebels crew in live action, and I don’t see anything to draw me in beyond that. I know people enjoy it; people enjoy Marvel movies, but I feel increasingly alienated for wanting to just walk into single movie and enjoy it on its own merits (which is what I was relating to in the parent comment).
Mandalorian is a hodgepodge of sci fi, western and samurai movie tropes, it’s about as Star Wars as you can possibly get.
“I feel increasingly alienated for wanting to just walk into single movie and enjoy it on its own merits”As someone who owned basically every EU book through Vector Prime, I can say that that’s not the way Star Wars works. Rogue One and TLJ were basically as un Star Wars as you can get(aside from Luke being a failure, that’s a holdover from the EU). Star Wars is big, bombastic and, above all else, interconnected and self referential.
Mandalorian is a hodgepodge of sci fi, western and samurai movie tropes, it’s about as Star Wars as you can possibly get. You’re talking about the general style, but I think lorem was talking about a more granular narrative approach: specifically, that The Mandalorian was very small-scale and very sparse—in terms of dialogue, visuals, and narrative structure—compared to the films or the shows like Clone Wars and Rebels. One laconic guy and a baby wandering around having fairly low-key adventures is markedly different from a band of charming heroes trying to stop the Empire.
(This is not to say that I think this makes it better or worse; the first two seasons of Mando both had serious problems with basic narrative and writing competence, but that’s independent of the narrative approach.)
Oh yeah no that doesn’t really matter, even the old EU had smaller stories and whatnot, it’s the sci fi/western/samurai space opera style that makes Star Wars Star Wars and Filoni does that better than pretty much anyone else. Clone Wars and Rebels had episodes with smaller scale stories too.Andor was an exception, the less said about the mess that is TLJ the better.
I’m not nearly as enamored of Filoni’s work as you are, but I get your point.
No one is as enamored of Filoni’s work as Filoni. With the possible exception of Favreau.
Filoni’s work makes me feel like a kid watching the OT again, which is more than can be said about pretty much every single piece of Star Wars content since RotJ. There were a couple scenes in Andor that recaptured that feeling, and some in Solo, but it’s mostly Filoni’s work that gives me the feeling.
On the plus side, there’s a lot of other stuff you can watch that isn’t Star Wars you can watch if you don’t like Star Wars style sci fi. Check out The Expanse, that’s a really good sci fi show!
it’s the sci fi/western/samurai space opera style that makes Star Wars Star Wars and Filoni does that better than pretty much anyone else.Here’s where we differ, I think. George Lucas took his sci-fi/western/samurai influences and created Star Wars. Filoni is just creating more Star Wars. I can only watch Lucas’ original vision get Xeroxed so many times before it becomes a pale imitation of itself.I would love to see Filoni lean on his influences to do something we haven’t seen before, but his influences just seem to be “I liked Star Wars.”
Right, Lucas created Star Wars and picked Filoni to keep doing Star Wars. If he was doing something else, it wouldn’t be Star Wars. You want something that isn’t Star Wars. That’s fine, but complaining that Star Wars isn’t something else doesn’t really make sense.
Guess we’ll have to disagree then. To steal another commenter’s analogy, I’m looking for a SW creator to build a sandcastle design I’ve never seen before.Whereas I think Filoni is primarily concerned with making sure the sandbox is contained and the castles look EXACTLY how fans remember them.
Ok but, again, that’s not Star Wars. Star Wars has basically been the same sandcastle for decades, if you want something else then you want something not Star Wars.
Filoni takes the shit ass castles Lucas has been farting around with since RotJ and rebuilds them to be not shitty. The Clone Wars even made Jar Jar not be as horrible.
Ok, you’re right. With so many SW creators and fans prescriptively telling me What Star Wars Is, I can’t believe I suggested having an imagination. Silly of me to think a franchise about space wizards could get creative.
I’m not telling you that prescriptively at all, I’m telling you that factually this is what Star Wars is and has been for quite a long time now. I’m not saying anything about what has to happen, I’m looking at the past and telling you what has happened.
Yup, this is what I mean; it seemed really unconcerned with the rest of the franchise or fan service. Then they’re introducing the darksaber, and here’s Bo Katan, and what are we going to do about the fate of Mandalore, and by the time we’ve got an entire episode trying to bolster a plot explanation for “somehow Palpatine returned,” I felt less like I was watching a tv show and more like I was watching wookipedia articles.
Wellll, I’d probably lean back a bit from “unconcerned with fan service” even at the start; Grogu, as adorable as he is, is essentially a giant piece of fan service (albeit sui generis in that a baby Yoda wasn’t something anyone expected), and we sure did end up on Tatooine awfully fast. But agreed that it did quite rapidly descend into (I chuckled out loud) “watching wookiepedia articles.”
The fan service/franchise-building and weak narrative construction are two sides of the same coin, I suppose: If you (and by you, I mean Dave Filoni) are focused on franchise-building, then you’re probably not focusing on the nuts and bolts of storytelling, which leads to narrative atrocities like The Book of Boba Fett.
Heh heh, we’re probably of a similar generation of fan that remembers what it was like to grab at anything new in Star Wars; I was also all in on the EU books until the New Jedi Order. And I’d say the NJO was a really good example of the sort of deliberate franchise work that turns me off. Maybe I was younger and more naive, but the EU books felt more like individual storytelling efforts; while they shared characters and plot reverberations, you could pick up the Thrawn trilogy or the Jedi Academy trilogy and get a story with a beginning, middle, and end. NJO felt like a Multiplatform Franchise Event, one which demanded my money and attention in order to get the “full experience.” Generally that’s me as a nerd: I like stuff that invites me to dive in and explore (e.g. catching up on a comic title and its spin-offs), but get turned off by stuff that tries to engineer its own importance (e.g. crossover events which require me to buy Hulk to see what happens to Wolverine, only to feel like I need to catch up on Hulk).I think the important thing as a Star Wars fan is to admit there is no One Thing that it should or shouldn’t be (because I’d love to roll around in the mud screaming about how TLJ is as Star Wars as you can get but it never pans out as a fun debate to have), and if you don’t like it, try to quietly sit it out. But I saw a thread expressing my thoughts and thought I’d commiserate.
I mean sure they were that but they were also bad for the most part. I’m pretty sure each Mando season tells a complete story. At this point Star Wars is very clearly a self referential set of stories that mostly all trade in the same set of tropes, it’s been that way ever since I can remember. TLJ may be Star Wars but its plot is lousy and the whole ‘Don’t trust your leaders just because they’re your leaders’ message is unusual, though it echos Tarkin’s hubris from ANH. Every leader in that movie being bad was obviously a message that not many people got. Star Wars isn’t really about messages, putting a subtle one like that in a SW movie is just reaching for too much.
See, my entire thrust is Filoni invites this whole “Star Wars is clearly one thing” dogmatic thinking, and the conversation inevitably drifts to what “is” or “isn’t.” It’s not fun to me.
I mean he is the guy that Lucas hand picked to guide the franchise. From my pov it’s more like he gets what Star Wars is better than anyone else.There’s plenty of sci fi content out there, wanting Star Wars to be ‘more’ than it has been for decades makes Star Wars more generic and less Star Wars. I’m not interested in the High Republic, there’s plenty of high fantasy style sci fi out there. I’m interested in the Clone Wars era through the modern Mando era. I’m interested in Thrawn because he’s always been the second best villain in Star Wars just behind Vader. I’m interested in Mandalorians because they’re fuckin cool. I’m interested in Ahsoka because she’s the one Jedi who called the Jedi out on their bullshit.If I want some kind of different sci fi, there’s a whole shitload of it I can look to.Though I’ll admit Andor was an exception to that.
Star Wars isn’t really about messages, putting a subtle one like that in a SW movie is just reaching for too much.This is very funny considering Lucas himself said the Ewoks were a metaphor for the Viet Cong, but sure.
Yeah Lucas says a lot of shit. Lucas said he had scripts written for 9 Star Wars movies in like 1979.
Ewoks were a metaphor for ‘Being able to sell a shitload of merch to kiddies’, nothing more.
Yes and yes.
Filoni content needs to die. It’s not that I hate it, but we need new and different voices in SW, not just more strip mining of existing lore. Let it go, man. Sheesh.
While I agree with you, the episodes listed are still really good stuff which you could enjoy watching anyway.
Clone Wars and Rebels are basically the best post RotJ stories but you do you.
That’s like ranking the best venereal diseases
Watched all of Clone Wars. Pretty good overall, although still a decent amount of filler. Also watched Rebels S1 but it’s too kiddie pool for my taste. I’m happy younger fans get their live action stuff but I wish they’d treat these other series as supplemental and not required reading. The Mandalorian is another great example. One of the biggest character decisions was farmed out to BoBF and Ahsoka’s first live action introduction wasn’t even on her own show. Mando S3 dropped the self-contained stories in favor of being heavily referential to the Clone Wars. Obi-Wan could’ve told an original story but they opted for Adventures in Babysitting Leia. This is not creative storytelling; it’s brand management.
Exactly. And it pigeonholes what Star Wars can be (which, considering its myriad influences and the myriad ways people connect with it, as well as the fact that it is innately an exercise in pastiche, is absolutely silly to categorize as a single definable aesthetic/story) while, as murry’s comments illustrate, delivering the dopamine hit of stoking childhood nostalgia.
Well sure it’s a lot of episodes, there’s gonna be some filler. That’s not an uncommon complaint about season 1 of Rebels, it really picks up during the second season because Ezra is aged up a bit and it starts to fit into the pre Battle of Yavin Rebellion a lot more. I don’t think any of it is ‘required reading’ in any way, my parents have enjoyed all of the live action shows without knowing a single thing about the cartoons. “Ahsoka’s first live action introduction wasn’t even on her own show”So?“Mando S3 dropped the self-contained stories in favor of being heavily referential to the Clone Wars”Again, so? Three season of The Adventures of Din and Grogu would have gotten boring
and played out after 2 seasons. Having Din interact meaningfully with
the other Mandalorians that are still alive makes sense. They explained everything that needed to be explained on the show, it just meant more if you knew the history. Again, my 70 year old parents have no problem following what’s going on without having watched a single episode of any of the cartoons.
Obi-Wan had a horrible development cycle that saw it stretched from a movie into a series. The series had a lot of problems and, aside from a couple cool scenes, is the bottom of the barrel as far as the modern series go in my opinion. That’s not even getting into the problems with editing…
Dear god, yes.
Early reviews indicate this is the case. I hear a lot of people griping about the pacing, as the characters are established for the casual fans who didn’t watch the animated shows (among my cohort of middle-aged OGStar Wars fans that number is surprisingly low).To be honest, I don’t care that much about Ahsoka. She’s a cool character who was designed to give some relief to Anakin and Obi Wan, and she grew into something much more interesting over the course of the The Clone Wars. She didn’t do much in Rebels that any Jedi survivor couldn’t have done though.And while the head canon meeting between her, Leia and Luke, as well as the spirits of Anakin, Yoda and Obi Wan, would make a great one shot or short story, I’m just not that invested in Rebels to be hyped. I’m glad some folks are, though. Getting ostensibly one more season of a show they love to tie up the story will be exiting for them. Again, I just don’t see most general audience members caring unless the story goes somewhere really interesting or they introduce some captivating new character that everyone collectively falls in love with.
I was super-psyched for this when it was announced but now I’m seriously “meh.” They better suck me in with the two-episode premier.I think it was my ultimate disappointment with the Obi-Wan series that did it.
I have confidence. Ashoka and the Rebels characters are his babies and he’s going to be super careful with their writing.
I forgot that series even happened.
“Ahsoka” looks like the least essential, most up-its-own-ass of all the Star Wars series. Even moreso than “Book of Boba Fett.” Just more endless strip-mining of the lore. It makes “The mandalorian” look positively original by comparison.Also, Dawson’s performance is a complete snooze.I’ll probably watch the first episode if only for the late, great, Ray Stevenson. But I’m sure I’ll probably tap out, like I did with BOBF and Mando S3.
I don’t think Dawson gets the character, which is odd given the love she’s expressed for Ahsoka in the past.Ahsoka is NOT the super zen, no emotions, Jedi-as-robot type. She’s the complete opposite. That’s the point of her character, and why she ultimately didn’t end up/rejoin the Jedi. But Dawson has been playing her as the very most robotic of all robots. It’s Ahsoka only in name, and (sort of) looks.The other issue that they’re going to run into is physicality. A huge part Ahsoka’s character was her physicality (which reflected her personality), which just can’t be replicated in live action, especially, unfortunately, by an actor over the age of 40. From the preview, the action already looks pretty stiff. They needed to cast a former gymnast who could pull some of the high wire stuff. “Older” Ahsoka who can’t flip all over the place is fine, but we still need to see a glimmer of the original character.That being said, the rest of the show and the plot looks good to me. I’m just worried that Ahsoka is going to be the most snooze part of it.
Well, Ahsoka herself is way over forty at this point. I agree with your points about Dawson vs. Ahsoka. To me, she feels like a completely different character.But I think we can only lay so much blame at her feet. After all, her performance is being directed and approved by the creatives (F&F) behind the series(es) that she’s appeared on. So this is clearly how F&F want her to be in live action. Which is truly baffling.
Ahsoka in the series is considerably older than the character was in Clone Wars. She was more subdued in Rebels compared to Clone Wars and this takes place even further after that. Her being more hardened and serious could very well be a character development decision and one that really makes sense given her age and everything she has been through.
She looks way too stupid in that getup for me to try. Sorry.
Well thanks anyway! Too bad that it was for you and only you that this show was made. Now it is guaranteed to be a failure. If she were to change her clothing would you consider coming back? We could refilm the entire series with another outfit of your choosing if you like. Please?
Ahsoka should smile more
FYI:“The Wrong Jedi” (season 2, episode 20) should be season FIVE episode 20.
Yeah big typo there!
Siege of Lothal is a better primer for Rebels than Fire Across the Galaxy, and also has good Ahsoka content that leads into Twilight of the Apprentice.
seems like Disney no longer has any vision for the future of Star Wars (and barely one for Marvel). more and more attention on prequels and revisiting characters from the past instead of new characters leading the way into the future. feels like even though they are making tons of money they are somehow circling the drain at the same time, i dunno
Watch the Clone Wars episodes that focus on the female characters and the Rebels episodes recommended. It will give you everything you need to know.
You should also watch Droids. It has nothing to do with Ahsoka. I just think it’s a fun animated series.
Personally I think the “Siege of Mandalore” story arc is one of the best Star Wars things ever made. I’ve always found it fascinating how good Filoni is at working with the parts of a puzzle and managing to flesh them out far better than Lucas could. These episodes made Anakin’s fall seem far more tragic than the movies ever did.
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