A live-action Thrawn should be a big deal. On Ahsoka it’s just episode 6
Grand Admiral Thrawn arrived when the Star Wars universe needed him most. With the movie series effectively dead after Return of the Jedi, author Timothy Zahn stepped in on assignment from Lucasfilm and its partner Bantam Spectra to come up with a Darth Vader-level character who could rival Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, and Leia Organa in the post-Empire years, and an adventure that would resuscitate the biggest blockbuster franchise of all time with mere prose. Boy, did he.
The result was 1991’s Heir to the Empire, a mega hit that ranked on the New York Times bestseller list, spurred the entire Star Wars publishing arm, and became a book so essential to the lore that, after Disney acquired Lucasfilm in 2012 and decanonized the “Expanded Universe” beyond the original and prequel trilogies, Thrawn was reintroduced across mediums. Thrawn used to be a deep cut in the mid-’90s, Star Wars’ “nerdiest” era. But these days he’s a known quantity to the franchise’s book readers (having just ended another run with the Thrawn Ascendancy trilogy) and cartoon watchers young and old, having been folded into the parallel original trilogy of Star Wars Rebels by George Lucas’ appointed successor, Dave Filoni.
Thrawn is a big frickin’ deal. So why wasn’t I losing my shit when he got his live-action due for the very first time?
Star Wars fans dating back 10, 20, 30 years would have killed for a Star Wars sequel trilogy focused on Luke, a new apprentice, and the vicious threat of Thrawn. We didn’t get that in J.J. Abrams’ Disney revival (though, in his defense, Lucas wasn’t planning to go there either if he had his way). But you can find dusty forums and Ain’t It Cool News threads full of gushing fans wishing for three decades that someone, any
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