How Ahsoka Tano went from sidekick to one of Star Wars’ most important characters
When Ahsoka Tano made her first appearance in Star Wars: The Clone Wars, the 2008 theatrical premiere of the animated series of the same name, it was hard to imagine that she would grow into one of the most popular and prolific characters in the franchise. In the early years of The Clone Wars, Ahsoka could be easily dismissed as an annoying kid sidekick shoehorned into the saga to engage younger viewers, but in the decade-plus since, she has become the soul of the Star Wars expanded universe, appearing across multiple animated and live-action television series. She’s arguably the most important Star Wars character who doesn’t appear in the Skywalker Saga (though her voice can be heard among the choir offering encouragement to Rey at the climax of Episode IX).
But Ahsoka has been featured pretty heavily beyond the main movies. She was a major character in both Clone Wars and Rebels, and made big waves when she showed up in just a single episode of The Mandalorian. Tales of the Jedi on Disney Plus also partly centers on her, with three animated shorts filling a few gaps in her journey from padawan to soldier to outcast.
Tales wasn’t meant to stand on its own; it’s a series of vignettes that expand on the stories of both Ahsoka and the errant Count Dooku, using them as keyhole viewpoints into the turbulent years surrounding the fall of the Jedi Order. It echoes the way Ahsoka approaches the character in the initial episodes: We get glimpses of her story, and brief mentions of important people that are part of her hunt for Grand Admiral Thrawn.
Where Dooku’s three episodes of Tales have a clear, coherent narrative thread running between them, documenting his disillusionment and separation from the Jedi, enjoying the
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