Ahsoka Just Did Something That’s Never Been In Star Wars Before
Ahsoka episode 6 featured a lot of firsts for the Star Wars franchise. For starters, it was the live-action debut of Grand Admiral Thrawn, something both Legends and Rebels fans have been waiting for with great anticipation. But as cool as bringing both Thrawn and Rebels favorite Ezra Bridger into live-action was, episode 6 managed to top that with something even more groundbreaking: for the first time ever, Star Wars traveled to a new galaxy even far, far away-er!
Episode 6, the latest episode of Disney+’s Ahsoka, takes the story to a new galaxy for the first time in franchise history.
Since the first episode of Ahsoka, the Star Wars series‘ main concern has been finding out where in the galaxy Ezra Bridger and Thrawn disappeared to at the end of Rebels. It wasn’t until the last few episodes, however, that the pair of adversaries ended up outside of the Star Wars galaxy as we know it on the mysterious planet Peridea.
Peridea represents a whole new beginning for the Star Wars universe, and it couldn’t have come at a better time. Most of the Disney+ shows prior to Ahsoka spent a lot of time on the same planet—franchise favorite Tattooine—making the galaxy feel rather small and repetitive. Now, thanks to Ahsoka episode 6, Star Wars has a license to change things up—to get weird with it for the first time since the prequels.
With the introduction of Peridea and the new galaxy in which it resides, Star Wars can try new things and explore new avenues of storytelling.
Since Disney purchased Star Wars for $4 billion dollars back in 2012, it has understandably been trying to make back the money it shelled out for the franchise. To that end, a lot of the Star Wars content Disney has put out has tried to emulate the previous movies and stories by reusing familiar people, places, and things in order to make sure that fans recognize it all as “Star Wars.”
While playing it safe has certainly been working for Disney so far, things have been starting to feel rather stale. Enter Ahsoka to give Star Wars the kick in the ass that it needed.
With the introduction of Peridea and the new galaxy in which it resides, Star Wars can try new things and explore new avenues of storytelling. Ahsoka episode 6 already hints at some of the possibilities waiting to be mined from this new Star Wars galaxy. When asked by Shin Hati if they followed Morgan Elsbeth to Peridea in order to gain power like that of Grand Admiral Thrawn, Baylan tells his apprentice that Thrawn’s power is fleeting and they are after something more.
Is the beginning the beginning of the Force as we know it? Does the Force even exist in this new galaxy?
According to Baylan Skoll, the Jedi Order used to tell stories about Peridea to younglings, stories they mostly regarded as folktales. One of the alleged secrets the planet holds is something Baylan teases can stop the vicious cycle of light-defeats dark-defeats light that plagues the main Star Wars galaxy.
What exactly Baylan is after will have to wait for another episode, but even just the vague hints he gives Hati in the latest episode of Ahsoka, like when he mentions going back to “the beginning,” are enough to spark the imagination of Star Wars, fans everywhere. Is the beginning the beginning of the Force as we know it? Does the Force even exist in this new galaxy?
The introduction of Peridea and the new galaxy in Ahsoka gives Dave Filoni and his crew the opportunity to change the look of Star Wars a bit. It gives them a reason to show new aliens, new technology, and maybe—if we’re lucky—even some wall panels that don’t feature the same asymmetrical rounded rectangles that seem to be the one design aesthetic in the galaxy.
