By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
Are you a Star Wars fan who recently started muttering that you’ve felt a disturbance in the Force? As it turns out, there’s a reason for that. After Ahsoka Season 2, Disney has no plans for more live-action TV shows in the immediate future; instead, they are reportedly focusing on animated series like The Ninth Jedi and pivoting the franchise back to the big screen. If you like the shows, you’ve probably got a bad feeling about this. But here’s a small consolation: the first trailer for Ahsoka Season 2 promises a show awesome enough to close the live-action era out in style.
Beginning, The End Is
Surprisingly enough, the trailer begins with Anakin Skywalker speaking to Rosario Dawson’s Ahsoka, presumably in the World Between Worlds. “Tell me, Ahoska…what troubles you?” We then see him join her in a fight against a mysterious Jedi with a double-bladed lightsaber. “I am always by your side,” Anakin says. We then cut to Grand Admiral Thrawn announcing his return to the “glorious citizens of the Empire.” Citing his oath to protect that Empire, he declares war on the “Rebel Alliance.” We then see TIE Bombers attacking, a mysterious foe boarding a New Republic ship, and Ashoka leading Sabine Wren into new dangers.
Amid even more battle scenes (including one featuring Shin Hati, our favorite manic Sith-y dream girl, fighting David Tennant’s Professor Huyang), we get more dialogue from Anakin and Ahsoka. He describes “knowledge of a power…that could end wars.” She tells him, “A long time ago, I walked away from the Jedi.” He gently chides her, saying that this is her trial and that she was going to have to finally answer the big question: “Are you a Jedi or not?”
Somehow, Grand Admiral Thrawn Returned
As a huge Rebels fan, I’m very biased, but I was very impressed by the trailer for Ahsoka Season 2. Focusing so much on Hayden Christensen’s Anakin Skywalker was a big gamble, but it pays off: he helps to ground all of these explosive shenanigans while cementing the emotional stakes for Ahsoka. Speaking of which, it looks like the show is wisely tying Ahsoka’s long-awaited trial to the fight against Thrawn. Done right, this could echo the Star Wars Original Trilogy by giving us a hero’s journey that will ultimately decide the fate of everyone in a galaxy far, far away.
If this trailer successfully whetted your appetite for more of this hit show, you won’t have that long to wait. Ahsoka Season 2 begins streaming on Disney+ on January 20. That should be a major relief to nervous fans who wondered what was holding this show up. After all, we got Season 1 way back in 2023, and definitive updates on the series have been few and far between. Now, though, over three years since the show debuted, we will be getting the second and presumably final season of Ahsoka. Once it’s over, the era of live-action Star Wars will come to a close.
Or as a Disney+ executive might put it in his best Yoda voice: “Twilight is upon us. And soon, subscribers must fall!”
