While Jake Lloyd and Hayden Christensen are the actors chiefly associated with Anakin Skywalker thanks to their time as the character in the Prequel-era Star Wars movies, Timeless and Jupiter’s Legacy actor Matt Lanter has them both beat regarding how long he’s held that particular role. Lanter primarily voiced Anakin for the entirety of Star Wars: The Clone Wars’ run, and among his costars on that series was Ashley Eckstein, who voiced Anakin’s apprentice, Ahsoka Tano. She has now shared her support for the actor after he was hospitalized for emergency surgery.
To provide some context, Matt Lanter’s wife, Angela Lanter, shared on Instagram that her husband has “been through the ringer” since last Tuesday and ended up in surgery on Thursday. Fortunately, as of Sunday, he “started to turn the corner and is slowly getting on the road to recovery,” and Angela Lanter thanked those who’d shared their prayers, love and support for Matt Lanter. That group includes Ashley Eckstein, who posted the below message about her Star Wars: The Clone Wars costar.
The Star Wars: The Clone Wars saga kicked off in the summer of 2008 with the theatrical movie, and the animated series’ premiere on Cartoon Network followed a few months later. However, Matt Lanter, Ashley Eckstein and the rest of The Clone Wars’ main cast members had started recording their roles a few years earlier, meaning Lanter and Eckstein go back over a decade and a half now. So it’s no surprise that Lanter means a lot to Eckstein, hence why she asked her fans to join her in extending “kindness, well wishes and prayers” for Matt Lanter’s “good health and a speedy recovery,” as well as support for his family.
The master/apprentice dynamic between Anakin Skywalker and Ahsoka Tano was one of the key relationships in Star Wars: The Clone Wars, which took place during the three years between Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith. Even after Ahsoka left the Jedi Order at the end of Season 5, she and Anakin reunited one more time as allies during Season 7, ahead of Darth Maul being captured on Mandalore. Sadly, Anakin’s transformation into Darth Vader occurred shortly thereafter, and in the Star Wars Rebels Season 2 finale, which took place a little over a decade and a half after the Clone Wars ended, Ahsoka dueled her former master on Malachor.
While it remains to be seen if we’ll ever hear Matt Lanter and Ashley Eckstein voicing Anakin Skywalker and Ahsoka Tano together again (though Lanter teased in 2021 that he was working on another animated project), we’re not done seeing these two characters come face-to-face. The upcoming Ahsoka series, which will be available to watch with a Disney+ subscription like all the other Star Wars shows, sees Rosario Dawson’s older Ahsoka taking center stage following her appearances in The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett. It was revealed in October 2021 that Hayden Christensen will reprise Anakin in Ahsoka. While we’ll see Christensen playing a different kind of Darth Vader in Obi-Wan Kenobi soon, given Ahsoka’s placement in the Star Wars timeline, it’s unclear if we’ll see Anakin and Ahsoka back together in flashbacks to the Clone Wars, or if the former will appear to the latter as a Force ghost in the “present day” storyline.
Keep visiting CinemaBlend for all the latest updates on upcoming Star Wars movies and TV shows. We’re also passing along well wishes and support Matt Lanter’s way for a speedy recovery.
