Under Disney, the galaxy far, far away has been expanding at an incredible rate. When The Mandalorian & Grogu movie opens in less than two years, we will have just as many Star Wars movies under Disney as we ever got from George Lucas and in a fraction of the time. On top of that, we have all the Star Wars series on Disney+ and numerous novels and comic books. There’s so much happening that there may inevitably be the occasional hiccup in the story.
Such is seemingly the case when it comes to the backstory of fan-favorite character Ahsoka Tano. She was created for the Star Wars: The Clone Wars animated series, but has since been the subject of novels, live-action shows and additional animated series, and some of that has my head spinning as different stories appear to contradict others.
Tales Of The Jedi And The Ahsoka Novel Appear To Tell The Same Story
Back in 2016, before we ever knew we’d get more Star Wars: The Clone Wars or a live-action Ahsoka series, we got Ahsoka, a novel by E.K. Johnson. The book is set following the events of Season 6 of The Clone Wars, which was then the end of the series. It follows Ahsoka as she hides out following Order 66. Eventually she is forced to use The Force, which sends an Inquisitor after her whom she defeats.
This is also essentially the story told in Episode 6 of the Tales of the Jedi animated series. Obviously a 12-minute animated episode is more condensed than the full novel, but there were already some significant continuity issues between the two, and now there are more.
The newest edition of the Star Wars Encyclopedia (via SFFGazette) states that the Inquisitor that Ahsoka battles in Tales of the Jedi goes by the name First Brother. The problem is that the Ahsoka novel specifies that the person she is fighting there is Sixth Brother. So are these two things not telling the same story?
It’s a minor thing to change the name of a small character but it would have been just as easy to simply use the name that had already been used. All this does is add confusion to the situation. Is Tales of the Jedi retconning the events of the novel? Is this a very similar, but different situation?
Is The Ahsoka Novel Now Non-Canon?
Dave Filoni, who co-created Ahsoka with George Lucas, and has been shepherding the character through the Star Wars universe since, reportedly worked with E.K. Johnson on the novel, so the story would seem to have had the official Star Wars seal of approval. This makes the decision to change things in Tales of the Jedi all the stranger since it’s not like Filoni was rewriting a story he hadn’t been involved in.
At the end of the day, this doesn’t necessarily matter. It’s not like this isn’t an entire Star Wars Expanded Universe of novels that have been relegated to the dustbin of Star Wars history, so one more is no big deal. Still, for those that want to follow the “real” story, decisions like this make that more difficult.
