The latest episode of Star Wars spin-off Ahsoka might have retroactively changed the meaning of one of the franchise’s signature traditions.
Ever since the very first Star Wars film, Episode IV: A New Hope, entries in the main Star Wars saga have always begun with an “opening crawl” – a block of text that scrolls upward across the screen, introducing the audience to the characters and situations they are about to witness.
There has never been a canonical explanation for the crawls, with the “fourth wall”-breaking device instead being a means of directly addressing the audience and providing necessary context.
However, the latest episode of Ahsoka has prompted some fans to wonder whether there might be an in-universe reason for the crawls after all.
In episode six of the Disney+ show, titled “Far, Far Away”, Ahsoka Tano (Rosario Dawson) is seen talking to Huyang (David Tennant), an ancient droid who formerly worked with the Jedi order.
Huyang begins relaying a detailed account of history to Ahsoka, which he describes as a three-part “history of the galaxy”.
He begins the story with the phrase, “a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away” – the very same phrase that begins every film in the Skywalker saga.
As some fans quickly pointed out on social media, this detail seems to imply that the opening crawls were written by Huyang the entire time. More than this: it could suggest that the entire Star Wars saga was in fact being narrated by Tennant’s professorial robot.
“Soooo is it officially canon that Huyang is the one who writes every Opening Crawl we’ve ever seen? That’s my head-canon now, anyway,” one fann wrote on Twitter/X.
Part of the ‘opening crawl’ for ‘Star Wars: A New Hope'— (LucasFilm)
“New headcanon that the entirety of Star Wars is being told by Huyang a long time in the future in our galaxy,” wrote another.
“Huyang saying the opening line in this teaser, plus the knowledge of where this series is likely headed, has me in the mindset that Dave Filloni’s about to pull a CW and have Huyang be the ‘Star Wars narrator,’ as in the reason we have the opening crawl for the movies,” someone else wrote.
If Huyang is indeed the narrator of the Star Wars films, at least he’s a popular one – Tennant’s performance as the droid has been hailed by fans as one of the high points of Ahsoka.
Ahsoka is streaming now on Disney+.
