Star Wars has endured because so much of its worldbuilding has remained consistent over the decades. Sure, many elements have been fleshed out, like Obi-Wan’s offhand mention of the Clone Wars in A New Hope becoming the basis of the prequels and several animated series. But there’s rarely anything in later works that directly retcons the basic premise; a Jedi in a new movie has the same basic powers as a Jedi in an old one.
So when Ahsoka suddenly changed everything we thought we knew about how the Force works, fans were confused by the sudden shift. But showrunner (and new Lucasfilm chief creative officer) Dave Filoni has defended the choice, claiming it’s not really a change at all.
In conversation with Entertainment Weekly’s Star Wars podcast, Dagobah Dispatch, Dave Filoni defended his choice of making Sabine a Jedi padawan even though she’s not “Force-sensitive.”
“Very fundamentally, if you just pay attention to the films George made, you understand that the Force is an energy field created by all living things,” he said. “So the Force emanates from all of us and everything, right, all living things. It surrounds us, it penetrates us, it binds the galaxy together. So she’s not absent from the Force. She is part of the Force.”
He compared Jedi training to learning a skill like martial arts or yoga, in that it’s something you can be taught even if you’re not blessed with a naturally high midi-chlorian count (or decent hand-eye coordination). “Force-sensitive” is just the Jedi equivalent of a “gifted child.” Jedi training would be easier for them, but not impossible for anyone else.
For Filoni, the fact Sabine wasn’t “gifted” like Luke, Sabine, and even Ahsoka made her storyline more powerful. “Generally we’ve always seen very gifted people be trained, and I wanted to show kind of the opposite,” he said. “With the warning that if she achieves her potential, there’s also the danger in that because of the way she is as a warrior. She’s prone to anger. All the things that make Ahsoka concerned could flare up.”
Filoni’s perspective is interesting, but it does imply the Star Wars galaxy is teeming with middling hobbyist Jedi we’ve never seen. But whether you like it or not, at least there’s an explanation for how Sabine went from zero to Jedi hero. There’s a new rule now: anyone can be a good Jedi, even if they aren’t a Chosen One.
