A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, the Star Wars saga took flight. And while that galaxy is expansive enough on its own, the story’s most recent chapter has made the franchise that much bigger.
Ahsoka took its title ex-Jedi and Rebels alum Sabine Wren on a quest to a neighboring galaxy. They reunited with Ezra Bridger on the planet Peridea, and accidentally paved the way for the formidable Grand Admiral Thrawn to return to their native galaxy. While Thrawn will undoubtedly be much stronger when we see him next, Ahsoka and Sabine are still stranded on Peridea. But that doesn’t mean their stories are over, which implies Peridea and the galaxy it occupies will have a role to play in the future.
Separating Ahsoka from the main action may have been a controversial choice by Ahsoka showrunner Dave Filoni, but the concept of a brand-new galaxy didn’t begin with this series. Filoni was inspired by a blink-and-miss-it moment in Star Wars: Episode II — Attack of the Clones.
“If you look, there’s an image of the galaxy, and then there are actually these smaller galaxies near it,” Filoni recently told Vanity Fair. The writer-director admitted the idea had always interested him. Ahsoka provided the perfect opportunity to reintroduce the concept, and with Filoni working on a Star Wars feature film, we could be seeing a lot more of it.
As Ezra and Thrawn were effectively missing for nearly a decade, concealing them in a far-off galaxy made sense. “If they were in the Star Wars galaxy — the old Star Wars galaxy that we know — I think somebody would’ve found them,” Filoni said. “I had to really throw them far afield.”
The search for Peridea also allowed Ahsoka to introduce some lofty new lore. Some of it was familiar to fans of Filoni’s animated shows, but it wasn’t just Rebels fan service. Filoni is setting the stage for a huge reckoning, and everything established in Ahsoka will hopefully distinguish it from more familiar conflicts.
“I’m setting up what it seems to be a larger conflict with the Imperial remnant. That conflict can’t just mirror what we’ve seen before. It has to take on a different shape. It can’t just be the Empire versus what looks like the Rebellion, or even the Republic. It has to be visually different.”
Could those differences encompass the new ideas — and the literal new space — introduced in Ahsoka? With Filoni stepping into a much bigger role at Lucasfilm, his choices are more influential than ever. “I plan for a long game. I really do,” Filoni said. “And that encompasses a lot more than it used to, as I help other people as well.”
Only time will tell how the introduction of neighboring galaxies affects the Star Wars saga moving forward, but the possibilities are tantalizing. Ahsoka helped introduce multiple forms of intergalactic travel, so there’s really no telling where upcoming installments could end up... or what they’ll find in galaxies even farther away.
