Secrets of the Force

by Edward Gross

  ASHLEY ECKSTEIN

  I was born in 1981, so obviously I missed A New Hope, but what I do remember specifically, and I was so young, was the scene with R2-D2 and C-3PO on Tatooine in the desert. I loved Princess Leia, but I loved R2-D2 so much, I wanted to be R2-D2. My memories are watching it on VHS at home, and obviously, we had all the movies, so it was just something that was just there. It was a part of our childhood.

  HENRY GILROY

  Here’s this young person, she’s thirteen years old, she’s grown up on a temple on Coruscant, she’s never really seen the worlds—and suddenly she’s thrust onto the front lines of a war, going from planet to planet. And that’s something we wanted to do for our audience, was to introduce them to the galaxy through Ahsoka Tano. And with every episode, the more that Ashley brought life to this character, we started to feel the experience she was getting.

  ASHLEY ECKSTEIN

  Dave very much worked on a need-to-know basis. But he did let me know that Ahsoka was walking away [from the Jedi Order at the end of season five], and that I wouldn’t be back for a while. I knew that I would be back, but it would be a while. So for me, it was goodbye. I recorded these episodes, and literally, it felt like my heart was beating outside my chest, because I was essentially saying goodbye to these guys for a while, and I didn’t know when I’d be coming back.

  On the show, Yoda obviously recognized something in Ahsoka, where he saw that Ahsoka was the perfect Padawan for Anakin. To me, she’s a mix of both Anakin and Obi-Wan. She obviously is very smart and she’s very by the book. And she really takes pride in the Jedi way, which I think is why she took the ending—the season five finale—so hard, because she literally put her heart and soul into the Jedi and when they betrayed her so badly, it just broke her. But she grew up a lot.

  DAVE FILONI

  When we started with Ahsoka, George and I had a moment looking at the early days and such, and he and I were like, “Well, this is either going to work, or people are going to hate it.” But there’s not much in-between when you give Anakin a Padawan. And you dare, back then in 2005, to make it a little girl. But George always had a great mind for a bigger picture. And we evolved the character as we went, and she grew into someone obviously a lot of fans have grown to love and respect. That’s why the character continues to persist, because they show such tremendous support for her. We all feel we earned that, because she wasn’t universally liked at the beginning.

  HENRY GILROY

  It’s extremely satisfying to see her popularity. And also, for the generation of young women who were inspired by her. Before I talk about the good stuff, let me talk about the bad stuff. I don’t know who the A-hole is who wrote the August 2008 version of Entertainment Weekly—he wrote an article, “The worst characters of Star Wars,” but I never forgot that, because I was saying, “You have to give her a chance, and let her grow into the character we know she’s going to grow into.” So, yeah, it’s extremely satisfying. I don’t think I really realized it until the final episode of season one of Rebels, when Ahsoka returns, and somebody sent me a reaction video of all of these kids screaming and running around and jumping up and down. And I was like, “Oh yeah, she’s an extremely important character to this second generation of Star Wars fans.” So, yes, I’m extremely grateful and satisfied.

  In addition to the introduction of Ahsoka Tano, The Clone Wars did the one thing George Lucas specifically set out to avoid while making The Phantom Menace: they brought back villainous Sith Lord Darth Maul, who was previously sliced in half on camera at the culmination of the epic lightsaber duel on Naboo. George Lucas refused to hear demands for his return in future movies. Of course, ultimately, his return was Lucas’s idea.

  SAM WITWER

  (voice actor, “Darth Maul,” Star Wars: The Clone Wars)

  In terms of Darth Maul, the guy’s got the Boba Fett factor going for him, you know? He looks cool, and there’s an attitude that was established in The Phantom Menace. I mean, you can’t do the same thing. You can’t bring the character back and have it be exactly what it was. So we actually had to sit around and talk about if there can only be two Sith, he can’t just be good at sword fighting, he has to be good at everything. If you’re going to pick an apprentice and spend years training him, he’s got to be really smart. He’s got to be someone who could eventually take over the role of master. It was always our aspiration to go there, but the big thing for early on was to describe the cost of what had happened to him—not just physically, but mentally—and to show you the unadulterated dark side of the Force. This is what it is. It’s not just cool leather suits and red lightsabers—it’s madness and despair and pain.

  * * *

  Despite Disney canceling the show not once, but twice, public outcry for the series’ continuation prompted its return first for a truncated sixth season on Netflix in 2014, and then a “Final Season,” perhaps its best and most powerful, on Disney+ in 2020. The final episode of Star Wars: The Clone Wars aired on that streaming service, the show having proved itself to be one of the most popular and critically acclaimed entries in the history of the franchise. And fans are still clamoring for more: they continue to be enchanted by the possibilities of more adventures with Anakin, Obi-Wan, Ahsoka, and the Clones.

  GLEN OLIVER

  (pop culture commentator)

  The initial impulse to mirror Star Wars onto television was absolutely a correct one, although they didn’t go about doing so the right way—at first. Sure, there are considerations of “cinematic” scale and so forth, but whatever scope Star Wars might lose on the small screen can be (and, in some cases, has already been) more than compensated for through television’s ability to explore stories in more depth, by exploring a far wider variety of stories than films are, quite frankly, allowed to explore. Which, at the end of the day, are key elements any franchise needs to better thrive and survive.

  JOHN KENNETH MUIR

  The Clone Wars is a remarkable series, and adds to the luster of the prequel film series. The stories go deep and develop characters like Obi-Wan and Anakin in ways unexpected and welcome. Ahsoka is a remarkable creation, and now one of the most beloved characters in the franchise. The series demonstrates that Star Wars can stand up to long-term, serial storytelling, rather than just rinsing and repeating old formulas (like the sequel trilogy). By revisiting the Gungans (in stories such as “Gungan Attack”) or Watto’s people, the Toydarians (in stories such as “Ambush”), the aliens take on new substance, and the universe seems, oddly enough, less like a cartoon designed to sell toys.

  GLEN OLIVER

  Unfortunately, the animated—and canonical—animated Star Wars offerings have been short-shrifted by many fans. There often doesn’t seem to be an understanding, either tacit or otherwise, that animated material like The Clone Wars, Rebels, and Resistance are sanctioned, canonical, and even referenced at times by their live-action counterparts. There’s a lot of remarkable Star Wars being missed and misunderstood, largely because I don’t think the animated series have been properly framed by the Powers That Be. I also think animation still, to a large degree, carries with it an unjust stigma of frivolity and an assumption of childishness. Which should be factored in when positioning the importance of their storytelling to the overall franchise. I could certainly be wrong about this, but their being “cartoons” may well have, to some degree at least, marginalized them in the eyes of fans and the Powers That Be. The movies have always felt like “bread and butter”—which is absolutely the way it should be in the grand scheme of things. But it feels like the shows have sometimes been undersold, or mispositioned, to preserve this focus. And I don’t think that’s fair to fans, to storytellers, or the franchise in general.

  JAMES ARNOLD TAYLOR

  I’m in love with the show. I think it was one of the best shows on television and I’d also say that if I wasn’t in it. There are several actors, friends of mine, seasoned actors, that watched the show religiously with their kids. I think it is d
ue to the storytelling, the art, and the love of filmmaking.

  SAM WITWER

  The great thing with the show is the patience of the storytelling. How it started as a brighter, simpler series, and as it’s gone on, things got more complicated. And more adult. What’s cool is, as those stories got more complicated, the show became more visually stunning and complex. They all could’ve been more impatient. They could’ve gone straight for these things right away. “Let’s do a Mortis thing in the first season.” But it wouldn’t have been the right call. You want to know what you’re doing by the time you get to those heavy-hitting things. And you want to have the characters established so the audience feels something huge when something happens to any one of them. That patience of storytelling is something I admire.

  CATHERINE TABER

  Things get darker as the series goes along. I think they kind of had to in order to be true to the overall Star Wars “legend.” Ashley and Dave took Ahsoka in a very cool direction as she matured and came into her own. We know the path Anakin is headed down, and we started to see that transition. Everyone is affected, not only by the war itself, but also the hidden politics that are below the surface. There was still the classic Star Wars humor and light-hearted fun moments, but the darker, more mature tone continued.

  * * *

  The first Star Wars CG-animated series created after Disney’s acquisition of Lucasfilm was Rebels, set five years before the events of A New Hope and running from 2014 to 2018. The show, created by Dave Filoni, Simon Kinberg, and Carrie Beck, serves as a bridge in the same way that Clone Wars bridged Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith.

  In the beginning, the show’s core group of characters consisted of Ezra Bridger (voiced by Taylor Gray), a fifteen-year-old human con artist on the planet Lothal who discovers he has Force abilities and finds himself a crew member of the ship the Ghost; Kanan Jarrus (voiced by Freddie Prinze, Jr.), a Jedi survivor of Revenge of the Sith’s Order 66, which saw the near extermination of his kind; Hera Syndulla (voiced by Vanessa Marshall, the Twi’lek owner and pilot of the Ghost; Sabine Wren (voiced by Tiya Sircar), a sixteen-year-old Mandalorian who is a graffiti artist, as well as an expert in weapons and explosions; Zeb Orrelios (Steven Blum), a Lasat honor guard whose people were one of the first species to rise up against the Empire and, as a result, were all but exterminated; and C1–10P (also known as “Chopper”), an astromech droid built and owned by Hera.

  Star Wars: Rebels began with a one-hour film in October 2014 and that same month launched as a weekly series on Disney XD, running four seasons and seventy-five episodes by its conclusion in March 2018.

  DAVE FILONI

  (executive producer/director, Star Wars: Rebels)

  One of the crazy things about Rebels is that when I sat down at the table, we pitched around really quickly what kind of show we were going to make. We had a matter of, honestly, weeks as opposed to where you would normally have months. Carrie Beck said, “What about something that kind of feels like The A-Team, with a small group of people in a van? They’re rebels fighting for a cause and will fight small fights.” I liked that. If you look at the Art of Clone Wars book, one of my original pitches for that show was exactly the show that Rebels turned out to be. Which is a group of people living on one ship travel around trying to do some good underneath the bigger war. Then we added Simon Kinberg.

  SIMON KINBERG

  (cocreator/executive producer, Star Wars: Rebels)

  I was already working in some capacity on the Star Wars features when Kiri Hart, who’s the head of the Lucasfilm Story Group, reached out to me and asked, “Do you want to do an animated show for Disney Networks?” I was obviously very interested. They had an idea for an A-Team style show. It was about the birth of the early days of the Rebel Alliance and it was an ensemble show. The thing that I brought to it was to try and turn that group into a proto-family unit. None of them are actually blood-related, but they operate like a little family. I had a perspective about who the main characters should be as a way into the show. Everybody had different parts of the concept and we all just combined and worked hard together.

  HENRY GILROY

  (executive producer, screenwriter, Star Wars: Rebels)

  The family component is what brought people back week to week, because you’re watching this family go through this struggle, but you’re also seeing them grow together. You’re seeing the various personalities merge and the conflict that’s there. That’s something that everybody can relate to. Clone Wars was almost more esoteric, because you would spend four hours with these characters over here, then you would spend four hours with these clones over there; and then you’d spend four hours with the bad guys, like the Sith. It was awesome, because you’re telling this epic expanding storyline. It basically gave you a taste that the galaxy really is at war, whereas Rebels really allows you to get into the interpersonal dynamics of the family structure, even though it’s sort of a dysfunctional family. You’re attracted to the characters and the show just because of that. All the space battles and lightsaber stuff kind of goes on top of it, and it’s awesome, but underneath it all I get more worried if Kanan and Ezra are fighting.

  SIMON KINBERG

  There are missions and plots in every episode, and pretty intricate ones—especially for a half-hour show—but it is so focused on the characters. We talk in arcs of seasons about them. What their story is, what their emotional arc is. All of that is discussed preseason. The first season for us was very much a family coming together and starting to fuse that family. In the second season, it was very much about the family getting challenged, fractured, and having to expand and create upon itself with new members.

  HENRY GILROY

  In the beginning, the characters were a small group performing hit-and-run tactics, but by the end, they were basically challenging the Empire. When you blow up Grand Moff Tarkin’s Star Destroyer, you’re in trouble. [laughs] And once you get the attention of the Empire, you’re going to have to deal with the consequences of that.

  * * *

  A guest star on the show was Ahsoka Tano, Anakin’s former apprentice from The Clone Wars, an addition that helped further deepen the existing characters and relationships on the show and was welcomed by fans.

  DAVE FILONI

  Bringing Ahsoka in was always the plan. I didn’t want to be selfish, but I really like that character. I did feel she could have a role to play, but none of us were prepared for the reaction. The fans have been very vocal about their excitement and that was surprising. Star Wars is changing a bit. Where it’s always been about the original trilogy fans—they’ve been the ones that have ruled and run things from the beginning—I’ve found that over the last several years the prequel generation has become very vocal as they’ve grown up. Now the—you can almost call it—animated generation of Clone Wars is vocal in their own right. I imagine in the future the Force Awakens generation is going to say, “Ours is the best.”

  * * *

  But perhaps the most satisfying reprise of all in Rebels was the unexpected return of James Earl Jones as Darth Vader in a recurring role on the series.

  DAVE FILONI

  We never wanted fans to think Rebels was going to change into some kind of Vader show. I’ve just always felt that our characters, in the great scheme of things, are small potatoes for Darth Vader. If Vader is going to come in, he’s going to deal with things and deal with them simply. A bit of a game-changer for Vader was his realization that Ahsoka is still alive, and not only is she still alive, but early on he thinks he knows where she might be and she might be able to lead him to other surviving Jedi. And like any really smart villain, Vader will withdraw from the story and send out his attack dogs, which are the Inquisitors. They’re the ones that really sniff things out and figure out what’s going on. To say the Emperor is a genius is an understatement.

  HENRY GILROY

  Vader as a regular character wouldn’t happen, because it would be a situation of dimi
nishing returns for the character. One of the things that George Lucas asked Dave, when he was basically passing on the baton to him to continue on making Star Wars, was not to diminish Vader. To not ever make him lighter. That whenever we are going to have James Earl Jones doing the voice of Vader, he will always be a formidable character.

  DAVE FILONI

  What’s great about Vader and the Emperor is that they’re willing to play a very long game for victory. Vader appeared a few times in season two, but Ahsoka actually had a larger role than he did. It’s more interesting to see this all from her side, a lot of that having to do with maintaining the mystery of Darth Vader. We know so much about Anakin, but as Vader, his story is really about him and his son, Luke Skywalker. That’s the story that George chose to tell, because it’s so important.