Dave Filoni teases a potential “Ahsoka ”season 2: 'Always in motion is the future'

The Lucasfilm mastermind breaks down Ahsoka Tano's long journey to the screen — and what might come next.

Dave Filoni has explored nearly every corner of the Star Wars galaxy — but he’ll always have a soft spot for Ahsoka Tano. The writer and filmmaker has long been one of Lucasfilm’s most trusted voices, launching animated shows like Clone Wars and Rebels as well as live-action hits like The Mandalorian with co-creator Jon Favreau. But one of his very first projects was collaborating with George Lucas on the 2008 Clone Wars movie. It was then that they first created Ahsoka Tano, Anakin Skywalker’s brash, double lightsaber-wielding Padawan.

A decade and a half later, Ahsoka has evolved from quippy teenager to powerful adult warrior, finally stepping into the spotlight with her own Disney+ show, Ahsoka. It’s a grand, planet-hopping story Filoni has wanted to tell for years, reuniting Ahsoka (Rosario Dawson) with old allies and sending her on a journey to a galaxy even farther away.

“I’m just glad to get it out there in the first place,” Filoni admits, speaking to EW via Zoom. “Sometimes it’s hard to pick what actually gets made and what doesn’t, and it feels like a real privilege to just be able to create in this world and in this galaxy. That thrill has never gone away in my almost 20 years [at Lucasfilm].”

When developing the series, Filoni says he was most interested in how an adult Ahsoka would be affected by her past. After all, she essentially trained as a child soldier in the Clone Wars. Not only did she live through multiple intergalactic regime changes, but she watched her mentor and trusted friend Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) turn to the Dark Side. As Filoni started outlining early plans for Ahsoka, he found himself thinking about some of the samurai stories and Akira Kurosawa films that originally inspired Lucas, imagining his heroine as a solitary, ronin-like wanderer.

“Who is she meant to be now that her whole world has collapsed?” Filoni explains. “It’s not just that the Jedi order fell apart, but her mentor, this person she looked up to, became one of the most evil people in the galaxy. It’s devastating, and I never showed her deal with that. I wanted a character we could watch have that transformation, where she fully accepts not just who she was but what her past was, what the good things were about this mentor she had. It changes who she is and who she can be in the future.”

In many ways, Ahsoka is a story about mentors: Not only is Ahsoka reckoning with Anakin’s legacy, but she also becomes a master herself, taking on Mandalorian warrior Sabine Wren (Natasha Liu Bordizzo) as her own Jedi apprentice. Filoni says he particularly wanted to pair Ahsoka with the headstrong and reckless Sabine because the brash young Mandalorian reminded him so much of Anakin.

“For Ahsoka, I could see a tendency to want to reach somebody that reminds her of her mentor,” he says, “but I could also see the danger that would be present in that.”

He was also intrigued by the idea of a Jedi Padawan who didn’t immediately connect to the Force. Filoni acknowledges that fans may have different opinions and ideas of how Force sensitivity works, but he notes that Lucas always described the Force as something that “binds the galaxy together” and “emanates from all of us,” connecting all living things. So, Filoni explains, every person is connected to the Force, but not everyone has the mental discipline or innate ability to use it and train as a Jedi warrior. For someone like Ahsoka or Luke, it would come much easier than it does for someone like Sabine.

“She’s a very talented warrior, but this is not something that’s easy for her, and I think that makes it relatable to people,” he adds. “Generally in Star Wars, we’ve always seen very gifted people be trained, and I wanted to show kind of the opposite. If she achieves her potential, there’s also a danger in that because of the way she is as a warrior. She is prone to anger, and all the things that make Ahsoka concerned could flare up.”

In some ways, Ahsoka is a culmination of Filoni’s many fascinations: reluctant masters, headstrong apprentices, mind-bending meditations on the nature of good versus evil. Also, he notes with a laugh, it has space wolves: “There’s a lot of wolves in my work because I simply just like wolves." But even as Filoni reflects on his past, he’s also looking to the future: Lucasfilm has yet to officially announce Ahsoka season 2, but the series finale ends on a cliffhanger, setting up a potential showdown between fan-favorite heroes like Ezra Bridger (Eman Esfandi) and the notorious Grand Admiral Thrawn (Lars Mikkelsen). In the meantime, Filoni is also developing an untitled live-action Star Wars movie, and just a few days after our conversation, Vanity Fair revealed that he’s taking on an expanded role as chief creative officer for Lucasfilm.

In other words, it certainly seems like Ahsoka Tano’s story isn’t over yet — whether it continues on TV or on the big screen. Filoni is tight-lipped about how (and when) we might see Dawson pick up her lightsabers again, but he says that even in early development, he had an idea of where this story “should end up.”

“I’ve set up several threads that can continue, but if not, I feel like, well, at least I got Ezra home, and that was really important,” he says. “But there’s always a plan. I hope one day we’ll see it. It could be very cool, but it took a while to get [Ahsoka] done, so you never know.”

After all, he says with a smile, it’s like Yoda says in The Empire Strikes Back: “Always in motion is the future.”

Listen to the full conversation with Dave Filoni on EW's Dagobah Dispatch podcast.

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• That Ahsoka finale, explained

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly.