How Ahsoka Was Saved: What Happened Between Her And Anakin Explained
Star Wars fans who were crawling up the walls after Ahsoka episode 4’s Anakin Skywalker cliffhanger finally got the answers they were looking for earlier this week when episode 5 dropped… sort of. When it comes to Ahsoka’s fate, that one is easy: much to no one’s surprise, the main character of Ahsoka, Ahsoka herself, is not dead, huzzah!
After all, according to IMDb, there are still three more episodes to go before the season ends. It would be weird to kill the main character three episodes before the end. As for the spiritual journey she went on with Anakin, well, that one’s kind of up for interpretation.
The World Between Worlds
For starters, it looks like Star Wars’ World Between Worlds does function as a kind of limbo for Force sensitives—at least, that’s how it functioned for Ahsoka. Basically, if you’ve ever seen a movie where someone on the brink of death visits the “afterlife” only to have a previously deceased loved one tell them it’s not their time yet, it’s a lot like that.
Anakin Skywalker turned out to be a Force Ghost rather than a past version of Anakin, who got temporarily stuck in the World Between Worlds. While he didn’t look like the typical Star Wars Force Ghost (no neon blue aura, no slight transparency) the fact that he was able to take Ahsoka back in time to re-live events like the Siege of Mandalore—a battle he wasn’t even present for—points to him being one with the force rather than flesh and blood or “crude matter” as Master Yoda put it in The Empire Strikes Back.
Anakin And Ahsoka
As for why Anakin showed up, well, that’s where it gets a little fuzzy. According to him, it was to finish his former apprentice’s training. Of all the themes that run throughout Star Wars, students like Ahsoka running out on their instructors without finishing their lessons has to be the most frustrating—at least as far as Anakin and Yoda are concerned. It’s what Ashoka’s final lesson was that’s not entirely clear.
Anakin and his former Padawan first traveled back to the Battle of Ryloth—an early Clone Wars skirmish that was first shown in the animated Star Wars: The Clone Wars series—where Anakin taught Ahsoka the importance of making wisecracks when she’s surrounded by dead soldiers.
Ok, that’s an oversimplification. Much like the doctors on M.A.S.H., Anakin knows the simple wartime truth: it’s either you laugh and make dark jokes on the battlefield, or you risk letting the horrors of war overtake you and drag you to a dark place.
Which may have been the lesson that Anakin was trying to impart. So far, live-action Ahsoka has been much more dour and serious than early Clone Wars animated Ahsoka. Except, later, it feels like the lesson is more about forgiving herself for past mistakes and moving on.
Rather than deal the killing blow, Dave Filoni proves that he’s just as adept as George at making sure everything “rhymes” by having Ahsoka throw the lightsaber aside, mimicking a similar scene in Return of the Jedi where Luke does the same thing onboard the second Death Star.
Everyone in Star Wars who knew Anakin before his fall to the dark side seems to blame themselves for it, and Ahsoka is no exception. Anakin’s real lesson for Ahsoka may have been to accept that her legacy is one of both darkness and light, like every sentient creature in existence.
But that’s not it either because there also seems to be something in there about not being a warrior but rather a Jedi—not attacking to win but rather only for defense.
At one point, Anakin goads Ahsoka into a lightsaber duel. Eventually, his blue lightsaber turns red—yet another clue that he’s not physically there but rather a spiritual manifestation—and the duel ends with Ahsoka getting the upper hand and holding Anakin’s own lightsaber to his throat, ready to decapitate him with the slightest flick of her wrist.
Rather than deal the killing blow, Dave Filoni proves that he’s just as adept as George at making sure everything “rhymes” by having Ahsoka throw the lightsaber aside, mimicking a similar scene in Return of the Jedi where Luke does the same thing onboard the second Death Star.
Maybe the point was for Anakin to teach Ahsoka a bunch of stuff to finish her training, but it definitely seemed like a “You have one more lesson to learn before you are a true Jedi” situation.
If so, it’s hard to pinpoint just what the final lesson was in its totality. Of course, there’s a chance that much like how Filoni purposely left the true nature of the World Between Worlds vague in order to preserve some sense of mystery in Star Wars, he also intended Ahsoka’s final lesson to be open to viewer interpretation.
Meanwhile, not left to interpretation was the manner in which Ashsoka was physically rescued. Jacen Syndulla, having his own burgeoning connection to the Force, could “hear” lightsabers among the crashing waves of the ocean Ahsoka plummeted into in episode 4. Jacen convinces his mom Hera to fly just inches above the ocean’s surface, where eventually the Ghost’s scanners locate a seriously waterlogged Ahsoka.
As for whether Anakin completing Ahsoka’s training makes her a Jedi, the answer is no. Not only is there no longer a Jedi order at this point in Star Wars to bestow that honor upon Ahsoka, but she specifically left the order willingly. Ahsoka is her own thing.
Much like how Baylan Skoll and Shin Hati aren’t Sith, but they still use the Dark Side of the Force, Ahsoka is a light side Force user who—for now—doesn’t choose to label herself. She’s just Ahsoka, and that’s okay.
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