Warning: this article contains full spoilers for the first two episodes of Star Wars: Ahsoka. If you haven’t already, be sure to check out IGN’s review of the Ahsoka premiere.
Star Wars: Ahsoka may be the first live-action series to star Rosario Dawson’s iconic heroine, but the series is about more than just Ahsoka herself. As the first two episodes show, Ahsoka is effectively Star Wars Rebels: Season 5 in all but name. The new series builds very directly on the foundation of its animated predecessor, including featuring many of the fan-favorite Rebels characters.
Those first two episodes do an admirable job of getting Rebels newbies up to speed, but there’s one key character whose role is still a mystery as Ahsoka gets underway. Who is Eman Esfandi’s Ezra Bridger, and why is finding him so important to Ahsoka and her friends? Here’s what you need to know about this wayward Jedi and his strange history with Ahsoka Tano.
Who Is Ezra Bridger?
Ezra is one of the few Jedi to actively fight against the Empire in the years leading up to the Battle of Yavin. He was born on Empire Day, the symbolic holiday that marked the end of the Clone Wars and the start of Emperor Palpatine’s rule over the galaxy. After his parents were imprisoned for speaking out against the Empire, Ezra was orphaned and grew up alone on the planet Lothal. That is, until he was found by the Spectres and recruited into their family.
Family really is the best word to describe this ragtag team of Rebel freedom fighters. Hera Syndulla (voiced by Vanessa Marshall in Rebels and played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead in Ahsoka) is the den mother keeping the team together. Zeb Orrelios (Steve Blum) is Ezra’s gruff older brother. Sabine Wren (voiced by Tiya Sircar and played by Natasha Liu Bordizzo) is both an older sister figure and someone Ezra was deeply infatuated with (his final holo message to Sabine reflects that complicated relationship between the two).
But Ezra’s most important relationship in Rebels is with Kanan Jarrus (Freddie Prinze, Jr.). Kanan is a former Jedi Padawan who survived the events of Order 66 (as seen in the series premiere of Star Wars: The Bad Batch) and, like Ahsoka, spent years in hiding before eventually joining the Rebel Alliance. Kanan senses Ezra’s strong connection to the Force and reluctantly becomes his teacher, despite never having completed his own training. The series is as much about Kanan’s growth as a mentor and father figure as it is Ezra’s path to becoming a Jedi.
Ezra is unusual in that his Force abilities often express themselves through a deep connection to nature and the animal kingdom. He’s able to commune with animals in a way no ordinary beings could. But like many budding Jedi before and after him, Ezra also feels the pull of the Dark Side. That pull becomes stronger after Ezra discovers his parents were killed during an attempted prison break. The ex-Sith Lord Maul senses in Ezra a worthy apprentice, though he’s never able to turn Ezra to the Dark Side.
Following Kanan’s heroic sacrifice in Rebels: Season 4, Ezra comes into his own as a Jedi and helps lead the fight to liberate Lothal from the Empire’s grip. Ezra confronts Grand Admiral Thrawn aboard an Imperial Star Destroyer, using his Force power to commune with a group of sentient space whales known as purrgil. The purrgil drag the Star Destroyer into hyperspace and to the far end of the galaxy, leaving the remaining Imperial forces vulnerable to the Rebels. Thanks to Ezra’s sacrifice, the rebels win a key, early victory, and the Empire is robbed of its most brilliant commanding officer.
Years later, the question still remains – what exactly happened to Ezra and Thrawn? Where are they now? That’s a mystery Ahsoka and the remaining Spectres are determined to solve.
Ezra’s Connection to Ahsoka
Ahsoka herself has an established history with Ezra, as she fought alongside the Spectres in her role as the Rebel intelligence agent Fulcrum. Ahsoka feeds intel to the Spectres during Season 1, before revealing herself in the season finale and becoming a regular member of the crew in Season 2.
However, she is written out of the series in the Season 2 finale, following a climactic battle with Darth Vader and the Sith Inqusitorius on Malachor. Ahsoka is seemingly killed when the Sith temple collapses. Only toward the end of the series do viewers learn what actually happened and how she survived.
In Season 4, Ezra travels to a realm known as the World Beyond Worlds, one that exists outside the boundaries of normal time and space. There he’s able to see Ahsoka’s fateful duel with Vader and pull her to safety just before the temple collapses. Ezra contemplates doing the same for Kanan, but Ahsoka reminds him that he and his fellow Spectres are only alive because of Kanan’s sacrifice. Ahsoka returns to her own time and promises to find Ezra again.
Unfortunately, Ahsoka never makes good on her promise. For reasons that aren’t entirely clear, Ahsoka doesn’t reunite with the Spectres in the remainder of Rebels, despite returning to the Sith temple moments after its destruction in the Season 2 finale. In general, very little is known about Ahsoka’s story in between the events of Rebels: Season 2 and her first live-action appearance in The Mandalorian (which happens over a decade later). We don’t know if she continued to fight alongside the Rebel Alliance or when exactly she first encountered Luke Skywalker, the son of her old master.
That said, Star Wars: Ahsoka is beginning to fill in that major gap in Ahsoka’s story. We’ve learned that she did reunite with the surviving Spectres at some point after the end of Rebels. She even briefly tried to train Sabine in the ways of the Force, though that arrangement clearly didn’t work out thanks to the first two episodes of Ahsoka. We also know that Ahsoka is firmly committed to making good on her promise to find Ezra again. She’s been hunting for her old friend for a long time, and she’s finally found the map that points to a whole new galaxy.
Time Travel and Alternate Galaxies in Star Wars
Star Wars is much more fantasy-based than it is true science fiction, so concepts like time travel don’t normally come into play. But clearly, that rule is thrown out the window where Ahsoka and Ezra are concerned. Ezra’s rescue of Ahsoka in the World Between Worlds is perhaps the most notable example of time travel being used in the Star Wars franchise. But will it be the only time these two characters breach the laws of time and space?
There’s some evidence to suggest that Star Wars: Ahsoka will delve deeper into the mythology of the World Between Worlds. The imagery of the star map pinpointing Thrawn’s location is suspiciously similar to that of the World Between Worlds, which is depicted as a black void full of planetary bodies connected by sweeping arcs. And now we know that finding Thrawn and Ezra is more than just a matter of homing in on the right planet. The two were taken to a completely different galaxy. Once again, Ahsoka is venturing into a realm beyond the regular Star Wars galaxy.
Fans of the Star Wars Expanded Universe may remember that it’s no small matter to open a doorway to another galaxy. The New Jedi Order books introduced the Yuuzhan Vong, alien conquerors from another galaxy who nearly brought the New Republic crashing down. Those books established that the laws of physics work differently in each galaxy, and the Vong hail from a place where the Force itself doesn’t exist. That makes them uniquely skilled in the ways of killing Jedi.
Could the same rule hold true in Disney’s Star Wars universe? Will Ahsoka and Sabine travel to a new galaxy, only to discover the Force is AWOL when they arrive? That would certainly complicate Ahsoka’s mission. It might also explain why Ezra has stayed missing for so long. Trapped in another galaxy and without the Force to rely on, he would be completely unable to contact his friends.
Another popular fan theory suggests that Ezra is currently hiding in plain sight. We know very little about the Sith Inquisitor Marrok, whom Ahsoka battles in the second episode of the series. Is there a reason this character stays masked and silent? Could it actually be Ezra underneath the armor, somehow brainwashed to serve Morgan Elsbeth and Baylan Skoll? Maybe Ezra escaped his exile, only to lose his humanity in the process.
It’s also enough to wonder what Thrawn has been up to for all these years. The EU established that Thrawn was aware of the threat posed by the Vong, as his people in the Chiss Ascendancy had run-ins with Vong scouting parties. Part of Thrawn’s motivation for reunifying the fractured Imperial Remnant in those books is to prepare the galaxy to defend itself against a full-scale invasion.
There’s been no mention of the Yuuzhan Vong in Disney’s Star Wars continuity, but the recent Thrawn novels do introduce a similar alien empire known as the Grysk Hegemony. Could Star Wars: Ahsoka build on the books and reveal that Thrawn has been battling the Grysk in another galaxy? Will Thrawn turn out to be less a villain than an unlikely ally against an even greater threat to the New Republic? That’s an interesting possibility to consider as Ahsoka’s Dave Filoni gears up to direct his own live-action Star Wars movie. Maybe Thrawn himself isn’t the endgame here.
Where do you think Ezra is these days? What will Ahsoka and Sabine find when they reach another galaxy? Let us know your theories in the comments below. And for more on the new series, learn about the history of the Witches of Dathomir and brush up on the essential Ahsoka, Hera and Sabine episodes to watch.
Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.