Empire Magazine and The Direct featured two insightful Star Wars articles today, so we are wrapping them up in one handy post to use for next week’s episode of the Star Wars Time Show!
You can also check out our short-form videos that tackle these new reveals below.
Ahsoka and Star Wars Rebels
In an interview with Empire Magazine, Rosario Dawson and Natasha Liu Bordizzo revealed a few interesting things about the Ashoka series. First up, Rosario teased that fans don’t really know what Ashoka has been up to and who she is as a character during the Mando-verse timeline, so her series will finally show fans more of who Ashoka is as a character at this point in her life.
“Dave and Jon [Favreau] are continuing Star Wars in a way where it can be standalone, but it also makes you hungry for more… there have been two instances where [Ahsoka] shown up on a mission, you see how she’s interacting with folks, but you don’t really get her, per se. Even fans who’ve lived with her for so long don’t know where she’s at now in this journey.”
Rosario Dawson
Natasha, who plays Sabine Wren, gave some insights into her character and who she is in the series.
“Sabine is so fearless and brave, with so much grace, but she still has flaws… she’s not perfect, she’s on her journey, she’s making mistakes. And it’s very high stakes in this galactic war, to make mistakes.”
Natasha Liu Bordizzo
More importantly, she revealed that there will be a standalone Star Wars Rebels chapter to get all fans caught up on the happenings and characters from that series.
“A lot of people have not seen Rebels… It’s great for them to have seen it, but we’ve got a standalone chapter as it is.”
Natasha Liu Bordizzo
It’s not clear if she means we will get live-action Rebels flashbacks to fill non-Rebels fans in, or if the episode will just feature the Rebels cast to get fans learned on who they are, but she did make it sound like the series will give a full episode to just the Rebels.
Vader Wins Duel and More Emperor
From The Direct, we learned today that in the original Kenobi script, Darth Vader was going to win the final duel with Kenobi, and that Palpatine was involved early on. He also went on to explain why Vader and Ben had to be separated at the end of their duel.
Apparently Palpatine was involved early on:
“To me, Vader in this period is just so obsessed with Kenobi, so obsessed with revenge and what you did to me, you know that he just wants to put a lightsaber to him. And he doesn’t want this to last another second. He wants to kill this guy. In my film he was under pressure from the Emperor from the beginning. ‘Forget Kenobi. Forget Kenobi. That’s Anakin, let that go. Focus on the present, we’ve got this problem and this problem, this problem,’ you know, and Vader just can’t let it go.”
Stuart Beattie
“[Palpatine] was sending Vader to crush a Rebel uprising on a moon somewhere. And he was saying… ‘Forget Kenobi, forget Kenobi.’ And I had this really funny line, I thought was funny. But it was, you know Vader saying, ‘Look, Kenobi is one of the two biggest threats, you know, in the galaxy.’ And the Emperor responds, well, you know, ‘Pity you didn’t kill him when you had the chance.’ And Vader responds, ‘The other one is Yoda.’ And the Emperor just gets really pissed off at him. ‘You forget your place.’ [Laughs] You know, so he’s on him from the start, ‘Let this go. That’s Anakin. You’re Darth now.'”
Stuart Beattie
Beattie also shared that Vader won the final duel.
“In mine, Vader won the fight. They were fighting on this space station. It was falling apart in the atmosphere of this big planet and Obi-Wan basically fell off. Vader pushed him off and they separated. They didn’t get the chance to find Obi-Wan, basically. But what was going through Obi-Wan’s mind is the same thing which is, ‘My brother is truly dead. He’s gone. And while I absolve of that guilt because I didn’t kill him, Vader killed him, I’m still just devastated. I’m absolutely devastated.'”
Stuart Beattie
In mine, he really did believe that Kenobi was dead at the end, which was the thing that allowed him to finally let Kenobi go and focus on ruling the galaxy with an iron fist. Because it always seemed that in [A New Hope] he was shocked when he was like ‘I sense something, a presence I’ve not felt since…’ Why do you stop talking to yourself? It’s because you’re that shocked, you know? So I always felt that that was a moment when he suddenly realized, Oh, my God, he’s alive. I mean, in the next scene, he’s talking to Tarkin and Tarkin’s like, ‘What? No, he’s dead. He’s got to be dead,’ you know, (but) no, no, he’s alive. So I felt that was justified and really the only way that Vader would have stopped hunting Kenobi is that he believed Kenobi was dead.”
Stuart Beattie
Finally, he revealed that in the opening, fans would have seen Vader killing 5 Jedi at once, establishing as THE Jedi killer and someone that Kenobi should kill if he got the chance.
“To me, if Obi-Wan has a chance to kill Darth Vader, he would do it. I mean, you know, how many countless lives would you save? Right? Especially knowing that Vader would be hunting other Jedi, which was established in the show. My film began with Vader taking on five Jedi at once and killing all of them, you know, so it established that he is the big Jedi killer. The Inquisitors are capturing them, but Vader is the big daddy who comes in and just lays waste to any Jedi all while hunting Kenobi.”
Stuart Beattie
Nick and I will talk more about these interviews on next week’s episode of the SWTS, so don’t forget to tune into the Star Wars Time Show on a weekly basis via our podcast platforms or via YouTube if you prefer the livestream angle.
