Star Wars: Ahsoka: new release date, trailer, cast, plot and more

Star Wars: Ahsoka puts the spotlight on one of the most important characters in George Lucas’s galaxy far, far away. Ahsoka Tano may not have appeared in any live-action movies (not yet, anyway…), but – as a key player in both The Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels TV animated TV shows – Anakin Skywalker’s former Jedi apprentice played a pivotal role in both the Clone Wars and the formation of the Rebel Alliance.

With Tano now played by Rosario Dawson (reprising her role from The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett), new Disney Plus series Ahsoka is set in the aftermath of the (supposed) demise of the Empire, some five years after the conclusion of Return of the Jedi. And as she tries to prevent her old Imperial adversary Grand Admiral Thrawn filling the power vacuum filled by the (apparent) death of Emperor Palpatine, she’ll be joined by a few familiar faces from her Rebel days, including ace pilot Hera Syndulla, Mandalorian warrior Sabine Wren and – at some point – wannabe Jedi Ezra Bridger.

The Ahsoka TV show’s release date has just been brought forward by a few hours to 6pm (PT) on Tuesday, August 22 (Wednesday, August 23 In the UK). Before you set coordinates for the latest Star Wars TV shows on one of the best streaming services, here’s everything you need to know about the cast, story and Ahsoka herself. You can also check out this guide to the Disney Plus shows you should watch before launch. And be warned – spoilers for The Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels lie in wait.

Star Wars: Ashoka release date: August 22 2023

It was announced at April 2023’s Star Wars Celebration in London that the Ahsoka TV show will debut on Disney Plus some time in August 2023. That gave us confirmation that the series will be the first live-action Star Wars TV show to emerge from that galaxy far, far away since The Mandalorian season 3 concluded in April. 

In early June, the exact Ahsoka release date was confirmed as August 23, though an announcement on the official Star Wars Twitter feed revealed that we’ll be seeing the show a tiny bit sooner. 

Star Wars: Ahsoka will now launch at 6pm PT (9pm ET) on Tuesday, August 22 – though viewers in the UK will have to wait until the early hours of Wednesday (2am BST) to lay eyes on the show. 

According to StarWars.com, subsequent episodes will also debut on Tuesdays at 6pm (PT), a significant move that brings a Disney Plus big-hitter into primetime. (Previous high-profile Marvel Cinematic Universe and Star Wars shows have tended to launch episodes at midnight (PT) or 3am (ET) on Wednesdays or Fridays.) Just to add to the adventure and excitement of the Ahsoka release date, the eight-part season will premiere with the release of two episodes.

We first heard about the Ahsoka TV show when it was one of many new Star Wars and Marvel TV shows announced at the Disney Investor Day in December 2020. The official Star Wars Twitter account confirmed that production began in May 2022, with filming wrapping a few months later in October.

Star Wars: Ahsoka trailers

Warrior. Outcast. Rebel. Jedi. 

The first Star Wars: Ahsoka trailer debuted at Star Wars Celebration 2023, and it proved to be something of a Star Wars Rebels reunion. As well as featuring plenty of scenes with Ahsoka herself, the teaser gave us our first look at the live-action incarnations of several members of the Ghost crew: Mandalorian warrior Sabine Wren, ace pilot Hera Syndulla and (very briefly, as a hologram) trainee Jedi Ezra Bridger. We also got to see – albeit from the back – Star Wars Rebels Big Bad Grand Admiral Thrawn, who’s returned from the far reaches of space to make life awkward for the nascent New Republic. 

The Ahsoka trailer also introduced a pair of Dark Side Force wielders in the form of Baylan Skoll and Shin Hati, and confirmed returns for New Republic leader Mon Mothma and Huyang, the ancient droid who helped Padawan learners construct their lightsabers in The Clone Wars.

The second Ahsoka trailer, released in July 2023, teases a little bit more about the show’s plot. 

In the trailer, Baylan Skoll not only confirms that “We are no Jedi” – something we’d long suspected – he also announces that, “War is inevitable. One must destroy in order to create.” He also says that Thrawn’s return will lead to “power, such as you’ve never dreamed”. 

That’s unlikely to be good news for the New Republic, now led by Mon Mothma, who seem strangely resistant to Hera’s efforts to prevent another war – though the sequel trilogy has already made it clear that her best laid plans will ultimately be unsuccessful, when the First Order rises from the ashes of the Empire.

We also see Ahsoka recruiting Sabine – who’s “still as stubborn as ever” – to rejoin the fight, and hints that the Mandalorian will become her new apprentice, despite some obvious tension in their relationship. Sabine even gets to wield a lightsaber – could she have some latent Force powers we didn’t know about before?

This being a Star Wars project, actual concrete plot details are thin on the ground, though fans will surely enjoy their first proper look at the live-action Grand Admiral Thrawn, Sabine standing in front of a recreation of the mural from the end of Rebels, and Hera reminding us all that, “Once a Rebel, always a Rebel.” Like we didn’t know…

Who is Ahsoka Tano?: the Jedi’s backstory explained

“When gone am I, the last of a Jedi will you be,” a dying Yoda told Luke Skywalker in Return of the Jedi, but – in a long-standing Star Wars tradition – the wise old Jedi Master was only correct from a certain point of view. Ahsoka Tano isn’t technically a Jedi – she left the Order before passing the relevant trials – but, in every other regard, she posesses the necessary qualifications.

So, who is Ahsoka Tano? She made her first appearance in 2008, in the animated Clone Wars movie that set up the long-running TV show. (See how it fits into the overall chronology in our guide to watching the Star Wars movies in order.) The Togruta teen went on to serve as Anakin Skywalker’s Padawan apprentice throughout the eponymous conflict. 

A highly respected commander in the Republic forces, she fought with a distinctive two-lightsaber style, and was nicknamed “Snips” by her master, owing to her supposedly snippy attitude. In return, she referred to Anakin as “Sky Guy”.

Ahsoka went on to play a key role in the formation of the Rebel Alliance in Star Wars Rebels, set more than a decade later during the run-up to A New Hope. She then made her live-action debut in The Mandalorian season 2 episode 5, ‘The Jedi‘, and has since shown up in The Book of Boba Fett‘s sixth episode, ‘From the Desert Comes a Stranger’. Her voice can also heard among the choir of Jedi giving Rey a pep talk when she faces the resurrected Emperor in The Rise of Skywalker‘s denouement.

Star Wars: Ahsoka cast

Here’s what the Ahsoka TV show cast currently looks like:

• Rosario Dawson as Ahsoka Tano
• Natasha Liu Bordizzo as Sabine Wren
• Eman Esfandi as Ezra Bridger
• Mary Elizabeth Winstead as General Hera Syndulla
• Lars Mikkelsen as Grand Admiral Thrawn
• Ivanna Sakhno as Shin Hati
• Ray Stevenson as Baylan Skoll
• David Tennant as Huyang
• Genevieve O’Reilly as Mon Mothma
• Diana Lee Inosanto as Morgan Elsbeth
• Hayden Christensen as Anakin Skywalker
• Chopper as himself

Although Ashley Eckstein voiced Ahsoka throughout The Clone Wars and Rebels, Rosario Dawson (Sin City, Daredevil) has played the character in live-action Star Wars projects The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett. Dawson returns as the Jedi in the new Disney Plus series.

Dawson will be joined by Natasha Liu Bordizzo, replacing Tiya Sircar who voiced graffiti-loving Mandalorian explosives expert Sabine Wren across four seasons of Star Wars Rebels. The show’s Star Wars Celebration 2022 panel in Anaheim also announced the return of surly astromech droid C1-10P, better known as Chopper. Then, in September 2022, The Hollywood Reporter confirmed Eman Esfandi will play aspiring Jedi Ezra Bridger, a role originated by Taylor Gray in Rebels. 

Additional members of the cast were announced at Star Wars Celebration 2023 in London. 

Birds of Prey’s Mary Elizabeth Winstead will play Hera Syndulla, who captained the heroes’ ship, the Ghost, throughout Rebels (where she was voiced by Vanessa Marshall), and has since been promoted to the rank of general in the New Republic. 

Following the confirmation of Hera’s return, the only surviving member of Rebels’ Ghost crew who isn’t definitely returning to action in Ahsoka is Lasat muscle Zeb Orrelios. But, seeing as he turned up in The Mandalorian season 3, we’ll be extremely disappointed if we don’t get a full-on Star Wars Rebels reunion somewhere down the line. (Fugitive Jedi Kanan Jarrus sacrificed himself to save his friends during the final season of Rebels, so is unlikely to appear.)

The Dark Side of the Force will be represented by Pacific Rim: Uprising‘s Ivanna Sakhno and Punisher: War Zone/Black Sails star Ray Stevenson as Dark Siders Shin Hati and Baylan Skoll, respectively. Sadly, Stevenson passed away in May this year.

Arguably the most exciting piece of Ahsoka casting news – for Star Wars Rebels fans, at least – is the identity of the actor playing Grand Admiral Thrawn, the blue-skinned Imperial mastermind who first appeared in Timothy Zahn’s much-loved series of (now non-canonical) 1990s novels, starting with Heir to the Empire. While fellow Rebels veterans Ahsoka, Sabine, Hera and Ezra have all been recast, actor Lars Mikkelsen is following in the footsteps of Katee Sackhoff (the voice of Mandalorian Bo-Katan Kryze) by taking a character from animation to live-action. This is great news for the Ahsoka TV show – not only was Mikkelsen suitably chilling in Rebels, he also has a track record playing memorable villains thanks to his appearance in Sherlock season 3 finale ‘His Last Vow’.

The Star Wars: Ahsoka trailer also confirms a return for Diana Lee Inosanto, who played Thrawn acolyte Morgan Elsbeth in The Mandalorian season 2. Other actors reprising their roles from previous Star Wars projects include Andor‘s Genevieve O’Reilly as former Rebel and New Republic Chancellor Mon Mothma, and Doctor Who star David Tennant voicing ancient droid/Jedi ally Huyang.

And after persistent rumors – and plenty of evasive maneuvers from Rosario Dawson and Ahsoka showrunner Dave Filoni to dodge the subject – it seems that Hayden Christensen really is set to follow up his spectacular return as Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker in Obi-Wan Kenobi. The teaser below features a new voiceover from Ahsoka’s old master before he turned to the Dark Side, suggesting the new show will take a few diversions to Ahsoka’s formative years during the Clone Wars. (Interestingly, Dawson and Christensen also appeared together in 2003’s Shattered Glass.)

Luke and Leia’s dad might not be the end of the cameos in Ahsoka, either. Seeing as the show exists at a similar point in the Star Wars timeline to The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett, don’t be surprised if the likes of Katee Sackhoff’s Bo-Katan Kryze, Pedro Pascal’s Mando/Din Djarin and Grogu make appearances in the series. There’s also a possibility of The Book of Boba Fett star Temuera Morrison turning up to play Ahsoka Tano’s Clone Trooper buddy Captain Rex – Boba and Rex were born in the same Petri dish, after all. 

In fact, seeing as all the shows in this part of the Star Wars universe are building up to a “climactic” event movie directed by Filoni (and set to be released in theaters), it would be a big shock if we don’t see any big-name guest stars from elsewhere in that galaxy far, far away turn up in Ahsoka. Han Solo, Leia Organa and Lando Calrissian are all active at this point in the timeline, so anything could happen…

Don’t hold your breath for another digitally de-aged performance from Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker, however – although he reprised the role in both The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett, Hamill suggested in an interview with Esquire that his time in those Jedi robes might be over. But never say never… 

“One thing you learn working for Lucasfilm: everything is confidential,” he admitted. “So, if I were involved, I wouldn’t be able to tell you. And if I were not involved, I wouldn’t be able to tell you. So, I don’t know. We’ll all find out together, I guess.”

Star Wars: Ahsoka showrunner and directors

Lucasfilm Executive Creative Director Dave Filoni (a veteran of the hit Avatar: The Last Airbender cartoon series) co-created Ahsoka Tano alongside George Lucas for The Clone Wars and went on to shepherd her through seven seasons of The Clone Wars and several guest appearances on Rebels. He also directed her episodes of The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett, and has been a key part of the creative team on those shows, alongside The Mandalorian creator/showrunner Jon Favreau.

“With Ahsoka, it’s time that she came into her own in a way we’ve never seen it before,” Filoni teased in the “Journey to Ahsoka” featurette below. “Rosario [Dawson]’s so compelling. She is on fire and she knows her stuff.”

In addition to being showrunner on Star Wars: Ahsoka, Filoni will direct at least one episode. Other directors on the show include Steph Green (The Book of Boba Fett), Peter Ramsey (Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse), Jennifer Getzinger (Jessica Jones), Geeta Patel (House of the Dragon) and Rick Famuyiwa (The Mandalorian).

Star Wars: Ahsoka story

For the benefit of anyone who hasn’t watched the animated Star Wars shows, here’s a brief history of Ahsoka Tano’s life and times.

Having served the Republic with distinction throughout the Clone Wars, she left the Jedi Order under a cloud during The Clone Wars season 5. Although she was eventually exonerated for bombing the Jedi Temple – she’d been framed by her friend and fellow Padawan Barriss Offee – she decided not to return, and went out into the galaxy solo.

During the final days of the Clone Wars, she helped Bo-Katan Kryze remove Darth Maul from the Mandalorian throne, and was on her way to return the former Sith Lord to Jedi custody when the Emperor initiated Order 66. With some help from her old friend (and Clone Trooper) Captain Rex – whose mind-controlling inhibitor chip she removed via some DIY surgery – Ahsoka survived the Jedi purge and went into hiding. One of the episodes from 2022 anthology series Tales of the Jedi (available on Disney Plus, and one of the episodes worth watching when you’re preparing for Star Wars: Ahsoka) shows how a chance encounter with one of the Empire’s Jedi-hunting Inquisitors persuaded her to rejoin the fight.

Ahsoka turned up again in Star Wars Rebels, set around 15 years after the Emperor came to power in Revenge of the Sith. It was eventually revealed that Ahsoka was the mysterious Fulcrum, an agent who helped pull disparate cells of freedom fighters together to form the Rebel Alliance.

She also fought a fateful duel with her former master. When she removed a portion of Darth Vader’s helmet with her lightsaber – much as Obi-Wan did in the Obi-Wan Kenobi TV show – she became one of the few people in the galaxy aware of his true identity. The Vader/Anakin Skywalker connection wouldn’t become common knowledge for several decades, with the secret eventually being leaked to damage Leia Organa’s post-Return of the Jedi political aspirations in Claudia Gray’s 2016 novel Bloodline.

Ahsoka barely made it out of the duel with Vader alive, but she was saved by a future version of Jedi apprentice Ezra Bridger. He pulled her into the so-called World Between Worlds, a mystical realm where the usual rules of time and space do not apply. By the time of the Rebels epilogue – set some time after Return of the Jedi – Ahsoka had somehow returned to the normal reality of that galaxy far, far away.

Aside from the flashbacks in the standalone episodes of Tales of the Jedi, her most recent canonical appearances came in The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett.

In The Mandalorian episode 13, otherwise known as ‘The Jedi’, she met Din Djarin (aka the Mandalorian) and Baby Yoda. While communing with the Child, she learned his real name was Grogu, and gave Mando some pointers to help find more Jedi – who just happened to be represented by some guy called Luke Skywalker.

She then unexpectedly showed up again in The Book of Boba Fett’s sixth chapter, ‘From the Desert Comes a Stranger’. The episode provided confirmation that Ahsoka has met up with Luke Skywalker, as she paid him a visit at his new Jedi academy on Ossus. She also counselled him about Grogu’s training, and told him that he reminded her of his late dad. When Luke asked if he would see her again, she replied with a cryptic “Perhaps”. (In other words the door has been left open for Luke’s return – or possibly not!)

So what do we know about Star Wars: Ahsoka‘s plot? “There’s always been a big open question,” Lucasfilm head of development Carrie Beck said in an August 2023 interview with Entertainment Weekly. “We don’t see her in the original trilogy. We don’t see her in the sequel trilogy. What did she end up doing?”

Luckily the show will have plenty of existing canon to work from, and there’s nobody on the planet who knows how to navigate the Star Wars timeline better than Dave Filoni, who clearly has a long-standing plan for the future of the character.

In fact, this is why he insisted that Ahsoka shouldn’t be the Jedi to train Grogu in The Mandalorian. “I was telling Jon [Favreau, Mandalorian showrunner] that as much as I wanted to have Ahsoka in the show, she can’t take this kid on,” he told Empire magazine in March 2023. “That‘s just not what I have planned.”

Going by StarWars.com’s original announcement, it looks like the new series will pick up soon after Ahsoka’s meeting with Mando and Grogu: “After making her long awaited live-action debut in The Mandalorian,” the site’s article reads, “Ahsoka Tano’s story will continue in a limited series.”

It’s currently unknown whether that Rebels epilogue takes place before or after Ahsoka showed up in The Mandalorian. However, we do know (from footage screened at Star Wars Celebration 2022) that the animated show’s closing scenes have been recreated in live-action for Ahsoka. And also that this is the incarnation of the character we saw dressed in white in the Rebels finale, having returned from the mysterious World Between Worlds.

“In the animation, you saw her go to the white,” Dawson explained, “but what I loved is the idea that there was even another level to her. Dave and I talked a lot about Gandalf the Gray and Gandalf the White [in The Lord of the Rings] – talking about that transition and how she’s someone very capable and excellent and looked up to as a leader, but she still has levels of development to go.” Dawson has also described her Ahsoka as a “lone wolf”. 

As is traditionally the case with Lucasfilm, solid details of the Star Wars: Ahsoka plot are thin on the ground. The first trailer did offer up a few clues, however – especially in the snippets of dialogue.

It began with Ahsoka Tano announcing that, “Something’s coming. Something dark. I sense it.” New character Baylan Skoll (he’s “no Jedi”) then spoke of a “new beginning. For some, war. For others, power.”

The most important line, however, arguably concerned the comeback tour of an infamous Chiss officer, last seen disappearing (along with Ezra Bridger) into deep space in the Star Wars Rebels finale: 

“I started hearing whispers about Thrawn’s return,” said Ahsoka. “As heir to the Empire.”

This wasn’t just a sly callback to the aforementioned Timothy Zahn novels. We’d long suspected that infamous military strategist Thrawn was going to be the main antagonist in Ahsoka, not least because Ahsoka asked Morgan Elsbeth about her “master”‘s whereabouts in The Mandalorian season 2. Both trailers have provided definitive confirmation, however, even providing a glimpse of the man himself.

How Thrawn – and presumably Ezra, who’s only been teased in hologram form up to now – have made it back to this corner of the galaxy is surely going to be one of the big questions answered by the Ahsoka TV show. Could it have something to do with the purrgil (space whales) who made an appearance in hyperspace in season 3 of The Mandalorian, perhaps?

“[Thrawn]’s brutal to a certain point, but he’s not stupid,” Lars Mikkelsen said of the Grand Admiral in an Entertainment Weekly interview. “He utilizes the creativity around him, and I like that. He doesn’t just kill people off for the fun of it. He’s sort of seven pages ahead of everybody else.”

It looks like Thrawn’s impact will stretch way beyond Ahsoka, as his imminent return was discussed by the Imperial Shadow Council in The Mandalorian season 3 episode ‘The Spies’. Indeed, it looks like he’s being set up as the Big Bad for this whole era of the Star Wars galaxy as the action builds up to a movie (directed by Filoni) that –according to StarWars.com – will “close out” interconnecting plot threads from The Mandalorian, Ahsoka, The Book of Boba Fett and (we’re guessing) the upcoming Skeleton Crew.

“I think it’s hard not to feel part of something bigger,” Sabine Wren actor Natasha Liu Bordizzo told SFX magazine (via GameRadar+).

With The Mandalorian tackling the re-emergence of the Empire from a Mandalorian perspective, and The Book of Boba Fett hanging out in the criminal underworld, Ahsoka seems primed to explore what it means for the New Republic and what’s left of the Jedi.

Who knows, Ahsoka may have a part to play in restoring the Order to past glories. “The Jedi fell a long time ago,” she acknowledges in the trailer. “There aren’t many left.”

“Perhaps it is time to begin again,” replies Huyang, an ancient droid who’s been associated with the Jedi for millennia.

But, having turned her back on the Jedi decades earlier, we think it’s unlikely Ahsoka will join forces with Luke Skywalker at his (ultimately doomed) Jedi Academy on Ossus, so her involvement may be more advisory than hands-on.

“[Ahsoka’s] a wanderer at this point,” Filoni told Empire in June 2023, “and is in a lot of ways wary of any organisation as such because of the power that comes with it as a group. She walks a path that basically died out a long time ago. And there aren’t many like her left, if any. So that’s a lonely thing. What is that life like? If you are a loner, you have a very small circle of friends. What is it like, then, when you try to open back up?”

With Hera now a general in the New Republic military and Mon Mothma at the head of its government, Ahsoka has friends in high places. But we know from both The Mandalorian and the Star Wars sequel movies (where Empire spin-off group the First Order have risen to power in secret) that the New Republic are frustratingly slow to act on the growing Imperial threat on the Outer Rim. This means that Ahsoka may be left to take on Thrawn’s forces alone – or, at least, with the help of her old friends from Star Wars Rebels, including aforementioned Mando Sabine Wren.

“I think there’s a deep level of respect that Sabine has for Ahsoka, as someone to learn from,” Bordizzo told SFX (via GamesRadar+). “In the show they’ve been through a lot in the time that has passed, some of which we know about, some of which we don’t. Their quests kind of end up overlapping, bringing them back together, and there’s tension and there’s things they’ve been through that they need to work out. Their reunion’s interesting!”

It’s also clear that Ahsoka will be facing a new enemies from the Dark Side in the form of Baylan Skoll and his Force-wielding apprentice, Shin Hati. It’s safe to assume they’re not Sith – following the deaths of Darths Vader and Sidious, canon dictates that the arch-enemies of the Jedi are unlikely to make another appearance until The Rise of Skywalker – but they’re clearly powerful enough to give Ahsoka some serious headaches.

Skoll was actually a Jedi before he became a mercenary in the wake of the Order 66 purge. “He has a stoic lethality in that there’s a purpose to him,” the late Ray Stevenson explained in an interview with Empire. “He is not genocidal or malicious or overly aggressive. He will request that you get out of his way. But if you don’t, he will take you out of his way.”

Of his young sidekick, Shin Hati, actor Ivanna Sakhno, told Entertainment Weekly that, “she’s very calculated, She’s impatient, but she’s a seeker. She’s only in the beginning of finding her own voice.”

Whatever happens, the TV show that bears Ahsoka’s name clearly has a big role to play in shaping the Star Wars galaxy as it approaches the era of The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker.

You can find out more about the story and development of Star Wars: Ahsoka in this video on the official Star Wars YouTube channel:

And for more Star Wars-based content, read our interview with The Mandalorian season 3 director-executive producer Rick Famuyiwa. Additionally, find out which Star Wars TV series made it onto our best Disney Plus shows list.

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