Full Series What should Ahsoka's fate be?

Well, Tano's influence on Skywalker and the other big players is something I've mentioned numerous times. I've said again and again that other than her effect on these characters, she has had no influence on events at the galactic scale. In fact, I wish TCW would have made an attempt at making Tano's influence on Anakin's slide even more of a central issue, as I feel this is where she could've had the most impact on the saga at-large.

As to the Nexus Route, unfortunately, it was never addressed in TCW again and I'm not certain that the hyperspace lanes used before the Battle of Coruscant and this route are one and the same (though I'd like to think they are). Thing is, as far as I know, we're not even sure if Palpatine ever got ahold of the half which Tano gave to the Jedi Council, which would have forced Grievous to use a wholly different route to get to the capitol. For all we know, though, the nexus route had no other bearing on events, at all. Even if that's true, though, I'd argue that in keeping the info away from the Chancellor (and forcing him into using a different route), Ahsoka and the Jedi Council would have made an impact (albeit a temporary one).

That said, Even Piell would have given that intel to Obi-Wan, or any other Jedi that Piell trusted, and who happened to be there at the moment. The fact that Tano was the one who was with Even as he lay dying has no bearing on whether or not she's "one of the greatest Jedi heroes of all time," if you take my meaning. Besides, whether it was the Separatists or the Republic who retained posession of the intel, Sidious already had control of the information, you know?

I have to say, it's nice to have a reasoned, informed discussion on the matter, though.

 

I already explained how she had influence on events at a galactic scale.

 

Right, through her influence on Anakin.

And I already explained that this was, time and again, the one concession that I'd given her from the start. That said, I guess I don't understand how Tano influencing Skywalker's further descent towards the dark side makes her a candidate for "one of the greatsest of Jedi heroes of all time," (which is the point of the whole debate).

 

Sure, Ahsoka's leaving had SOME consequences for the galaxy (she's not the only reason Anakin distrusted the Jedi, though) but I'd hardly call having that impact worthy of making her "the greatest Jedi hero." Hero =/= impact. By that reasoning, Hitler was a hero in our world, or Stalin...

And tell me, how does Ahsoka's knowing the part of the Nexus route coordinates make her a "hero"? She didn't find them. Piell passed them to her. She listened. That, a hero does not make.

And TreborSabreon:

 

Right, and I was only using galactic-scale impact as simply one of many measuring sticks used in gaging the greatest of Jedi heroes.

I'm not arguing that Tano wasn't shown committing heroic deeds (clearly, we all know she was), just that the magnitude and amount of those deeds, the sum of her character in total, as depicted thus far, does not add up to her being "one of the greatest Jedi heroes of all time," and any Star Wars fan worth their salt, who has studied the history of the Jedi Order, wouldn't argue that. If Lucasfilm adds more to her story, this may be something that will change, of course (but at this time, we have no way of knowing). It's never been about slighting her character one bit.

 

I must have skimmed past that part of the debate. I only saw your assertions that she did nothing of galactic importance. Ahsoka is a Jedi hero certainly. As for being one of the greatest Jedi heroes of all time, who would be considered a greatest Jedi hero of all time?

 

Right. I mean, if we're given more of Ahsoka in the future (and I imagine, in one form, or another, we will) and if she accomplishes the feats of an Obi-Wan Kenobi, a Master Yoda or a Luke Skywalker (to use the archetypal Jedi), over the course of decades, especially, then we can revisit the discussion at a serious level.

At least that's my take on it.

 

Honestly, I'm not very familiar with the EU, not enough to nominate "greatest Jedi heroes" of the ages, just like I couldn't nominate the greatest heroes of the 16th, 17th, 18th or 19th centuries, not without doing some deep research.

So going by MOVIES mainly, and TCW and the early EU that I am familiar with: Obi-Wan, who kept a dying flame alive and passed it to the next generation; Luke, who built one what he was taught and made the Jedi Order over, Qui-Gon Jinn who ultimately showed the Order's remnants that while "orthodoxy" is well and good, so is improvision and "distractions."

 

As far as I know the EU, the greatest Jedi is clearly and without any doubt Luke Skywalker.

 

Would you consider Anakin Skywalker as one of the greatest Jedi heroes as he saved his son by killing Sidious and putting an end to the Sith? Or did Anakin committ to much evil and atrocities to ever be in that category?

 

Man, that's really difficult (Anakin). What might put him in that category is his "coming back" from the dark.

Personally, I'm a little torn on the idea that Luke's unconditional faith in him "reawakened" Anakin and allowed him the mental strength to pull himself out of the morass. It sounds good. But so does the idea that he "turned back" to save a "loved one." He turned to save Padme and he turned on Sids to save his son.

I suppose both views can co-exist, though.

 

I think that Anakin had an extremely large influence, both for the good and the bad - his life cast a very large shadow across many, many lives.

That said, while there's no taking away from Anakin's number of great and heroic deeds committed throughout his years as a Jedi (and that one vitally important act of heroism at the end of his life), no, I would not consider Anakin Skywalker one of the greatest Jedi heroes in the history of the Order.

From one point-of-view, one could say that Skywalker's was a life of unfulfilled potential (something I think both the Jedi and Sidious would agree upon, albeit for very different reasons), but sometimes when I think of Anakin and his ridiculous level of Force potential, I'm reminded of a quote I heard which once described Jimi Hendrix as a thin wire with too much electricity running through it. Who knows, maybe it wasn't realistic to expect him to walk just the one side of the Force? I'm not necessarily sold on that, but maybe.
While I'd argue that Luke Skywalker wound up fulfilling the promise of the Skywalker bloodline and turned out to be every bit the Jedi his father could have been (while eventually becoming incredibly powerful in his own right), I can't help but view Anakin as a very singular entity (which is something I think Lucas intended once he opted to reshape the saga into just the six films and give us The Tragedy of Darth Vader).

 

I thought this was a great interview with Dave Filoni focused a lot on Ahsoka:

http://insidetv.ew.com/2013/03/14/star-wars-clone-wars-dave-filoni/

 

Darth_Quintonis

Yeah, that was interesting. Thanks for the head's up.

“Why do we need to have this character? Why is she important, not just for Anakin, but for Star Wars?”

What were some of the answers?

There are the avenues that she opened up for female fans to carry a lightsaber at conventions.

I think Filoni makes an important distinction, as it relates to our recent discussion here, that out-of-universe (that is, to say, to fans of the show who enjoyed the character), Ahsoka has had an important impact. One far larger, I feel, than she has had in-universe, as of yet.

That impact, to the extent that the character of Ahsoka Tano can take credit for it, makes her important.

 

I can think of one pretty obvious galaxy-shaping event that turned directly on an action of Ahsoka's...

So you have this planet. Eight thousand miles wide. Twenty-five thousand miles around the equator. Massing six thousand billion billion tons. It's been happily orbiting around its sun for maybe four or five billion years. Billions and billions of life forms inhabit its surface, of which around two billion are sentients, mostly humans.

Then one day along comes this hulking great metal sphere, and suddenly, KABOOM!

And that fate... hinged directly on one single momentary snap-decision by Ahsoka Tano, on Lola Sayu 20 or so years beforehand

Thus was a world's fate sealed.

Never let it be said that Ahsoka had no lasting effect on the galaxy...

 

Oh man, of course this has to be Ahsoka's most impactful galaxy-shaping event! What a shame she didn't let Sobeck throw Tarkin's sorry behind into the lava. If Ahsoka is still alive during ANH, I'll bet she has to be most remorseful and regretful for this single, seemingly innocuous action 21 years earlier. A truly sad irony that this is the most significant galaxy-changing action of Darth Vader's former Padawan.

 

Nonsense. If Tarkin was killed, Palps would simply get a replacement and that guy would blow up another planet. You don't think the empire would keep a planet destroyer around and not use it, do you?

 

You have a point, of course. I was being a little bit facetious with my final statement. But the point is, if it wasn't Tarkin who commanded the Death Star to destroy Alderaan, than Ahsoka would have a guilt-free conscience on the matter, and only deem it as a major crime of the Empire that she wasn't responsible, however indirectly, for. I didn't imply that the destruction of Alderaan never would have happened (the Death Star plans were already created as early as before the first Battle of Geonosis). The fact that it was Tarkin who ordered Alderaan's annihilation has to make Ahsoka, if she were still alive and aware of galactic events around her, feel at least some measure of remorse.

 

But it wouldn't be Alderaan would it? Tarkin picked Alderaan for the first test / terror demo. If it was someone else in charge of the Death Star, in a galaxy with hundreds of billions of stars and millions of inhabited planets, almost certainly some other planet would have been picked. So Alderaan would have endured, and some other world would have died. Perhaps an outer rim world with a scattering of pirate settlements. Perhaps an uninhabited planet, as a clear demonstration of the station's power without actually killing anyone. Perhaps something worse than Alderaan... there were a number of city-planets besides Coruscant, maybe one of them, killing hundreds of billions, up to a trillion. That's a significant difference.

It's called the butterfly effect. It took only a fraction of a second for Ahsoka to look up, see Osi about to bodyslam Tarkin into the lava flow, and take action, driving her blade through his back. It only took a moment, but it immediately set in motion a chain of events that radically altered the fate of billions.

In fact, it's worth noting that the Death Star was to a certain extent Tarkin's pet project. It was he who proposed to Palpatine the strategy of rule through absolute fear, the infamous Tarkin Doctrine. He had a monster hardon for the death star, it's possible without him that it wouldn't have been such a priority. Maybe the Alliance would have been able to stop its deployment. Who knows?

The number of deaths at Alderaan were probably actually not that outstanding in the context of the wider war, or the clone wars where Grievous BDZ'd dozens of worlds. The actual, physical dispersal of the entire mass of the planet, so that there was no more planet, was the greatest, most shocking legacy of the death star, and, via saving Tarkin, of Ahsoka.

 

I think the fact that it was Alderaan which was chosen had much less to do with Tarkin, than with Leia's presence aboard the Death Star. It wouldn't surprise me that much if Alderaan would have still been targeted, all other things equal.

That said, I agree that Tarkin's involvement in the project is key and without it, who knows which direction it may have gone?

 

This kinda thing has precedent in real life too. When Adolf Hitler was a 5 year old boy living in Austria, he fell into an icy river and almost died. Another boy heard his cries and pulled him out, saving his life.

The boy who saved him subsequently went on to become a priest. I do wonder whether he felt guilt over it, once Hitler became what he became.

On the one hand, he shouldn't ought to feel guilt... he did the right thing at the time. You don't try to guess the future or try to imagine what a person might be 5, 10, 20 years down the line. You just act on the information you have now. But on the other hand feelings like that are rarely logical.

 

I'd definitely agree with that and, depending on where they go with the ST, we may soon be able to say the same about Luke in the films, too.