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The Acolyte teaser: what you need to know about the dark Star Wars adventure
by Luca Fontana
The new Ahsoka trailer is here: let’s get into it
13.7.2023
The Ahsoka series is only a few weeks away. No sooner had Lucasfilm released the new trailer than I’d already leapt straight into wild analysis and speculation. Let’s get stuck in.
It’s just over a month to go before the eagerly awaited Star Wars series Ahsoka hits screens on August 23 with a double episode. It’s what the latest trailer revealed. But that’s not all. What can we decipher so far? What are people asking, and what kind of wild theories are going around?
Let’s take a look at it together, one step at a time. Image by image.
Who are the baddies? What’s their plan?
And after having seen this trailer, we finally have our first real look at Lars Mikkelsen, who not only voices Thrawn in the animated series Star Wars: Rebels but also plays his live-action version in Ahsoka.
However, someone seems to know a way to track down Thrawn (and by extension, probably Ezra too). And that’s Morgan Elsbeth.
We first saw her in The Mandalorian, Chapter 13: The Jedi. That’s when Morgan faced Ahsoka in a duel and lost.
But she’s not dead. At least, not as far as we know right now. Which is why it’s hard to work out if the scenes with Morgan shown in the trailer take place before or after her duel with Ahsoka. The only thing that’s certain is she found a map of the galaxy in a place that looks like an archaeological dig. My guess is the map shows a path to the unknown regions. So, where Thrawn is.
Goosebumps, anyone?
My guess is that Morgan Elsbeth hired them to protect her from Ahsoka Tano and find Grand Admiral Thrawn before Ahsoka does.
Who are the heroes? And what’s their plan?
First of all, there’s obviously the eponymous Ahsoka Tano. In the trailer, you see her in a kind of temple at first, examining a stone statue with a golden ball. What does this represent? A whill, perhaps?
It’s quite possible that this whill statue is associated with the archaeological site where Morgan Elsbeth activated her map to the unknown regions. This could’ve been how Ahsoka tracked Morgan down, which in turn led to them coming head to head in the aforementioned duel.
Another heroine of the story is Hera Syndulla. She’s also an old acquaintance from Rebels. At that time, she led the rebel cell that Ezra Bridger was part of. Hera seems alarmed at Baylan and Shin’s goings-on. The New Republic doesn’t care as much. In Rebels, it was Ahsoka who commanded a lot of rebel cells, including Hera’s. My theory is that Hera turns to Ahsoka for help. Or vice versa.
There’s something about Sabine
The trailer also implies that the end of Rebels isn’t set immediately after the fall of the Empire, as we all previously thought. Instead, it suggests that it takes place five years later, after The Mandalorian, Chapter 13: The Jedi.
My theory is that when Ahsoka has finally found a way to track down Thrawn – and thus Ezra – after her duel with Morgan Elsbeth in The Mandalorian, she goes in search of Sabine. This would make the scene from the trailer fit nicely into the series, which is an almost 1:1 recreation of the ending of Rebels.
It’s quite possible that Sabine will play a bigger role in Ahsoka than we think anyway. She was also Ezra’s best friend and therefore the one hit hardest by his sacrifice. She therefore has a very personal interest in joining Ahsoka in the search for Thrawn. Even if her master-Padawan relationship with Ahsoka seems to be on the rocks if the trailer is anything to go by.
Unsurprisingly, there’s a scene in the trailer where Sabine duels Shin Hati with a green lightsaber. We know from the first teaser trailer that she kept Ezra’s homemade green lightsaber. Another indication that Sabine is going the way of the Jedi is Ezra’s lightsaber.
Purrgil, Chopper and the ghost
So, those were the most important things we gleaned. But what else did the trailer show? There’s a purrgil, for instance. The first one we get to see in the flesh. Ezra catapulted himself and Thrawn into the unknown regions using a creature like this. That’s because purrgil are huge and whale-like, equipped with tentacles and the seemingly impossible ability to naturally traverse hyperspace.
If this sounds familiar, we already caught a first, vague glimpse of purrgil in The Mandalorian, Chapter 17: The Apostate. We only saw their shadowy outlines amid the swirling blue of hyperspace.
What else? Ah yes, Chopper, the scatterbrained and cheeky C1-series astromech droid, also known from Rebels and part of Ezra Bridger’s crew.
I think that’s it. Did I miss any exciting details? Let me know in the comments.
Header image: Disney/Lucasfilm
Luca Fontana
Senior Editor
Luca.Fontana@digitecgalaxus.chI'm an outdoorsy guy and enjoy sports that push me to the limit – now that’s what I call comfort zone! But I'm also about curling up in an armchair with books about ugly intrigue and sinister kingkillers. Being an avid cinema-goer, I’ve been known to rave about film scores for hours on end. I’ve always wanted to say: «I am Groot.»
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