The Mandalorian Season 2: Rosario Dawson to play Ahsoka Tano
In an out-of-nowhere report, we learned Rosario Dawson would be playing Star Wars fan-favorite Ahsoka Tano in the upcoming second season of The Mandalorian.
Mild spoilers for Star Wars The Clone Wars, Rebels, and The Mandalorian.
How about good timing? On the day that Ahsoka Tano made her return to Star Wars The Clone Wars, a big piece of news was reported about her. According to Slashfilm, season 2 of the massively popular Disney Plus show The Mandalorian will feature the fan-favorite character in her live action debut.
According to the report, Rosario Dawson will star as Ahsoka Tano.
Ahsoka made her first appearance as Anakin Skywalker’s padawan in The Clone Wars movie. Since then, her popularity has only grown as she came into her own as a character and proved herself to be a worthy counterpart to Anakin. She is headstrong and opinionated, much like her master, which creates a lot of room for character growth for both of them in The Clone Wars show. Since the conclusion of The Clone Wars, Ahsoka became a recurring character on the followup animated show, Rebels.
When seen in her (mostly) full arc, Ahsoka is one of the best and most complex characters in the mainstream Star Wars canon. While Anakin became disillusioned with the Jedi and it drove him to the Dark Side, Ahsoka became disillusioned but used what she learned for good, to start the rebellion. In a lot of ways, she had the strength to be what Anakin could not.
Ahsoka pops up here and there throughout the Star Wars timeline. It begins with Clone Wars and then continues roughly a decade and a half later with Rebels. The finale of Rebels takes place just a few years after the events of Return of the Jedi, which would leave it right about where The Mandalorian takes place. We don’t know where she is or what she is doing during this time, so hopefully, this season will begin to fill in some of the gaps.
In fact, Rebels ends with Ahsoka going off on a mission with Sabine Wren, who is a natural Mandalorian herself and former wielder of the Darksaber, bringing in two direct ties to The Mandalorian show. It would make sense for Sabine to be accompanying Ahsoka if and when she runs into Mando. We may even be in for seeing Ezra and other members of the Rebels crew. In all likelihood, Ahsoka will be able to provide information on Baby Yoda, or at least on his Force-wielding abilities. She would definitely recognize him as something similar to Yoda, which would be fascinating and exciting to watch.
Interestingly, though, Ahsoka’s voice is heard through the Force at the end of The Rise of Skywalker, leaving us to wonder if she had died between Return of the Jedi and then. This is a question that will definitely loom large over her screen time on The Mandalorian.
When we finally find all of this out, Ahsoka will be played by Rosario Dawson. Dawson has over 100 live action and voice acting credits on IMDb, including the former Netflix-Marvel shows such as Daredevil. Interestingly, that is her most high-profile role since the early 2000s, when she was in films by Kevin Smith, Robert Rodriguez, and, most notably, Quentin Tarantino.
Dawson is certainly a good actress and has the enthusiasm for the role, as she expressed both on Twitter and on Good Morning America. But you really do have to feel bad for Ashley Eckstein who has voiced Ahsoka since 2008. She obviously knows the character better than any other actor would, and it is difficult to see someone else get this role.
But this is a pretty unprecedented move. We’ve seen lots of live action Star Wars characters become animated, and most of them were not voiced by their live action actors. But not many characters made the opposite transition. The vast majority of Eckstein’s professional acting experience has been voice acting, so it makes a lot of sense to choose a seasoned, well-known actress such as Rosario Dawson to embody the character.
All in all, this is extremely exciting news for Star Wars fans. Any opportunity to see more of a fan-favorite character should be counted as a win. There always seems to be some sort of controversy and disagreement about everything in Star Wars (and Dawson has had legal allegations brought up in the last couple of years), but the return of this character is something that we should all be excited about.
You can catch up on The Clone Wars, Rebels, and The Mandalorian now on Disney+!