Another tidbit that has been annoying me within the fandom is this absolute sureness that Tech “somehow survived”.

Y’all.

I mean, I get it.

At the end of last season, I was absolutely convinced that he survived the fall as well. How could he not!? He went through so much character development. And, what would the squad be without him?

Then I found out that season 3 would be the last season, and I pointed out that I felt because of this, Tech would be dead for real and that he would not be coming back.

Still, all of fandom is convinced that Tech is going to end up being this CX-2 guy, and I guess maybe if the finale is like two hours long, he could be.

But honestly, I feel like CX-2 is going to be Marroked. He’s very likely a whole new character that will inevitably end up being little more than a green fart… so… prepare yourselves.

Okay. So. I’m going to say it:

I don’t think we’re going to get the Clone rebellion show that everyone in fandom is expecting at the end of the Bad Batch. I don’t think it actually ever materializes.

I say this mainly due to what happens in Rebels.

In Rebels, Wolffe calls the Imperials when Kanan and Ezra show up so that the three Clones brothers don’t get into trouble for harboring them. We’re told that this isn’t the first time that Wolffe has called to report something to the Empire. If Rex and Gregor had been part of or lead an actual rebellion against the Empire, they would have been wanted men. Wolffe calling the Empire would have resulted in their demise.

Wolffe’s overall attitude towards the Empire while on Seelos leads me to believe that he actually never joins Rex in his efforts against the Empire during The Batch era. I think Wolffe is going to serve out his purpose with the Empire, and ends up retiring quietly. I think it is only after Wolffe retires from his Imperial duties that he joins Rex and Gregor in their already retired states.

Finally, I don’t think Rex is as concerned about fighting against the Empire as he is about saving his brothers who are enslaved by them. Meaning, Rex is only fighting for now because he wants to free his brothers. I don’t think he’s as concerned about freeing the whole ass galaxy from the grip of the Empire. He wants the Clones to be free more so than anything else.

I could be wrong, but I feel like a full-blown Rex-led Clone Rebellion would ultimately lead to a complete Rebels Rex retcon.

Also, I’m not sold on Barriss even being Ahsoka’s “nemesis”.

This is pretty much all of Ahsoka and Barriss’s interactions in The Clone Wars:

They had some weird homoerotic moment trapped in a separatist tank under tons of rubble.

They’re rescued by their masters after swapping lightsabers and holding hands.

They fought brain worms. Ahsoka awkwardly stares at Barriss. They eat. They get attacked by clones. They separate. Barriss begs for death after being infected by a brain worm. Ahsoka can’t do it because she’s “attached” to Barriss. She saves Barriss from the brain worm. They cuddle in the freezing cockpit until Kit Fisto arrives. Ahsoka panics because she’s worried about Barriss. Anakin says Barriss is fine. Ahsoka stares awkwardly at a healing Barriss as weirdly romantic music plays, then they pan off into space.

Then, they are seen walking together with younglings at the Jedi temple in one episode.

Barriss blows up the temple (out of literally nowhere).

Ahsoka tries to comfort Barriss. They share some very homoerotic glances in the hallway of the Jedi temple.

Ahsoka gets blamed for murder. Decides she’s going to go on the run which makes her look guilty. Barriss sucks at improving to get Ahsoka out of it, once again, sharing homoerotic glances.

Barriss beats the shit out of Ahsoka in a warehouse filled with explosive nano-droids for “reasons (?)”.

Ahsoka gets expelled from the order.

Anakin hauls Barriss in to Ahsoka’s trial, and Barriss confesses to the bombing. Barriss shoots Ahsoka this look that basically screams, “My god, I’m so sorry. I fucked up! Please forgive me! Please understand where I’m coming from! I did not mean for this to happen!” And, Ahsoka stands there looking utterly heartbroken as if someone donkey punched her in the rib cage.

That’s doesn’t really say “nemesis” to me.

I think boxing Barriss in as being this one-dimensional “nemesis” of Ahsoka is honestly unfair.

In fairness, Barriss was a character first. She was created and existed completely outside of Ahsoka’s orbit. She had a legends backstory, and, unlike Ahsoka, appeared in one of Lucas’s theatrical releases.

This isn’t to say that she isn’t intricately tied to Ahsoka in canon. I mean, she was Ahsoka’s first unofficial official ex-girlfriend, and the events that pretty much completely stymied Ahsoka’s whole trajectory in life.

However, to say that Barriss’s appearance in The Tales of the Empire is only happening so to deepen or enrich Ahsoka’s narrative, or is being done strictly because of Ahsoka is disingenuous.

People truly want to know what happened to Barriss, and it’s time that story be told. She was seriously the only character from The Clone Wars that had not had her story wrapped up. We even got the whereabouts, and ending narrative for the Zillo Beast FFS.

Barriss’s story was a crazy one because no one saw what happened coming, and it honestly NEEDS more backstory that we likely will not get. Still, having some sort of resolution to her narrative will be nice (even if it isn’t completely resolved at the end of this because there’s more-*fingers crossed*).

I think boxing Barriss in as being this one-dimensional “nemesis” of Ahsoka is honestly unfair.

In fairness, Barriss was a character first. She was created and existed completely outside of Ahsoka’s orbit. She had a legends backstory, and, unlike Ahsoka, appeared in one of Lucas’s theatrical releases.

This isn’t to say that she isn’t intricately tied to Ahsoka in canon. I mean, she was Ahsoka’s first unofficial official ex-girlfriend, and the events that pretty much completely stymied Ahsoka’s whole trajectory in life.

However, to say that Barriss’s appearance in The Tales of the Empire is only happening so to deepen or enrich Ahsoka’s narrative, or is being done strictly because of Ahsoka is disingenuous.

People truly want to know what happened to Barriss, and it’s time that story be told. She was seriously the only character from The Clone Wars that had not had her story wrapped up. We even got the whereabouts, and ending narrative for the Zillo Beast FFS.

Barriss’s story was a crazy one because no one saw what happened coming, and it honestly NEEDS more backstory that we likely will not get. Still, having some sort of resolution to her narrative will be nice (even if it isn’t completely resolved at the end of this because there’s more-*fingers crossed*).

I’ve probably talked about this before, but now that she’s actually coming back, I would like to reiterate my hopes and fears for Barriss Offee.

I’ll start by saying that I do not think that Barriss accepting her role as an Inquisitor with open arms is very likely.

I mean, her whole reason for blowing up the Jedi temple in the first place was because she thought that the Jedi had become an army fighting for the darkness. So, her openly embracing the ideology of the Empire seems wildly out of character. For this reason, my hope for her would be that she is doing what she must to survive, that she is using her status as an Inquisitor as a springboard for escape, and that she will succeed in her efforts.

My fear for her is that she absolutely will not survive. The likelihood of her getting offed in this is relatively high. She could get unceremoniously iced by a fellow Inquisitor (my guess would be the Fourth Sister, who bails her out of jail in the first place). Equally likely, she could get offed by Vader… and not for the reasons everyone thinks which is to exact revenge for what happened to Ahsoka. Let’s face it. Vader doesn’t give two shits about Ahsoka at this point. Vader was going to ice Ahsoka himself before Filoni put time travel wormholes into the Star Wars universe so that Ahsoka could be ripped through it before meeting her untimely demise at Vader’s hand. No. He’d kill Barriss for something far more arbitrary. Something that would suck, but also would be incredibly unpoetic, lazy and unfulfilling after not seeing her for over a decade. And, this is why it feels so likely, I guess. Why wasn’t she in Rebels or Kenobi or any other media with Inquisitors? Did she find some sort of freedom and lay low until the dust settled? Or did she get un-alived? Her odds? Not great.

Which leads me back to my hopes for her… I want her to make it through this era. I want her to find someone like Baylon to hang out with. Maybe she’ll find a convent of former Jedi that didn’t want to bend to the will of the Empire, but also felt that the Jedi had lost their way and so they worked to make themselves into something else. Not good, but not necessarily bad or, at least, not intentionally bad.

I’d like for her to run into Ahsoka…. but not in the Tales of the Empire series… somewhere else. Based on the fact that Ahsoka is still being salty about all of the things that happened to her in her teen years in her series, I don’t feel as if she and Barriss had the chance to ever kiss and makeup.

I honestly feel as if Ahsoka, ultimately, fell victim to Barriss’s wild inability to improvise. I don’t think Barriss framed her on purpose (at least, canon, and that deleted scene where Barriss hugs Ahsoka as she is being escorted out of the temple after being expelled from the order, seems as if it could support my head-canon). It would be, at the very least, nice to get confirmation of this… OR, why the fuck she chose to frame Ahsoka for it if it was a conscious decision. Like, I get that she was the only person that could have railroaded Ahsoka’s emotions like that, but come on. There had to be a lead up.

I also don’t see it being very in-character for Ahsoka to off Barriss in a showdown. That’s another place where it would be kind of lame if there is an Ahsoka versus Inquisitor Barriss duel in this. Ahsoka doesn’t seem bent on killing for revenge even in her lowest moments, and she is wasn’t able to bring herself to kill Barriss before when Barriss was infected by the brain worms. I feel as though Ahsoka would forgive Barriss for what happened… assuming Barriss asked for forgiveness. And, Barriss would. In something like this, a short, we’d end up getting a heartless, quasi-emotionless duel between the two of them that would end almost as unceremoniously as Vader offing Barriss (because clearly Ahsoka would win). No. At least, I hope not.

So yeah. TL/DR: Hope Barriss survives to fight another day.

Ya’ll. I’m not going to say that she isn’t in it, but that’s NOT Ahsoka in the trailer or on the poster for the Tales of the Empire.

In the trailer, the person in question (you know, the hooded one in the long, dark cloak that everyone says has montrails; appearing right underneath Morgan Elsbeth on the left hand side of the poster) is “force”pushing over half a dozen B2 battle droids on what appears to be Dathomir. The person in question is very likely the Matron of the mountain witches on Dathomir, and the fact that she falls on the Morgan Elsbeth side of the poster and not the Barriss Offee side should likely confirm this. The Matron will likely be the one that saves Elsbeth in some self-sacrificial way that only further fuels Elsbeth’s anger. You’ll see.

EDIT: It isn’t Luminara Unduli either. Once again, she is on the Morgan Elsbeth side of the poster. And also, why would Luminara be on Dathomir pushing B2 battle droids around? In a post-Galactic Republic setting? It doesn’t make sense.

EDIT PART TWO: Also, she’s not going to be “just another nightsister.” Whoever it is will be important in Morgan Elsbeth’s journey.

On the one hand, folks complain that Sabine was stabbed straight through her gut with the lightsaber and lived. And on the other, people are totally accepting of the fact that Maul somehow survived being bisected.

I mean, Sabine was scooped up and taken to a hospital immediately. And Maul? Well. He became a trash spider on a waste planet. AND THAT WAS LUCAS’S STAR WARS!

Thinking about Anakin wanting to leave the Jedi to be with Padme.

Thinking about how he told Ahsoka that he understood why she wanted to walk away from the order.

Thinking about Ahsoka walking away not so much because she wanted to, but because she felt as though she had to…because she didn’t see herself as a Jedi…because she was not a peace keeper, but a soldier.

They aren’t the same.

I need a case study done on how many folks turn into water snobs because they grew up in a place that had great water on tap… because I can assure you not all water is created equal.

After watching the Second Battle of Geonosis arc again, I’m even more convinced that Barriss didn’t actually mean to fuck Ahsoka over in the Wrong Jedi arc and that she just blew ass at improvisation.

I really hope this rumor that they’re developing a Star Wars “What if?” show turns out to be untrue.

Mainly because it will muddy canon, and fandom is too stupid to decipher what IS presented to them as in-universe fact already… let alone having some additional AU presented to them from the source.

Leave AU to fandom fiction accounts and AO3. We got this already.

I love it how Anakin and Ahsoka stans will sit and call the Jedi the villains in the narrative when Anakin went on to aid in the genocide and systemic oppression of countless Star systems in the pursuit of power, and Ahsoka WANTED to be a Jedi with all of her heart but couldn’t embrace it because she had crippling imposter syndrome and felt herself unworthy of the moniker.

Like…. Y’all missed the whole ass point.

From a kid that grew up before the prequels and the Clone Wars, I can confidently say that Vader WAS framed as THE ENEMY. Vader was THE BIG BAD IN TWO FILMS. Was his story tragic? Yeah, but that’s Anakin’s story. The Jedi saved the galaxy by freeing it from the oppression of the Sith, not once but twice in the Skywalker saga alone. THE JEDI ARE NOT THE ENEMY IN THE NARRATIVE… unless, of course, your loyalties were with the Sith and/or the Imperials / First Order. At which point, yeah, good on you, but those were not SUPPOSED to be the guys you root for.

I’m getting on the bus way late, but I feel compelled to defend the Wolfwren ship.

To preface, if it was made to be canon, it would be hugely impactful for the LGBTQ community as a whole for so many reason. In the same breath, however, I don’t see it ever becoming canon. Maybe I’m just jaded by the sheer number of queer-coded people in media with literally zero payoff. Never mind the fact that Lucasfilm is owned by Disney, who despite ring-wing criticisms, are by far the most vanilla, lukewarm media creator who shows literally zero inclination or willingness to “rock the boat” in any capacity. Truly, I would be shocked and nothing they have ever done has shocked me. And, honestly, it doesn’t truly matter either way. People should be allowed to enjoy what they enjoy without people judging or constantly attacking people over it. It’s all fiction regardless. The Wolf and the Wren don’t even exist in reality, so…

Still, the actors involved have obviously embraced it, fed into it, appreciate it, and I think that’s adorable and commendable. I find it incredibly interesting, yet not shocking that Natasha Liu Bordizzo picked up on Sabine’s clear queer-coding (whether purposefully done or not) and ran with it. This isn’t wholly relevant in and of itself, but I’m building to my point.

My point is that I have seen some arguments against Wolfwren that come from very homophobic, comphet places. Gayness still makes many people uncomfortable, and I’ll be honest, that’s on the person that’s being made uncomfortable by it and not the gay in question. Particularly, and since it is now sort of socially unacceptable to outright bash the LGBTQ community, I see A LOT of red herring arguments being made to try and divert attention to the real reasons that they hate it. And, I’m going to discuss one of those arguments that feels like is being made in bad faith.

The argument in question is the comparison to Wolfwren and Reylo. Many anti-wolfwrenners argue that they hate the ship because it reminds them of Reylo, a problematic ship between two people with a borderline abusive power dynamic that weirdly fall in love after a series of very questionable interactions.

And first, let’s be honest, some of these people probably do, at some levels, like and appreciate Reylo and that’s fine. To each their own. But, Wolfwren isn’t anything like Reylo at all. And comparisons truly cannot be made like that here.

Is Wolfwren problematic on the surface based on the happenings of Ahsoka season one alone? Yes. Absolutely. It’s not a washed and folded LGBTQ pairing. It’s not supposed to be. Their relationship has started out in kind of an ugly place. They’ve been gritty and violent. They’ve attempted to kill each other multiple times. That’s madness.

Still, there is no lop-sided power dynamic here though. Kylo Ren was obviously more powerful than Rey, both in the force and by societal position. He was a right hand man to the leader of the First Order. Rey was just a scavenger, rummaging for parts on a backwater planet. He’d studied the force since he was a tot. Rey didn’t even realize she had it. They were not equals. Sabine and Shin are, in every aspect of the word, equals in the story. Shin ultimately gay panics and stabs Sabine in the torso, but Sabine struck first in that skirmish. In fact, Sabine struck first in every battle that she and Shin had. And while Shin did have force powers where Sabine had yet to unlock her own potential, Sabine’s a bad ass. She’s not tradwife material (despite a lot of preconceived notions). She’s a warrior, someone that likely had blasters in her hands before she could write. That is something in and of itself. Sabine is equally capable, if not more so than Shin. Sabine is not a helpless victim just because she got stabbed, she has been an equal participant in every interaction that she and Shin have had.

Another difference is that Shin and Sabine have not lobbed words of hate, disdain or abuse at one another. Shin tells Sabine, “you have no power” then Sabine straight up shoots her with an arm cannon as if to say, “bet”. Other than that, there has been no hateful banter between them. At no point have either of them uttered the words “you’re nothing” while the other stood by in tears. It’s basically been well-matched sword duels where neither has truly gotten the upper hand outside of one lucky strike at the beginning. Sabine was unbalanced.

What truly makes this a decent ship is the “enemies to lovers” dynamic, a plot device that has been used time and time again in media (albeit mostly in cishet connotation where it doesn’t seem to bother other cishets). Shin is not beyond redemption. She isn’t inherently evil. She hasn’t truly abused Sabine outside of fighting back after Sabine went after her. Shin has done nothing other than sword fight with an equal, and follow around a master with questionable values. She is still perfectly capable of a redemptive arc, something that I feel was teased in episode 7 when Ahsoka reached out calmly to Shin saying, “I can help you.” It will not shock me when Shin does turn to the Jedi in the story, where she could and likely will find belonging. With that, she and Sabine could find happiness in a more homo-friendly, less heteronormative society. And if either of them were male and the other female, it would totally be embraced by the larger viewing audience as totally normal and okay.

So yeah… there it is.

Filoni’s drawing of Ahsoka and Sabine on the hand of the Father on Peridea tell me two things:

1.) I am probably right about the fact that Ahsoka and Sabine are about to have an epic adventure in that galaxy before they return home. What that entails, I could speculate but won’t for now. Just know, it’s going to big, weird, trippy force shit.

2.) Ahsoka and Sabine WILL NOT be rescued by the Skeleton Crew. I think it’s highly unlikely that Ezra or Din Djarin swoop in to save them any time soon either though it is possible that they wind up with the hyperspace coordinates to go and get them inevitably (however, it may be a movie or two in before that happens).

Take this with a grain of salt. I’m not a creative, but if I was, this is how I’d do it.

I think it’d be sort of funny if Grogu’s name wasn’t actually Grogu, and that Ahsoka just completely made that shit up.

Ezra: Guys, I’m getting a feeling. I think I might be going home after all.

Ahsoka: Actually, I don’t have the hyperspace coordinates to get home because I rode here in a whale’s mouth and they come here to die, so….

Ezra: What!?

Ahsoka: Yeah, and Sabine hitched a ride with the enemy. Options are limited.

Ezra: WTF is wrong with you two!?!

One of the key takeaways from episode 5 of Ahsoka was the realization that her “I am no Jedi” line from Rebels had less to do with an anti-Jedi sentiment or hatred of the Jedi, the Jedi order or the dogmatic nature of their existence, and more to do with the fact that Ahsoka couldn’t consider herself to be a Jedi because she saw herself as more of a warrior than a peace-keeping monk.

What’s worse is that there’s a whole swath of fandom that’s so media illiterate that they will go on continuing to hate the Jedi because “they were mean to Ahsoka” when in reality it was Ahsoka’s choice to live free of a hypocrisy that she created in her mind due to her depression, guilt over everything that happened, and her crippling imposter syndrome.

I don’t think that it will ever be spelled out for us sadly, but the fact that she says, “This isn’t what I trained for” while mourning her lost Clones during the Ryloth flashback, and during the Siege of Mandalore flashback when Anakin says, “You’re a warrior now. Just like I trained you to be.” Ahsoka’s response is, “Is that all?”

She wanted to be a Jedi wholeheartedly… she didn’t feel as if she was up to the title because she’d been a child-soldier. And, yes… we could go into a Doylist argument about how the Jedi were “bad” for sending kids to war, but keep in mind “The Clone Wars” was a cartoon that was for children that happened to have a child in a lead role. So…