As the wily Jedi Kanan once told Ezra Bridger in Rebels, “Having a laser sword doesn’t make you a Jedi.” Sabine Wren is the perfect example. Though she wielded the Darksaber as a Mandalorian, she never considered herself a Jedi until Ahsoka began training her, though some unknown event drove a wedge between the two.
Now, in Ahsoka, we’ve seen Sabine start to tap into her Jedi identity again, but she’s the first to admit she’s not very good at the classic Jedi telekinetic powers. No matter how hard she tries, she can’t even move a cup. It’s one of Ahsoka’s odder storylines, given that the show hasn’t really explained why someone with no apparent affinity for the Force is being trained in its use. But even if she’s no Matilda, Sabine could still find success as a Jedi through a workaround used in an old, non-canonical novel.
Lost Legends is an Inverse series about the forgotten lore of our favorite stories.
Back in 1998, the novel I, Jedi followed accomplished Rogue Squadron X-Wing pilot Corran Horn as he underwent training to awaken the latent Jedi powers he inherited from his grandfather. But while he was a fabulous pilot, the Force didn’t come as naturally to him. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t move objects.
In a key scene, Luke asks his student to move a giant plinth embedded into the ground. Corran closes his eyes, focuses, and envisions the plinth rising. When he opens his eyes, he’s dismayed to see the plinth is still stuck... but all his fellow students, and even Luke himself, see an illusion of it rising.
While he never got the hang of telekinetics, Corran made up for it with a talent for mind tricks. He could use the Force to project images into people’s brains to the point where it didn’t really matter if what he did was real. He was so good at it that he once tricked aggressive wedding crashers into thinking they were being sucked into a black hole.
Sabine Wren — or her writers — could take inspiration from this Jedi. Like Corran, she’s already made a name for herself in the New Republic. She’s already helped fight the Empire. Now, she’s trying to tap into a latent skill Ahsoka sees in her, but she’s terrible at telekinesis. Sabine’s greatest strength is her wit and cunning; she could very well develop mental Force powers to make up for her lack of physical powers. She doesn’t necessarily have to project terrifying black holes, but she could use her connection to the Force to outsmart her foes, not outmuscle them.
In Ahsoka Episode 7, we learned that Ezra has developed his telekinetic powers to the point that fighting with a lightsaber is more of a luxury than a necessity. He took Kanan’s words to heart, and now Sabine could too, counterbalancing his physical style with something more abstract and definitely more Sabine. She’s an artist; what could happen if she could create pictures with her mind?
