For a certain type of Star Wars fan, Ahsoka is essentially selling itself as Rebels Season 5. The Disney+ show will serve as the live-action debut for multiple characters from the animated show, including fan favorites like Hera Syndulla (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), Ezra Bridger (Eman Esfandi), Sabine Wren (Natasha Liu Bordizzo), and even Chopper the droid. It’s also set to introduce a wider audience to one of the weirdest creations in Star Wars history: the World Between Worlds. But a new report reveals how showrunner Dave Filoni plans to change (and maybe even fix) one of the most unhinged concepts ever invented for this galaxy far away.
Ahsoka on Mustafar
Lucasfilm leaker Jason Ward of MakingStarWars reports that Ahsoka will feature a fight scene between Anakin and a younger Ahsoka set on Mustafar. That alone isn’t a huge shock since we already knew Hayden Christensen was returning, although the location is a nice surprise. However, there are a few interesting details. For one thing, the scene will feature a younger Ahsoka, placing the fight somewhere in the prequels era. But even stranger, the scene will also feature a deceased Obi-Wan Kenobi — Ward compares it to the iconic moment in A New Hope when Kenobi is struck down by Darth Vader and becomes one with the Force.
Of course, the only problem is that none of this makes sense in the current Star Wars timeline. Ahsoka wasn’t present during their fight on Mustafar and Ob-Wan lived to be a wise old man. Ward claims the purpose of this scene is to show that it was always Anakin’s destiny to turn to the Dark side, but that doesn’t explain how any of this is possible.
One theory might be that Ahsoka is simply having a Force vision. However, Ward’s report seems to confirm this is all happening thanks to the World Between Worlds.
“She's walking down a Hall of Mirrors, so to speak, and she looks into one and she sees this moment,” Ward says. “That might be all that that it is, or it might just be simply she has a vision.”
What is the World Between Worlds?
Originally introduced in Rebels Season 4 Episode 13 (“A World Between Worlds”), this Star Wars location is best described as the nexus of, well, everything. It’s depicted as a black void filled with portals that connect various points throughout space and time.
In Rebels, young Force-user Ezra Bridger finds himself in the World Between Worlds and is able to use one of these portals to save Ahsoka’s life. Ever since then, Star Wars fans have speculated that this is basically the franchise’s version of time travel, meaning that anyone who can access the World Between Worlds could travel through time and change the timeline — which might explain why Emperor Palpatine seemed so interested in gaining access.
Star Wars canon hasn’t done much to correct this notion in the years since, though Rebels and Ahsoka showrunner Dave Filoni did attempt to clarify his creation in a 2018 interview with CinemaBlend.
“I don't really think of it as time travel,” Filoni said. “It's not really a thing where you go through one door and out another in a different time. The World Between Worlds is really about knowledge and gaining knowledge.”
In the context of these new Ahsoka leaks, that makes a lot more sense — although it still doesn’t totally explain how Ezra was able to save Ahsoka’s life via the World Between Worlds. We’ll just have to accept that he was destined to do it, or whatever.
Ahsoka in the World Between Worlds
Based on all this, it sounds like the Mustafar scene in question in Ahsoka won’t exist as something that actually happened (or will happen), but rather as a way for Ahsoka to simply gain the knowledge that no matter what she did, Anakin would still have turned to the Dark Side.
If that’s what Filoni has planned, then our understanding of the World Between Worlds (and that episode of Rebels) could change dramatically very soon. Leave it to the guy who introduced time travel to Star Wars to finally explain how it actually works.
