There have always been two gaping holes in the fabric of Ahsoka. After the events of Rebels, two Jedi characters, Kanan and Ezra, were lost in the effort to defeat Grand Admiral Thrawn, and the finale of Ahsoka Episode 2 reveals just how much this affected Sabine. In a shot-for-shot replication of the Rebels finale, we see Sabine take a moment to remember her fallen friends at the mural of the crew she created.
This scene was touching for Rebels fans, but there was also one big issue for nitpicky viewers to focus on. A brilliant fan theory not only explains that discrepancy, but makes Rebels all the more heartbreaking in hindsight.
Redditor sanfranciscointhe90s noticed an apparent flaw with this scene’s live-action recreation. Rebels is an animated series, and the mural is done in the show’s exact art style. By that logic, shouldn’t the mural be photorealistic in live-action, a pitch-perfect recreation of the show’s characters?
Maybe the issue isn’t a flaw in how Ahsoka portrayed the mural, but in how Rebels portrayed its characters. This theory suggests Rebels looks so much like Sabine’s art style because Rebels itself is a collection of Sabine’s memories.
That would explain why Rebels is so focused on Ezra. Of course Sabine would prioritize Ezra in her memories, because memories are all she has left of him. It also explains why we never saw any inklings of Sabine’s future Jedi training, which appeared out of left field in Ahsoka. If she later rejected her training, she wouldn’t want to return to the memories either.
This wouldn’t be the first time a Star Wars animated series was theorized to have an unreliable narrator. In one of the most famous Star Wars theories of all time, it’s suggested The Clone Wars was actually Republic propaganda, explaining the newsreel-esque narration at the beginning of each episode and the glorification of the Jedi throughout.
If Rebels has a similar subjective lens, it makes the entire series more heartbreaking. It’s not just the story of a found family, but also of a young woman grieving the loss of that family. It also casts Ahsoka’s status as a pseudo-sequel in a new light. Rebels showed us those characters through Sabine’s eyes, but Ahsoka can now give us another perspective; and a more objective one.
