i can’t decide if having ahsoka back made me feel worse or better about kanan 😭
i think i feel like. it 100% checks out that ahsoka’s back in some capacity….. you don’t have to be a fucking genius to see the end of twilight of the apprentice ending was the most obviously open ended shit ever like shining a fucking beacon in the sky saying they’re NOT DONE WITH HER CHARACTER. like if ahsoka was ACTUALLY dying there, at DARTH VADER ANAKIN SKYWALKER’S HANDS no less – they would SHOWED it and ripped your soul out. plain and simple. so i just kinda assumed we’d see her again??
it felt really good to have her TALK to ezra. after what happened to kanan i really needed someone give ezra comfort and talk him through…. Everything. he was ALL ALONE during DUME and getting tackled by a loth-wolf wasn’t exactly the support i was looking for.
ezra’s got his family, but it feels right that the one to really help talk ezra through things was ahsoka. cos ahsoka’s been through so much loss herself and not five minutes before she experienced the soul-crushing irrefutable confirmation that her master is lost to her in the worst way possible. kanan was SO MANY things to ezra, but he was his master before anything else so it was a big comfort for me that ezra got to speak about losing kanan with the only other character who knows what his specific loss is like,
i think it was really neat to draw ezra and ahsoka to each other and let them find at least some peace over losing their masters together. in this respect having ahsoka again did make me feel a little better about kanan, because it helped ezra.
but ugh….
i think the intention was to show that 1) ahsoka’s path, including ezra snatching her out of time for a hot minute, always happened that way and 2) by the same token, once it happened kanan’s path must always end as it did and neither can be changed. and that emphasizes how fucking serious the emperor it is that the emperor was so close to accessing the world between worlds, because he would abuse the power to shape the universe how he chooses.
i don’t think they were trying to pull some There Can Only Be One kind of shit. the message wasn’t supposed to be “OH we can change time for AHSOKA, but that kanan guy? screw him, just let him burn!!!!” they filled in the missing puzzle pieces of ahsoka’s fate that they’d left out in twilight of the apprentice. it was clear that for whatever reason, ahsoka briefly getting pulled into the world between worlds ALWAYS happened, but further changing time or her fate is way off limits. and kanan’s sacrifice?? the REASON ezra can’t do anything to change it has fuck all to do with ahsoka. it’s that if ezra pulls kanan out of that moment ezra dies. hera dies. they all die. and time probably fucking collapses, or something hellish like that.
but like…. The timing? the entire way they framed it? you just can’t fucking escape the fact that in the one single episode, ahsoka is briefly pulled out of time, likely sparing her from death but for kanan the message is that we can do nothing to help him. why does he have to die? when he has so much to live for and so many people he’s leaving behind? as a viewer it makes me feel like i’m getting ahsoka back and i’m expected to feel better about kanan because of it.
i’m very very happy we have ahsoka back. i love her a ridiculous amount and she’s absolutely one of my favorites. but i also love kanan more than pretty much anything in the fucking universe. firmly closing the book on kanan and designating him as Officially Gone For Good at the same damn time as bringing ahsoka back from “assumed dead by the characters” just makes me feel like shit about something i should be happy about. i’m glad shes ok, but in terms of the actual mechanism of how it happened i can’t escape the intense sadness (even bitterness) i feel about it.
i understand that the overall plot of rebels is really interconnected, and that so much of this stuff was planned, foreshadowed, whatever, well before it ever reached out screens. i respect and appreciate the story they wrote wasn’t done lightly or without care. and i definitely don’t think the actual intent was to screw over kanan in his own damn show or that they truly meant ahsoka to be a bandaid on a giant gaping wound kanan leaves me with.
HOWEVER. ultimately, i just don’t think they can write those two events so intertwined without each affecting the viewer’s emotional reaction to the other. i wish they’d brought her back at a different time or in a different way, so i could feel as happy about ahsoka as i want to be, instead the whole thing just making all the bad feelings i have about kanan even more intense and confused.
space 