Eldest Daughter Support Line

It’s been three years and I still don’t know precisely why they made Sabine Force-sensitive (or, rather, that they decided to use her as a vehicle for the “anyone can use the Force if they try hard enough” narrative because that appears to be the Ahsoka show’s… unique angle).

I think it’s a culmination of factors, some being that the Ahsoka show wasn’t intended to be a slapdash Rebels sequel but, rather, a story focused on (surprise surprise) Ahsoka, and the role of unofficial-padawan would’ve been an original character (and likely someone much younger and more like young Ahsoka). Somewhere along the line, either that script didn’t get traction or interest, or they decided to go the (supposedly) safer route of pulling in already established characters and so Sabine was copy-and-pasted into the unofficial-padawan role (and hopelessly corrupted in the file transfer). Hence why she acts like a young Ahsoka (stubborn, snarky, rash) when this is Sabine and she’s thirty and even when she was a teenager she didn’t act like this.

It could be too that the Rebels sequel (which was going to be animated and apparently had quite a bit of progress) was quietly cancelled so this Frankenstein project was the only way to continue and complete the story. There were a lot of Star Wars shows announced in the immediate wake of The Mandalorian’s success and a fair few of them got axed or absorbed into other shows (there’s heavy speculation Rangers of the New Republic became part of Ahsoka, Mando S3, and even the Mando movie).

Long story short: I never got the impression they actually thought of Sabine when they made Sabine in Ahsoka. She’s just there because Ahsoka needs someone who can mirror her past self and who she can play Anakin to.

Do I suspect they made her use the Force because Force-wielders are more marketable and just overall super cool? To a degree, yeah, I do.

In the end of Rebels, Ezra gives her his lightsaber. There’s many layers to this (and the SabEzra community especially has delved into it beautifully), but basically it boils down to a passing of the torch: Ezra is entrusting the rest of the mission, his homeworld’s safety and wellbeing, and his own life to Sabine. He is not giving it to her because she’s Force-sensitive and needs a lazer sword (also because that is NOT how lightsabers work. If she were Force-sensitive and going to train to become a Jedi, it would be better if she made her own because you can’t just trade around kyber crystals like baseball cards. *cue “That’s not how the Force works!” reaction gif*)

It was expected that we would see Sabine use his lightsaber in a sequel. But! Anyone who watched Rebels would be going into a Rebels sequel knowing Sabine has had puh-lenty of lightsaber training from Kanan and Ezra. Ahsoka doesn’t have to go back to square one teaching her—SABINE LEARNED WITH THE DARKSABER AND BECAME ONE OF IT’S MOST PROFICIENT WIELDERS EVER. So no. We didn’t need that scene with the training sticks and Sabine shaming her Mandalorian heritage like that.

But if we didn’t have that scene, we wouldn’t have a someone-wise-and-cool-teaches-a-girl-who-doesn’t-know-what-she’s-doing-how-to-fight scene or that reference to the original trilogy when Luke was training on the Millennial Falcon. Wasn’t that fun, kids? You love references and nostalgia bait, right? Right?

The merchandise since the Ahsoka show has made the green lightsaber a very prominent piece of Sabine’s arsenal. It was featured in her character poster and much of the promo art. We know why it’s there for the story, and it should’ve just been a nice bonus that characters with lightsabers look real cool and happen to make for awesome posters. But it became pretty clear in the show that they just wanted to use the lightsaber as much as possible when it doesn’t make sense for a kitted-out character like Sabine. (Also showed up the constraints of live-action and low budget when she suddenly, inexplicably doesn’t have her jetpack and a cache of colourful explosives of varying strengths).

And since you bring it up, yes, I do think it’s symptomatic of a larger issue with Star Wars in general.

I mean, I get it. When you hear “Star Wars” out in the wild, what do you think of?

Jedi.

Space.

Lightsabers.

Stormtroopers.

Darth Vader, The Empire, “come to the dark side; we have cookies.”

It makes sense from the marketing point of view to focus on and feature the parts that stick in people’s minds, the parts that have immortalized this particular story, the parts that make for good, sellable toys and costumes, the parts people meme. It’s the same reason Marvel focussed for so long on superheroes like Spider-Man, Hulk, the X-Men, and the Fantastic Four for movies over ones like the Avengers, Iron Man, Hawkeye, or Black Widow—the visually cool superpowers and costumes draw more attention.

Can you imagine if they had tried to pitch a show like Andor in the nineties/naughties? Something set in Star Wars featuring a character without a lick of the Force? And a story that never has a single Jedi on screen, mentioned, or plot relevant? (though I still harbour my suspicions about Luthen…) Or even The Mandalorian—sure, it has Grogu, a Jedi youngling, but the title character is a non-Force-sensitive bounty hunter from a race that’s explored in books and comics but not on screen.

That poor person would’ve been laughed out of Hollywood.

I don’t think people give Rebels enough credit for paving the way for such stories. It was one of the first SW shows to really, properly highlight heroes who don’t use the Force and underline the importance of characters and stories set in SW that have nothing to do with the Skywalkers, the Force, or the galaxy’s larger fate. Yes, there have always been SW heroes without the Force (Han, I got my issues with you, honey, but you came through in the end), but Rebels took the time to flesh out Sabine, Hera, and Zeb, to make their worlds, their families, their plights as dear to us as Kanan and Ezra’s. Even Ezra’s story is unique in that his goal was to save his world, his people, not the whole galaxy.

I only got into Star Wars because of The Mandalorian and how it had nothing to do with the Skywalkers. I liked that the Empire was in shambles and the only stormtroopers around were the leftovers in beat up armour. I liked that there was no Emperor, no Darth Vader, no lightsabers, just a fresh new story with new characters, and I was excited to learn more about these mysterious Mandalorians. Grogu’s story was also intriguing because yeah he’s got the Force but what will that mean for a character when there’s no Jedi order? Is he going to try go back to what he knew before or forge a new path?

Well.

We’ll never know now.

Because they scrambled to bring back in Skywalkers, lightsabers, the Empire, and shiny white Stormtroopers with bad aim (are you guys still laughing about that? Laugh about it. Please. Oh, please laugh.) and, in the process, backspaced whatever original tale they were spinning.

This has kinda gone all over the show, but my point is that the powers that be are inclined to regurgitate a story with things that worked before because it’s a safe bet. I don’t think it’s a specific bias towards Force-wielding characters so much as it is a drive to reuse an element that grabs attention, stokes nostalgia, and makes for a marketable toy and costume.