I can't really take Tales of the Jedi seriously for like- a bunch of reasons. The series really isn't part of my personal canon, and honestly, it isn't for me. However I do wonder at, like, the actual implication (not the intended implication) of some things presented in it. Like, say, Anakin considering that proper training should, apparently, knock Ahsoka out. Would that imply that he considered the treatment he got, as a slave child, as more normal than the care he received on the Temple? Or just... outright that he's a bit of an asshole? I guess we already knew that, but what I wonder at is what rationalization it makes more sense to think he used.
Is this a deeply held belief that suffering makes one greater, in line already with Sith ideas? Or is this just carelesness, a matter of "eh, whatever, she can handle it, so I don't have to worry"? Is this just plain inability to recognize he may have commited a mistake with the exercise and a knee-jerk reaction to double down? Like, "nope, no harm, so much no harm that it should be repeated!"
I guess this part of the series intrigues me because, even though the narrative wants to frame them positively, the actions of Anakin are still something I find entirely within character.
Do I believe these scenes happened in my understanding of Star Wars? No. I think that this 'practice' scenario would have meant an immidiate separation of Ahsoka and Anakin, because I don't think the Jedi would have allowed the mistreatment. I can totally believe that Anakin would do this, though.
His ability to harm loved ones and remain in complete denial of it is... actually fairly consistent. I am of the belief that everyone Anakin has ever loved has been also his victim, with the exception of his mom. Thus, the scene, to me, works as a thought experiment to try and analyze Anakin's thought process. If I can pin down, for myself, an understanding of what he may have been thinking in this scenario, I have a better system to apply to other Anakin moments.
I honestly think that the other Jedi didn't know.
Anakin promises to make her a "better test" when they're talking quietly by a window; the only ones who would have heard it were maybe Depa and Caleb, who were passing by, and this wouldn't be abnormal for someone without context, and someone unaware he could and would go to extremes-- to those two, it sounds completely normal!
Anakin summons her first to some barren looking warehouse type place. No other Jedi are present: only clones who think gross mistreatment of children is normal, and if they had issues with it, they literally could not speak up or try to intervene with it for fear of execution.
After the time-skip, once again, they're in an isolated area: a hangar bay on what must be the Resolute. No other Jedi. Only Anakin, Ahsoka, and the 501st.
Considering they aren't using things like, I dunno, training salles, which exist, and have padding for when she falls (many, many, many times), and are instead in out-of-the-way places Jedi typically wouldn't go, I actually think Anakin was aware what he was doing was wrong, and he was hiding it-- at least on some level he knew the others wouldn't approve. Ahsoka was a child; she trusted him. I doubt she ever brought it up because if Anakin says their training is secret and it'll make her better than any Jedi, well, who is she to argue?
I suppose if this level of secretism is what she's used to in regards to the rest of the Order, it explains better her actions in the last seasons of TCW. Why not believe Anakin would bust her out of prison? Why not seek to prove her innocense on her own? Why not snap at Obi-Wan under a belief that the Order isn't effective enough? She's not being shown how to properly communicate, she's being shown how to dismiss others, and how to see her family as obstacles- or her most trusted and closest ones as sources of pain.
God, just when I believed I couldn't possibly think worse of Anakin.
Yes! This actually works right into the theory I've been building up for a little while that the only way to explain why Ahsoka is SO QUICK to decide that only Anakin would ever believe that she was framed when she's been in prison for a few hours, at most, and she hasn't spoken to a single other Jedi to even KNOW if they believe or not, is because Anakin's been unintentionally slowly training her NOT TO TRUST THE JEDI. Specifically the Council, but it probably bounces out to the rest of the Order to some degree.
One of the very first things we ever see him teach her, the first episode they even have on the show, is how to lie to the Council and do what you want anyway. He tells her off for announcing her disagreement to the Council, says that it's the WAY she stated her disagreement that was wrong not the disagreement itself, which he clarifies is basically that she should just keep her mouth shut and agree and then find a loophole that lets her do what she wants afterward. None of which is helped by Palpatine coming in later and being like "Anakin, the Council is FURIOUS with you" when we just literally saw it not to be true like 3 seconds ago and Ahsoka is sitting right next to him when it happens (I think).
In the episode with Luminara, when they find the Padawans, Anakin IMMEDIATELY throws Luminara under the bus with the statement that he was right not to give up on them. And Luminara at least gets a chance to defend herself here, but Ahsoka basically has to choose whose word to believe between the two of them, and it's not surprising that she might choose her Master over Luminara who she may not know as well.
Those are the only obvious examples of Anakin undercutting the Jedi off the top of my head, but where would Ahsoka have learned to mistrust the Council from if not Anakin? Why would she mistrust the Council SO MUCH that she automatically believes that they won't believe HER when she tries to defend herself against a crime without having even spoken to them, if she hadn't already been building up that mistrust for a while? It's not like Obi-Wan or Plo Koon or Yoda would do that and she interacts with them fairly regularly, loves them even. We don't see her interact with many other members of the Council beyond those three, but there's never anything negative that actually happens between Ahsoka and the Council before the Wrong Jedi arc to justify that mistrust.
So where did it come from?
And now we see Anakin PULLING HER AWAY from the other Jedi, from other Council members, including Obi-Wan and Plo, talking down Jedi and their training, being secretive about their own separate training, and it's not hard to extrapolate from there that this probably is not the only time this has happened or will happen. That it all adds up from here, and while Ahsoka wouldn't ever say prior to the Wrong Jedi arc that she doesn't trust the Jedi, we all know what it leads to. We all know she doesn't end up trusting anyone but Anakin.
And the parallels this has to the way Palpatine and Anakin's relationship plays out are a little frightening. Anakin's not necessarily doing it intentionally, he's not actively trying to poison her against the Jedi in the same way, but he's spouting similar rhetoric, he's accomplishing the same purpose and the reason ANAKIN mistrusts the Jedi is due to things Palpatine has encouraged him to believe, and so that mistrust that Anakin's been nurturing since TPM just gets passed right back down to Ahsoka, too.
#part of the thing that pisses me off about it is the way all the new stuff CONSTANTLY loops everything ahsoka does back to anakin #like yeah! he was obviously a big influence on her! (to her detriment) but she has/had other people too!#but the writers are obsessed with anakin so everything about her has to revolve around him #and the way everything is framed to draw a clear line to her survival of order 66 to this is so frustrating #she didnt survive order 66 because of anakin #if anyone she survived because of fives and rex #order 66 might not have even HAPPENED if not for anakin
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