#oenimo talks

I love Ahsoka as a character. I love Clone Wars.

I love Star Wars Rebels

I want Ezra to come home. To see Hera again. To see Sabine again. Zeb. Chopper. Kallus. Rex.

I want him to meet Jacen

I loved the Mandalorian

I loved the Bad Batch (whitewashing not included)

I loved Book of Boba Fett

But I am terrified of the Ahsoka show

I am terrified at what they are going to do to the characters I love with all my heart. I am terrified of what they are going to do to Sabine. To Ezra. To Hera. To Chopper.

I am terrified they are going to erase Zeb. Terrified they’ll erase the meagre progress we got in the finale, of Kallus and Zeb on Lira San together.

I am terrified that Thrawn is going to be a villain.

“But he is a villain?” I hear you ask. “He was a villain in Rebels? He was the big bad for season 3 and 4?”

He was.

And that’s half the reason I’m scared.

Because I read the books.

Before I read the Thrawn books, Rebels was my favourite piece of Star Wars content/media I’d ever consumed (and I have consumed a metric fuckton of Star Wars). But the two new Thrawn book series beat it out. The new canon ones (Disney canon, if you want to call it that).

I love these books so much that I couldn’t consume any more Star Wars media after them. The live action shows, I could see the hints flooding in, and I have barely a shred of hope left that they won’t take my beloved books and destroy them. By which I mean, destroy Thrawn. This is why I’m so so scared of the Ahsoka show. I retreated from every bit of Star Wars fandom because I just couldn’t handle it.

The Thrawn books set up a beautiful narrative for the time skip in rebels. The hints from both the original trilogy (of Thrawn books) and the Thrawn Ascendancy trilogy wove into the beginnings of an amazing explanation for where Ezra might’ve been during the gap, and did so while exploring Thrawn's character in a way that made me love him. And if you’ve only watched Rebels, you’ll believe me when I say that before reading the books I hated him. Before I read the books I couldn’t imagine liking him. And then I read them. And now the main reason that I am so so so distrustful and scared of the Ahsoka show is that I can see contradictory hints in the trailers, hints at the themes and stories that are going to be explored in the show, and they are all hints pointing towards making Thrawn who he was in the pre-Disney canon, in the old Thrawn novels. In those, he was exactly what you likely think of him as—ruthless, evil, heartless. However you want to describe it. But the newer books (written by the same guy who created Thrawn in the first place, I’d like you to know) changed that. They made him an infinitely more nuanced character, gave him a story that is so much more interesting than an evil dictator. But the trailers for the Ahsoka show make reference to the old books. The set up of the show is making Thrawn out to be the big bad. And when I heard “Heir to the Empire” (the title of one of the old Thrawn books, in which he is exactly that, and is his usual Legends canon nightmareish evil self) I pretty much lost all hope.

Theoretically, all this should’ve been assuaged by the fact that the new Thrawn books are canon. Not Legends canon, they are current canon.

But after how they changed Kanan’s backstory in Bad Batch, contradicting canon comics in favour of their new audiovisual show, I can’t expect much respect for written canon vs audiovisual canon. They’ve already disregarded their books once, why wouldn’t they do it again?

And let’s loop back around to that “but Thrawn was a big bad villain in the Rebels show”, because that ties right in.

Most of us love Dave Filoni. Clone Wars kicked ass. Rebels is amazing. I said it before—it’s my second favourite Star Wars media ever.

However.

Dave Filoni is also involved in the whole changes that happened with Jacen. He did the Bad Batch.

He also did Rebels, and specifically, also chose to make Thrawn the way he was in Rebels.

Compared to how Thrawn is in the new books, written by Timothy Zahn (again, the guy who made Thrawn in the first place), I’d take Zahn Thrawn over Filoni Thrawn any day. Because as I said, he is way more nuanced and complex in the books.

Villain and antagonist are two very different things. A villain is bad. A villain is cruel, and wrong. An antagonist is an opposing force. An opposing force against the protagonist. The protagonist doesn’t have to be a hero. The protagonist is simply the person we are following the story of, the one we hear the side of.

In Rebels, Thrawn is presented as antagonist and villain. He is countering the rebels efforts, doing things they don’t condone. The Empire is the true overarching villain of Rebels, and he is the face of the empire (once the inquisitors are done away with, and Kallus has defected). He and Pryce are the Empire. (Maul’s also an antagonist, but this isn’t about him.)

In the books, Thrawn is the (main) protagonist. He’s not really a hero, not in any usual meaning of the word, but he’s a protagonist.

The other main protagonist for the first book is Eli Vanto. An imperial officer who’s a hick from Wild Space, he’s about as low on the food chain as you could get.

For the first while, the Thrawn books don’t really have a distinct villain. The antagonists are, as could be expected for a book centred on imperial officers, sympathetic, or just plain unimportant enough to really count. Pirates. Smugglers.

And then comes Nightswan.

Nightswan is not a villain—He’s an antagonist. But he’s not a hero either. He’s not even really a rebel, not in with the rebellion, or his own sect like Saw Guerrera. He’s just swindling and fighting because he doesn’t like the empire, but he’s not overly concerned with results. A bit, but not much.

Pryce is a protagonist of the first Thrawn book. She is also, simultaneously, a villain. We watch her turn from a cunning and conniving 30-something, to a cunning, conniving, ruthless 50-something with a body count and a former best friend she turned in, making her rot in prison (because she joined a rebellion after seeing how Pryce was treated by her superiors!).

The last of the conflicts in the first Thrawn book is not a person vs person conflict. It is a person vs society. The last antagonist is the Empire. Or, specifically, the Empire’s xenophobia.

Thrawn is treated like crap by more than half of the people he works with. Eli, hick extraordinaire, the lowest member of the food chain, is not the lowest. Thrawn is. The only thing worse than being a hick from the ass end of nowhere is being an alien from the ass end of nowhere. At every turn, there are enemies watching for Thrawn and Eli to slip up, so they can be sent packing. The only reason they don’t, the only reason they survive, is a combination of one (1) influential non-xenophobic friend (who’s a remnant of the Republic, funnily enough (love you, Yularen)), plain competency at military matters, and a lot of tiptoeing around and making concessions.

“When can we push without being kicked out or killed”. “When do we have to give ground in order to stay in the fleet, and have the chance to do better in the long run”. More often than not, for two people such as themselves, they have to give ground. Eli, and Thrawn, spend a lot of their time in the books having ethical dilemmas and crises of conscious. It’s subtler from Thrawn, but it’s there.

Tell me that’s not more interesting than another black and white imperial villain. Tell me that doesn’t make more sense than a black and white imperial villain when said villain is an alien.

I also… don’t like Lars Mikklesen, heh. I don’t have anything against him, not really, but the problem stems from how he doesn’t help counter what I’m seeing in the trailer(s). Lars Mikkelsen was, indeed, Thrawn’s voice actor in Rebels. However, it’s Dave Filoni’s Thrawn (Rebels Thrawn) that I’m worried about. As we’ve said, Thrawn in Rebels occupies a very black and white villain role, this cold as ice ruthless and cruel and creepy villain, but then they (Disney! Literally Disney! Literally canon!) expanded on him, changing his backstory and history and present to be something way more interesting, way more complicated and nuanced and sympathetic and tbh, not a villain so much as a misguided hero. 

That’s the Thrawn I want! That’s the Thrawn I read six books of! That’s the Thrawn that makes a fascinating counter to Ezra’s reckless idealism! But they are hinting at all the wrong hints, and the fact that they keep pulling from Rebels is one part of those hints. Ahsoka snarling in Mando asking for where “Grand Admiral Thrawn” is, is another. “Heir to the empire” is another, and that’s the really, really, really damning one. Anyway, yeah, Lars is not the problem, but he’s another person involved who doesn’t have any exposure to Book Thrawn, so he does nothing to reassure. Also, in the pettier reasons I’m eh on him, lmao, he’s… kinda old for how I think Thrawn should look since we’ve experienced that Chiss seem to age extremely gracefully, and also just generally his face isn’t right, and also… I know he was the first voice but I really like Mark Thompson (the voice actor for the audiobooks) way better, lol.

Other than Thrawn, the trailer(s) worries me that they’re going to pull force-sensitive Sabine out of their asses. There’s no reason to make her force-sensitive, she could use Ezra’s lightsaber without it, and work with Ahsoka without being her padawan (remember how Ahsoka left the Jedi order also?? And refused to train Grogu? Her randomly turning around to train Sabine (who shouldn’t be force sensitive anyway) doesn’t even fit in with their own canon!)

Ahem.

Rereading Thrawn (2017) (because I’m me, shut up) and…

“Why do you wish to have your translator?” ………… “Once again, your eloquence belies your need for a translator,” the Emperor said. His lips again turn upward. “But I will give him to you.”

Hi??? Okay, “giving” him to Thrawn is already side eye, but… Suddenly I’m wondering if Palp was thinking of how he was able to control Anakin through his attachment to Padmé, and if he could use Eli in much the same way. Because we can see earlier that he isn’t thrilled about Thrawn asking a favour of him, but once Thrawn explains why he wants Eli (and very clearly says that Eli doesn’t have actually useful information, just personally interesting information) Palp jokes, and then says alright, sure. You can have your interesting guy

“I will give him to you.”

“I will give you the power to save the one you love.”

(fair warning that this is directly pulling from details from the Thrawn and Thrawn Ascendency books)

Ezra, furious and hurt and just barely eighteen makes the purgill attack the chimaera, makes them grab and break and pull it into hyperspace, makes them disappear into Wild Space. They crash into an unknown planet far from the know galaxy. Luckily, it’s habitable for humans, and slowly the surviving Chimaera crew wakes up, as do Thrawn and Ezra.

Stuck with nowhere to go, Ezra begrudgingly has to cooperate with the crew. Thrawn is furious with him, but practical (with a little bit of help from bridge crew to calm him down), and they don’t even like, jail Ezra. This is wildly confusing to Ezra, but in a good way, but he knows that even with the weird free trust he’s being given he still has to stay with them because no matter how good a Jedi, he can’t live on a completely unknown planet alone, let alone get off it without at least using the crash salvage

Slowly, Ezra begins to vaguely trust some of the chimaera crew. Not Thrawn, he’s still so suspicious of him, why is he doing this, why does he seem… so different than Ezra is used to? And he can’t forget how thunderously angry Thrawn during their first interaction after the crash. He’s calm now, but he was so angry. Why? When will it come back??

Eventually, things change. For a while there’s weird, rebuilding and building a new life vaguely, looking at if the bits of the chimaera can be salvaged to contact someone (but also knowing that none of the stars are familiar, they are so far from knowledge, who would they even manage to contact in this area?).

But the surviving chimaera crew ends up splitting, imperial loyalists finally having enough of the casual disregard for regulations and punishment Thrawn et al have been showing in regards to Ezra, as well as just… generally getting fed up and sick of listening to Thrawn et al when they’re letting Ezra be chill.

Unfortunately, the Thrawn loyalists (aka, the people on Ezra’s side) end up outnumbered because it’s hard to compare “previous loyalty to a man who literally is letting the guy who got you stuck here roam free and even asking for his help with shit and this guy is also an alien and the vast majority of imperials are xenophobic even if they’d grown to respect him it’s hard not to fall back given the extra hating circumstances” to “I am stuck on a completely unknown planet and it’s literally their fault”. This all leads to a split in factions of survivors, with Thrawn and loyalists being essentially run out of camp lest they be killed, and Ezra stuck going with them because somehow (it’s still baffling to him) this is the group that wants him dead the least.

In a far, far locale, skywalker Un’hee begins, pretty immediately after the battle of Lothal, to be plagued with dreams. Not all bad, most just kinda weird, but soon she starts seeing scenes of war and destruction and scenes of crash and desperate survival on an unfamiliar planet. The whole thing from start to finish is weird for her because it’s mostly humans, and some other aliens she’s never seen before, so how are they in her head? But when the worse dreams start, and then get worse, and then when she finally gets the crash landing dreams that are filled with a deep sense of “come help us come find us you’re the only one who can find us”, she ends up talking (crying) to Eli about it.

And he’s like. Ummmm. That sounds sus. I am… concerned. Because when she describes it, he knows she’s talking about humans. And it even sounds like empire humans. And maybe even his imperial colleagues. Who Un’hee really shouldn’t know???

So they go talk to Ar’alani, who promptly goes OH FUCK ME SIDEWAYS WITH A FRUIT STICK and calls up Thalias, Che’ri, and Samakro (of whom Samakro definitely should have his name changed, and Che’ri almost certainly too).

Between the 6 of them and Vah’nya, with talks with Ba’kif and the rest of the CDF and CEDF, they end up sending a small search party for Thrawn et al. Un’hee and Eli for sure, possibly other big names, possibly minor support characters (like crew for a ship Eli gets out in charge of) or possibly literally just Eli and Un’hee. The ascendancy did, after all, kick Thrawn out. And they are, after all, relying on a 9 year old’s visions. And even though it’s happened before, that’s really dubious ground to stand on for committing resources to, especially when shit is dangerously close to hitting the fan in the ascendency itself then as well.

Cue lots of space adventures for both parties, as Eli’s party travels from the Unknown Regions to wherever the fuck Thrawn+Ezra’s ended up, dodging plenty of people against the chiss and probably some people with history with Eli (he’s not… really a friend to the empire anymore lmao), Eli trying to keep Un’hee safe and hidden, Un’hee trying desperately to follow her visions to the right places, and meanwhile the looming threat of the grysks hangs in the back of their mind that they really need to get back, they really need to bring Thrawn back, etc.

Thrawn and Ezra’s party on the other hand are basically in the show Manhunter: Lethal Space Edition. They’re trying to survive on the unknown world with the small amount of supplies they were able to snag on their way out, knowing that the planet also holds the hostile rest of the star destroyer’s crew, and knowing they have no way off and away except by finding and fixing/smashing together chimaera crash salvage. Maybe they get off the planet before Un’hee finds them, and they have their own road trip adventures too, maybe Un’hee and Eli find them there, doesn’t matter.

The two groups eventually meet, and things begin to come to a boil. The grysks have had all this time to make moves on the Ascendancy, and they might even be setting up in the Empire too now, if they’ve decided it’s worth it. Something dramatic probably has to happen to convince Ezra he’s needed there more than back in the Empire (tho the kid getting visions of his past and present is probably also a big factor, as is the “child girls are actively being kidnapped and held in forced labour for a species/legion/whatever hellbent on quiet takeover of everything ever in existence anywhere”) also, he’s been living on the “run” with Thrawn and co. for months now, and likely they’ve talked and come to some amount of understanding, especially re: previous actions done to each other and each other’s friends and family and factions.

Lakris and Frosif actually getting to eat their breakfast fritters (featuring a photobombing yubal)