Dave Filoni on Writing All of ‘Ahsoka’, Episode Lengths, and Which ‘Rebels’ Episodes to Watch Ahead of It
With The Mandalorian season 3 now behind us, Star Wars fans’ eyes are turning to the next project coming out. While Star Wars Visions Volume 2 and Young Jedi Adventures are coming out in early May, the next live-action Star Wars project is Ahsoka, which is targeting an August release date.
As announced at Star Wars Celebration, Dave Filoni is not only the showrunner, but also the sole writer of all eight episodes. This will be the first time Jon Favreau is not heavily involved in the writing of any of the New Republic-era shows, as he’s only an executive producer. Dave Filoni explained to Collider in an interview at Celebration that it only made sense for him to do it by himself, as he knows the characters better than anyone else; coincidentally, this was revealed in the same convention where Chapter 23 was screened for the fans.
The episode, one of the two in this past season co-written by Filoni, is highly regarded as one of the best of season 3. Moreover, before that, he’d co-written Chapter 20, which featured a flashback to the Jedi Purge and the return of Ahmed Best as Kelleran Beq, the Jedi Knight who saved Grogu, plus Chapter 6 of The Book of Boba Fett, which is beloved among the fanbase as well. The last time he wrote an episode of television by himself was The Mandalorian‘s Chapter 13, The Jedi.
In addition to writing, he also confirmed to Collider that he will be directing more than one episode of the season. While he wouldn’t provide the total number of episodes in the season, Ray Stevenson did confirm in a separate interview that there will be eight of them. This could hint at Filoni directing three episodes, as the list revealed at Celebration included six names: Filoni, Steph Green, Rick Famuyiwa, Peter Ramsey, Jennifer Getzinger, and Geeta Patel. When asked by Collider about the runtime, though, Filoni did say that, while they do like to have tight runtimes to keep the momentum going, the current cuts of the episodes could be, on average, slightly longer than The Mandalorian‘s:
“That’s an interesting question. I would say it’s pretty relative when you do this kind of work. One thing Jon and I are very adamant about is we try to cut it down and strip it down to keep it moving. It’s definitely a faster and more intense rule than George has. My episodes have actually started pretty long, you know, because I wrote them all, so they are a little different. Probably, relative to other stuff that I’ve written and done, like the episode “The Jedi”. If it’s gotta be tight and fast because I need the action to work, it’s gonna be shorter, but I would say they are in the same range as The Mandalorian episodes… Maybe on average a little longer, but I honestly I don’t know where they are right now, in the most recent cuts that I’ve done, but I would say it’s in the same range.”
We know that Ahsoka is essentially going to act as the sequel to Star Wars: Rebels, now in live-action. Filoni knows as much as the rest of us that the audience for live-action projects is much larger than for animation, meaning that there will be many people that tune into Ahsoka who are unfamiliar with Rebels. When asked which episodes from that series fans who haven’t seen it should watch before tuning into Ahsoka, Filoni replied the following:
“I would start, probably like the episode ‘Jedi Knight’, where the sad thing happens to Kanan. Even if you didn’t understand what that was, it would propel you forward. If you just watched season 4, you’d be set. You can start with that and you get that these Rebels are fighting this tyrannical Empire and that would get you everything and everybody you need. You don’t need to do the entire gamut of Rebels, but you should. Once you watch that, you’ll be like ‘Well, I’m gonna watch it all.’ […] Yeah, I’ve been very aware when writing these things that you don’t need to have seen any of it; not that I don’t want you to, I want you to, but you don’t have to.”
He was also asked at the beginning of the interview how many unannounced projects he and Favreau are working on, and while he wouldn’t provide any number, it seems like, as anyone would guess, they are constantly discussing new projects and new ideas.
We know that The Mandalorian season 4 is currently in storyboarding phase and should go into production later this year. A second season of Ahsoka is also a very real possibility if the first one performs well on Disney Plus. Check out the video interview below:
Miguel Fernández is a Spanish student that has movies as his second passion in life. His favorite movie of all time is The Lord of the Rings, but he is also a huge Star Wars fan. However, fantasy movies are not his only cup of tea, as movies from Scorsese, Fincher, Kubrick or Hitchcock have been an obsession for him since he started to understand the language of filmmaking. He is that guy who will watch a black and white movie, just because it is in black and white.
