Anakin Skywalker Is The Reason Why Ahsoka’s Lightsabers Changed Color in ‘Star Wars: The Clone Wars’ Season 7
Ahsoka Tano’s journey on The Clone Wars has been long and full of some of the best character development in all of Star Wars. From a snippy 14-year-old Padawan to an older, wiser Force wielder on her own path outside of the Order, Ahsoka is nearly a different person. In Season 7, she’s dealt with her fair share of difficulties but nothing like what’s going down with the Siege of Mandalore. In the latest episode, her former master Anakin Skywalker gives her back some very important weapons to help her out, but they’re a bit different than audiences remembered. [Spoiler alert: Spoilers ahead for The Clone Wars Season 7, Episode 9].
Ahsoka received her lightsabers back from Anakin after she left the Jedi Order in Season 5
After Bo-Katan recruits Ahsoka, they contact Anakin and Obi-Wan Kenobi to see if the Republic will aid them in a siege on Mandalore, since Maul currently has control of the planet. It would be the perfect opportunity to capture the rogue Sith Lord and put a stop to his terror on Mandalore. It becomes clear that Obi-Wan doesn’t support this plan, and then Chancellor Palpatine gets kidnapped, Ahsoka has to go in alone. Anakin gives Ahsoka part of the 501st Legion — now the 332nd company, which includes Captain Rex — so that she’s not going in empty-handed.
On top of that, Anakin has Ahsoka’s lightsabers, which she had to give up when she left the Jedi Order. It’s a very tender moment and shows how much forethought Anakin had.
“It was a touching moment when Anakin gave Ahsoka her lightsabers back and you can definitely tell that meant so much to Ahsoka,” Ashley Eckstein, who voices Ahsoka, said on the recent “Clone Wars Download” video.
Keith Kellogg, the animation director for The Clone Wars, said that one of the shots shows Ahsoka looking up at Anakin when she gains her lightsabers back. It’s a moment Kellogg loves from the episode.
“You can just see how much it means to her that he would do something like this,” Kellogg said in the video. “And that was really what we wanted to convey in that look. In that, ‘You’ve always had my back,’ kind of thing.”
Even though they’re the same lightsabers, they’ve changed colors now; why?
If you can remember, Ahsoka’s old lightsabers were green. She originally just had one, and then took on another to enhance her fighting in Season 3. So when she lights up her new ones, fans might wonder why they’re now blue. Well, who else has a blue lightsaber? Anakin.
“Of course, she lights them up and they’re blue,” Kellogg shared. “Typical Anakin. Has to make things ‘better.’”
While it wasn’t explicitly stated why they were blue in the episode, Kellogg’s comment solidifies that Anakin changed them for Ahsoka. And in the episode, Anakin also states that they’re even “a little better” than before, after he took care of them while she was gone.
Lightsabers work because of the kyber crystal inside of them. That’s what gives it its power and also what chooses the color. In canon, a lightsaber adjusts to the “spiritual alignment” of the Jedi or Force wielder in charge of the lightsabers. This is what turns it blue, green, purple, yellow, etc. with blue and green the most common. Since Anakin had control of Ahsoka’s lightsabers, he turned them blue, which often denotes bravery. He could have done it on accident, or on purpose, but however he did it, it’s the final gift he’ll ever give Ahsoka.
Ahsoka has one more major lightsaber change in her lifetime, and this is after Order 66. Told in the Ahsoka novel by E.K. Johnston, Ahsoka no longer has her lightsabers a year later. But she does need a pair in her anti-Empire work, so she takes two bleeding crystals and clarifies them. They become white and they’re the lightsabers Ahsoka wields in Star Wars Rebels. They’re white to show she’s on her own path and neither a part of the Jedi nor the Sith.
This final arc is important and one of the ‘hardest’ things done on ‘The Clone Wars’
If you couldn’t tell just by Episode 9 alone, The Clone Wars is heading into one of its best and most epic arcs ever. As Kellogg said in the video, executive producer and supervising director Dave Filoni called the Siege of Mandalore “the hardest thing” their team has done. “This is what fans have been clamoring for,” Kellogg shared.
Ahsoka and Bo-Katan went to Mandalore with their new Republic Clone troopers in hopes to capture Maul and bring justice back to the Mandalorians and Mandalore. Fans already know what happens to the main characters from, Revenge of the Sith. The finale of the series will show what happens to the others.
“The film’s saga tells the story of Anakin Skywalker and his rise and fall and his redemption. I don’t need to tell that story in The Clone Wars. Knowing that, identifying the main characters of the series then are probably Ahsoka and Rex,” Filoni said in “Clone Wars Download.” “They’re the characters that we don’t know about. We see the series largely through their eyes through many different story arcs. So there was a responsibility to tell the end of their story and then hand off Anakin and Obi-Wan to their proper conclusion which is the film, Revenge of the Sith.”
With three episodes left, audiences are dying to know how Ahsoka escapes Maul’s ambush. April 24 will bring the answers.
