It was a second Star Wars followers had been ready for: the reunion of Ahsoka Tano (Rosario Dawson) and her former grasp, Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen). Who higher to direct that episode of Ahsoka than Dave Filoni, who created the title character (alongside George Lucas) for the animated sequence The Clone Wars? For Filoni, who additionally wrote the episode, it was essential to discover a technique to please longtime followers whereas additionally educating new viewers. Bringing Anakin into Ahsoka was a part of that course of.

“I wished to discover a technique to understand a few of these issues that I had accomplished in animation in live-action past the present-day variations of the characters of Ahsoka and Ezra and Sabine, who had been older,” Filoni says of the animated Star Wars characters who had been dropped at life on this sequence. “So in my thoughts, bringing Anakin again was one thing to present context to the character of Ahsoka. In case you had by no means seen The Clone Wars, how do I provide you with that context? And so having her confront her mentor, for the typical particular person tuning in to grasp her mentor was Darth Vader, which is a really huge deal, made a number of narrative sense. However then additionally, in fact, the fan in me is considering, ‘This might be actually cool.’”

A bit of backstory for the uninitiated: A very long time in the past in a galaxy far, distant, Anakin Skywalker, a Jedi Knight, is given an apprentice, Ahsoka Tano, through the Republic’s combat in opposition to the Separatist Alliance, referred to as the Clone Wars. All through the seven-season animated sequence, Ahsoka research underneath Anakin as a Jedi Padawan, will get betrayed, leaves the Jedi Order and finally escapes Order 66, which is the directive given by Emperor Palpatine to kill all Jedi. Ahsoka turns up in one other animated sequence, Rebels, earlier than leaping to live-action first in The Mandalorian after which her personal sequence.

The “Shadow Warrior” episode has been extensively praised by the Star Wars fanbase — a neighborhood identified for being among the franchise’s harshest critics — and featured the live-action re-creations of two battle sequences from The Clone Wars, exhibiting a a lot youthful Ahsoka (performed by Ariana Greenblatt) preventing alongside Anakin earlier than he later turned to the Darkish Facet. The episode additionally gave Christensen and Dawson the chance to have interaction in a lightsaber battle within the World Between Worlds, which was first launched within the animated sequence Rebels — to not point out the primary live-action look of beloved clone Captain Rex.

“On the finish of the day, it’s all from the identical creativeness, it’s all from the identical love of Star Wars and journey,” Filoni notes when requested in regards to the variations between directing for animation and live-action. “In live-action, although, it’s all going to occur proper in entrance of you within the second. You are able to do so much digitally later, however you must be ready to seize that second. And within the animation, [you can control] each pose, posture, blink, expression, every little thing: If I don’t like the best way one thing’s going, I can redo it, I can get there granularly and redraw it. Right here, it’s trusting individuals to grow to be the factor and to create a second, which is a bit completely different.”

Although Filoni and Christensen had lengthy talked about working collectively, Filoni wished Skywalker’s look to be natural and never self-serving. “Possibly I’m simply doing this as a result of I’m going to get pleasure from watching Anakin discuss to Ahsoka with the clones working round,” he says of his considerations. “However I felt there have been sufficient good issues there that I used to be actually digging it and followers would, too.”

On a extra technical stage, the episode featured Ahsoka underwater — a problem given the truth that Dawson is in a head prosthetic — and speaking with a large area while-like creature, known as purrgil, whereas standing on a wing of her spaceship, which is aloft. Filoni additionally was aware of attempting to verify the extra out-there components didn’t take the viewer out of the story.

“All of the technical particulars that this staff had, I had confidence in them that they may overcome something, and all I needed to do was actually be clear with what I used to be describing,” he says. “Promoting the viewers on big area whales — it’s form of difficult, it may be a bit of far on the market, however I wished it to really feel naturalistic and actual and plausible.” To make it appear to be the creature was really floating in entrance of Dawson, the staff arrange 5 “gigantic” followers to create the impact of robust wind and drilled a chunk of wooden behind her foot to maintain her from being “blown again off the stage.”

One other concern was that the episode itself is “a bit summary.” Amongst different components, it additionally options the World Between Worlds, first launched within the animated sequence Rebels as a mystical realm, accessible solely to Pressure customers, that exists between time and area. Filoni labored intently with cinematographer Quyen Tran to stage upfront the scenes that discovered Ahsoka and Skywalker engaged in a lightsaber duel.

“What we’re seeing could be very impressionistic battles — how do you painting that?” he says of their method to re-creating this world. “We did a number of in depth pre-vis on it, similar to I’d the animation. After we obtained there on the day [of filming], we actually knew what we had been attempting to seize. Her lighting within the extra summary battle scenes was going to play a serious position of composition, so the lighting and the tonality of it needed to be clear. And I need to know with a number of certainty that every one of this exterior, environmental affect was going to work. So I might actually on the day give attention to the efficiency and the actors.”

What’s distinctive about Anakin is Christensen originated the character within the prequels, however Filoni fleshed out the a part of his life between Assault of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith to a level that his flip to the Darkish Facet is given extra context and foreshadowed extra considerably. How did Filoni assist Christensen reconcile the live-action and animated variations of the characters?

“What Hayden and I share is, we had been each instructed and taught by George,” Filoni says. “And so the view of Anakin that I’ve relies on my collaboration with George Lucas once I labored on The Clone Wars. I used to be lucky that we had the time to inform the story of Anakin Skywalker and flesh it out in a approach that he actually might be the hero that I imagined as a child within the films. You get a bit of of that [in the prequels], however as a result of he’s descending into the darkish aspect, you don’t get it in a serious approach. For Hayden, he actually favored what we’d accomplished on The Clone Wars, and we’d discuss it. So we actually had a typical body of reference for a way this character might be and to form of open him up.”

Jedi aren’t speculated to type emotional attachments, however Anakin does find yourself growing a bond with Ahsoka, in form of an enormous brotherly form of approach.

“However he can also he let go of attachments, if he sees that Ahsoka is self-sufficient, that she will be able to defend herself,” which is finally the explanation that Anakin reveals up in Ahsoka, to show her that lesson. “There was no query to me that he would simply be the embodiment of this character. He invented it. I took it and did a model in animation however I by no means considered it as completely different. I believed, ‘It’s simply Anakin.’ And so the one factor I needed to give him was the boldness that that was what this was and it’s all the identical.” (Filoni demurs when requested if Christensen will seem in Season 2, which he’s presently within the means of writing.)

For Filoni, one other huge problem lay within the casting of the long-lasting characters, he notes, praising Dawson and Greenblatt for portraying Ahsoka at two very completely different phases of her life, together with the remainder of the Ahsoka forged, who introduced quite a few Rebels character to life.

“The most important problem was discovering the proper individuals,” he says. “You write these scenes, you write these characters and also you go, ‘Gosh, anyone’s obtained to play this.’ I’ve had a fantastic model of those characters in animation. The voice actors are phenomenal and convey such life and dimension to each considered one of them. However [in Ahsoka], it’s going to be a distinct factor and, and somebody has to embody it differently. Will the viewers settle for that? Will they settle for the distinction? Do they should sound like them? Do they should seem like them? What’s the measure of that? Once you, when you’ve got these extremely gifted individuals, there’s a stage of belief and also you let go of issues. It’s a fantastic expertise to get to be there and be part of it and watch it and it, it’s launched out of your palms. It turns into one thing else. It comes alive in methods as a result of all people on set is doing their half to make it come alive, and that’s an exquisite factor.”

Filoni can also be fast to credit score his inventive staff, a lot of whom he’s labored with for 20 years. “I’d not be doing what I’m doing with out them,” he says. “I couldn’t have advised any good tales with out them. It makes me unhappy generally that they’re not all right here with me as a result of they’re such part of it. However you keep in mind these individuals, they’re necessary to your course of, they’re necessary to the tales. You make them part of it. They obtained to return to set and you realize, they get so excited and are so comfortable they usually’re doing nice issues.”

Filoni additionally credit his mentor Lucas for serving to him make the bounce to live-action. “I’m watching this stuff that I had watched since I used to be a child, or I had drawn in animation for years, bounce to life, and I wouldn’t have been doing any of that if it wasn’t for George,” he says. “If George hadn’t impressed me whereas engaged on The Clone Wars to say, you realize, live-action might be one thing that I might do, that I might problem myself and maybe discover that in me, as a result of I wasn’t educated in doing that. If there was any coaching I had, it was with working with him.”

A model of this story first appeared in a June standalone subject of The Hollywood Reporter journal. Click on right here to subscribe.