Ahsoka Fans Think Dave Filoni Snuck In A Joke About This Star Wars Critique

The last episode of "Ahsoka" Season 1 is full of details meant not for casual viewers, but solely for seasoned fans of the extended "Star Wars" universe. An owl in the "Ahsoka" season finale, for example, only appears on-screen for a brief moment, but represents one of the more esoteric storylines from the canonical "Star Wars" cartoons.

Leading up to the episode's final conflict, Ezra Bridger (Eman Esfandi) constructs a new lightsaber on Ahsoka's (Rosario Dawson) ship. Ancient Jedi droid Huyang (David Tennant) at one point tells Ezra that a blade emitter he's planning on installing is too narrow, which some fans think is a joke about a widespread critique of "Star Wars Rebels."

Lightsabers in "Rebels," notably, appear thinner than in most of "Star Wars" before it. Users of a variety of online platforms including Reddit and Quora have therefore questioned this divergence in design. One Reddit thread with more than 1,900 upvotes even features a key battle from "Rebels" with its lightsabers excessively widened in response to this criticism.

Now in "Ahsoka," "Star Wars" TV series architect Dave Filoni appears to getting in on the fun. In a Reddit discussion thread for "Ahsoka" Episode 8, one user commented, "'The blade emitter is too narrow' Joke about how everyone thought the lightsabers in Rebels were too skinny." This received more than 6,000 upvotes, suggesting that a large number of viewers appreciated Filoni's apparent response to his "Rebels" critics.

Dave Filoni and the rest of the "Star Wars Rebels" team didn't decide to redesign lightsabers on a whim. Rather, their appearance throughout "Rebels" is a byproduct of the influence of both the original "Star Wars" film and art by Ralph McQuarrie from around the time of that first movie's premiere. "We wanted something that was going to be reminiscent of the original trilogy, so I suggested we base it on Ralph's designs," he said, describing how they landed on the look of "Rebels" in an interview with StarWars.com

Skinner lightsabers are apparent in McQuarrie's "Star Wars" art, and Filoni described one manner in which he wanted "Rebels" to mimic their appearance in a ComicBook.com interview. "Kanan has a very classic lightsaber; if you look at it, it has a guard on it. That is really how Ralph McQuarrie originally drew lightsabers, with a little guard," he said.

Even in "Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope," Obi-Wan (Alec Guinness) and Darth Vader's (James Earl Jones) lightsabers are a little skinner than they would appear in future films, providing the "Rebels" lightsaber aesthetic with an even firmer visual basis.