Some of you fans may have noticed an Ahsoka Tano design change in The Mandalorian. Rosario Dawson’s live-action version of Ahsoka made her debut in Chapter 13 of The Mandalorian last Friday. Whilst the reception for Dawson’s take was largely positive, there was one detail some Ahsoka fans were peeved about. The length of Ahsoka’s head tails in The Mandalorian were a lot shorter than they were in Rebels. Now Rebels was a stylized animated show, but clearly her head tails were longer than they had been in The Clone Wars. However the live-action Ahsoka’s head tails are actually on par with The Clone Wars version.
Kyle Malone and I discussed the change on our The Cantina Podcast for this week’s episode. Kyle who has not really seen Rebels never even noticed. I did notice, but honestly it did not bother me, we both reckoned this was changed for practical reasons. Looks like we were right.
Concept designer Brian Matyas took to Twitter to explain the change. As Kyle and I suspected, this was changed for practical filming reasons regarding stunts etc. Check it out.
Yea pretty much that was the chief concern. From animation to live action I did a ton of design exploration for her and their appropriate size for the actor with consideration for stunts and movement. I'm sure I'll get to discuss at greater length in the near future!
— Brian Matyas (@brianmatyasart) November 27, 2020
One fan was still unhappy with the change and actually showed a pretty accurate comparison shot. Take a look.
Sadly, I think this was a bad call. Biggest complaint with the show so far but man, it’s not cool to see the continuity messed with. Found this rendition posted earlier and it looks so much better following Ashoka’s age relative to others of her species and following Rebels pic.twitter.com/q1XOYh2xHY
— Logan Harrington (@lman8bsa) November 28, 2020
Honestly, I think the right hand side shot looks better. I am not passionate enough for this to have a negative effect on my enjoyment of the character though. That’s essentially going to be a personal call for each fan, so decide for yourself.
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As said, I just didn’t think too much about the Ahsoka Tano design change. I enjoyed Dawson as Ahsoka, though she was treated as secondary guest character. The episode generally shows us Ahsoka from Mando’s point of view, or the Magistrate’s. We never really get the chance to explore Ahsoka’s head space or where she is at this point in her life. Though, we can see she is still following the dogmatic pre-Empire version of the Jedi code. Perhaps that she still does not consider herself a Jedi and has fear over what happened to her Master? Finally, we know that Ahsoka is searching for Grand Admiral Thrawn. As I said in my Free Talk Friday column, I think this is all designed to set up Ahsoka’s own spin-off series.
What do you think of this Ahsoka Tano design change in The Mandalorian? Are you happy with the explanation, or are you annoyed at this change? Leave your thoughts below.
