This article contains spoilers for Ahsoka episode 3.One upcoming Star Wars movie – set over 25,000 years before the Skywalker saga – could reset everything viewers know about canon. The future of Star Wars lies in the past – specifically, in the distant past, over 25,000 years ago. Announced at Star Wars Celebration 2023, James Mangold’s upcoming Star Wars movie will tell the origin story of the first Force-user. He doesn’t expect to even use the word “Jedi,” because this will be before the order has formed.
Star Wars has revealed surprisingly little about the galaxy’s distant past. All the evidence suggests even the Jedi Order know little of these long ago times, perhaps because records were destroyed during various wars or the many Jedi purges that occurred in history. But Ahsoka, a Disney+ TV show set roughly nine years after the Battle of Yavin, has shone a fascinating light on galactic history. It may well have just revealed the true nature of James Mangold’s Star Wars movie.
Ahsoka Has Rewritten The History Of The Star Wars Galaxy
The McGuffin of Ahsoka is an ancient starmap, one that points the way across the void between the galaxies – the pathway to Peridea, a place that exists only in ancient legend. It’s currently unclear whether Peridea is the name of another galaxy, or a planet situated on the rim of that distant galaxy. Whatever the case may be, though, according to Huyang there are legends of ancient times when travel between the galaxies was commonplace. Apparently voyagers followed hyperspace routes between the galaxies that had been mapped from the migration paths of purrgil, Star Wars‘ beautiful space whales.
It’s impossible to overstate the significance of this revelation. It means the Star Wars galaxy was once part of a vast intergalactic network of civilizations, one that mysteriously collapsed. Its technological secrets have been lost for over 25,000 years, given Morgan Elsbeth and Ahsoka Tano are only now reopening the paths between the galaxies. Disturbingly, there have been hints they may have ties to the dark side of the Force; Ahsoka‘s end-credits show the starmap contains references in an ancient language that appears linked to ur-Kittât, a language steeped in the dark side adopted by the Sith themselves.
Where Was The Force First Discovered?
The history of the galaxy is more mysterious than ever before. But this is nothing compared to the enigma of where the first Jedi were found. Star Wars: The Last Jedi revealed what appeared to be the first Jedi Temple, on the remote planet Ahch-To in the Unknown Regions. And yet, despite that the order swiftly became associated with the Core Worlds; it became connected to the political movement that established the Old Republic. It’s as though the Jedi emerged fully-formed, albeit slightly different to their modern incarnation, given a mural of the Prime Jedi indicated they were an agent of balance – the darkness in the light and the light in the darkness.
Ahsoka‘s revelations raise the intriguing possibility the Jedi Order was not born in this galaxy at all. Rather, the Prime Jedi could well have originated in another galaxy, bringing their philosophy and knowledge of the Force to this one. If that is the case, then James Mangold’s Star Wars movie – a film that will reportedly tell the story of the first Force-users, the precursors of the Jedi – is actually set in a distant galaxy, perhaps even at Peridea.
Has James Mangold Already Secretly Revealed The True Story Of His Star Wars Movie?
Little is known of James Mangold’s Jedi origin movie, but he may have secretly revealed more than anyone realized. “What I really wanted to do, what I told her, was just can we make a kind of the Ten Commandments of the Force, you know,” he explained. “A kind of origin story of how the Force came to be known, understood, wielded, and harnessed.” The reference to the Ten Commandments is particularly important, because that may carry a lot more baggage than has previously been realized.
In the Bible, the Ten Commandments were issued to God by Moses after He freed the Israelite slaves from Egypt, taking them out of that nation to the Promised Land. This, perhaps, is the true origin of the Force in the Star Wars galaxy; that a dark side power once ruled over the galaxies, but the light side rose up against them, overthrowing them. With these villains defeated, these proto-Jedi escaped to their own Promised Land – a distant galaxy. Such a theory would tie the Force into the great pattern of history woven in Ahsoka; it would explain why this intergalactic civilization collapsed, its secrets lost for 25,000 years.
It’s possible the slavers are a canon version of a race called the Rakata. In Star Wars Legends, the Rakata originated from the Deep Core and enslaved most of the galaxy, but were defeated by the Je’daii – the order who became the Jedi. The Rakata were strong in the dark side of the Force, noted for enslaving Force-sensitives. They have already been mentioned in canon, with a surprising nod to the Rakata in Andor, but the canon version could easily be transformed into an intergalactic empire. If this theory is correct, then James Mangold’s next Star Wars movie is one that will see the precursors of the Jedi emerge in another galaxy, overthrow their Rakatan oppressors, and travel to this more familiar one.
Star Wars‘ Jedi have often been seen as something of a Jewish allegory. Even the word Jedi bears similarities to the Hebrew word for Jew, “Yehudi” (the letter Yud is often anglicized as a “J,” as in the name Joshua). The Chosen One is, of course, a Messianic prophecy – a Christian one built on the foundation of Judaism. And the Jedi Purge is the horror of the Holocaust. All this means it would be entirely natural for Star Wars to weave the Exodus story into the history of the Jedi, revealing they were an exodus people – the slaves who rose up against their masters. It would be perfectly fitting, and yet absolutely thrilling, in that it would tell a story few imagined would ever be told.
New episodes of Ahsoka release every Tuesday and 6pm PT / 9pm ET on Disney+.
