Did you finish the first couple episodes of Ahsoka wondering when exactly this all takes place? It wasn’t just you — the new Disney Plus series doesn’t give specifics, and if you’re a fan of Star Wars Rebels, it even appears to contradict itself.
So let’s sweep up all these breadcrumbs and see what we can make of it, and Ahsoka’s (so far) oddly coy way of dating itself.
[Ed. note: This piece contains spoilers for the first two episodes of Ahsoka.]
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In a general sense, Ahsoka’s place in the Star Wars timeline is clear. Like The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett, it takes place after the fall of the Empire and before the rise of the First Order — between Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, starring Luke, and Star Wars: The Force Awakens, starring Rey. In Star Wars universe parlance, this is four years after Star Wars: A New Hope, or 4 ABY (which stands for After the Battle of Yavin).
And according to some supplemental Star Wars books, the events of The Mandalorian, in which Ahsoka initially cameoed, take place nine years after A New Hope, or 9 ABY. Ahsoka the show seems to take place sometime after that.
But then there’s that dang mural dedication scene
The mural is a nice treat for Rebels fans to see this artwork rendered in live action. Lothal’s government has a whole dedication ceremony for it in Ahsoka, which would imply that it’s newly painted.
But if you’ve watched Rebels, you know that it’s not. It was originally seen in the show’s finale, which takes place in 5 ABY, as Sabine Wren and Ahsoka Tano stood before it and vowed to work together in a search for Ezra Bridger. This should sound very familiar, because they do that exact same thing in the exact same place in the second episode of Ahsoka. So you could be forgiven for thinking that Ahsoka takes place in 5 ABY, before the events of The Mandalorian and immediately flowing out of Rebels.
And yet, we also learn in Ahsoka that Ahsoka and Sabine have developed a whole master-and-failed-apprentice relationship off screen, which would imply that when Sabine and Ahsoka meet to go find Ezra in front of the mural in Ahsoka, it is not simply a live-action re-creation of the final scene of Rebels. It’s just the two of them doing it again some years later, without either of them commenting on the repetition, and also that Lothal is just really, really late to dedicate the mural. Not confusing at all.
All in all, it currently appears as if Ahsoka takes place after the events of The Mandalorian and Boba Fett, which take place after the events of Star Wars: A New Hope. How many years after? As the governor of Lothal so helpfully puts it at the mural dedication ceremony: “Several.”
Thanks, that’s very helpful.