Investigating Thrawn in the Ahsoka Disney+ Show
With the highly anticipated Ahsoka Disney+ series recently completing its first season, we have our first glimpse of the notorious Grand Admiral Thrawn in live-action Star Wars. Having completed a Master’s Thesis where I talked a lot about Thrawn as an Antiquarian, representing a type of Archaeologist often found in pop culture, I wanted to revisit Thrawn and update my research on the subject.
Previous Iterations of Thrawn
Thrawn talking to Ezra in Star Wars: Rebels. Credits to Disney & Lucasfilm.
Grand Admiral Thrawn has been a staple of Star Wars since 1991 when Timothy Zahn’s Heir to the Empire was published. The series went on to be a trilogy, following Luke and Leia’s struggles rebuilding the Republic after the end of Return of the Jedi. The series follows Grand Admiral Thrawn as he attempts to rebuild the Empire at the same time, and he proves a hard adversary for Luke Skywalker as he outthinks and always seems to be one step ahead of the New Republic.
In my research, I talked about this iteration of him alongside the newer depictions of him in both Star Wars: Rebels and his appearance in comic books and novels. He keeps a lot of the same characteristics, and he is overwhelmingly still shown to be a collector and researcher of cultures through their physical remains - which is what Archaeology is all about.
“Who deserves what is irrelevant. What matters is who has power.”
These depictions of him, particularly in his role as a Grand Admiral of the Empire, also cement a lot of the imagery already associating the Empire with Nazi Germany. Bettina Arnold is a foremost scholar on Nazi Archaeology and the use of the past as propaganda in the field, and almost all of the imagery and parallels are there with Thrawn. He could easily be compared to historical figures such as Heinrich Himmler or Alfred Rosenberg. So how do those parallels and ideas continue in his new form?
Thrawn’s Live Action Performance
Thrawn in the final Ahsoka Disney+ trailer. Image Credits to Disney.
THERE WILL BE SPOILERS IN THIS SECTION FOR THE TELEVISION SHOW
Thrawn is being played onscreen by the same actor who did the voice performance for him in the Star Wars: Rebels show, Lars Mikkelsen. In my opinion, he continues to be a great cast for the role, and his appearance was very believable. This is one of the first shows in Star Wars that has a heavy non-human cast, and I think the costuming and makeup departments did a great job making them all very believable. This is quite important, as it is something I have talked about multiple times with respect to the representation in Star Wars with both gender and race.
I will talk about the full casting of Ahsoka later, I plan to do a small series of my own on the show to talk about the extensions of my research with other characters and aspects as well, but the casting and appearance of Thrawn were quite well done and he retains his militaristic appearance as a Grand Admiral that ties in well the previous iterations mentioned before.
We unfortunately don’t get to see a lot of Thrawn’s Antiquarian status come out in this show, though I fully expect it might later. What we do see a lot of is his interaction with the Great Mothers and his arrival to Dathomir. This is significant in a number of ways, as it relates directly back to the Jedi video game series, and I did a full breakdown of Jedi: Fallen Order in my thesis, but to summarize here is that Dathomir in the game was shown to have a massive connection to the Force and the ancient Zeffo, a culture that revolved around the use of the Force that had since died out.
There are a lot of Archaeological ideas in Jedi: Fallen Order, but as it connects to Thrawn specifically, his relationship to the Great Mothers, Dathomir, and the planet they have been stuck on for a long time all have this tie to the Force and potentially the Zeffo culture from the game as well. There are several times when the background elements on multiple planets in the show, including Peridea where Thrawn has been living, have the same stylistic elements as the ones in Fallen Order suggesting that Thrawn is still using his Antiquarian skills to give himself an advantage over his enemies and convince the Nightsisters to help him.
He is also a bystander to the Nightsister ceremony at the end of the series, further suggesting this connection. While that may be all we can directly gleam from the short glimpses we get of Thrawn, he remains an enemy to be wary of, and the direct reference Ahsoka makes to the Heir to the Empire book suggests that he will remain an enemy in Star Wars media for some time to come.
As I said, I plan to cover more of the series as an extension of my research for some time to come, but for now what did you think about Thrawn’s performance in Ahsoka?
