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When Rosario Dawson first appeared as Ahsoka Tano in Season 2 of The Mandalorian, it was a dream come true for many fans. She’d been a fan-favorite to take on a live-action of the iconic Jedi from Star Wars: Clone Wars and Star Wars: Rebels for years and finally, it happened. But the version of Ahsoka we first met on The Mandalorian got one major upgrade before she took the lead on her own Disney+ Star Wars series.
At the Destination D23 event in Florida, prop master Josh Roth revealed something interesting about Ahsoka’s iconic lightsabers. It seems on The Mandalorian, the props team couldn’t figure out how to power them. There simply wasn’t room for batteries to turn the saber on, leading the team to find a creative alternative. What was that alternative, you ask? They strapped the batteries to Dawson, herself.
That’s right, if you revisit Ahsoka’s first appearance on The Mandalorian, what you won’t notice is that under the sleeves of her costume, Dawson was fitted with battery packs connected to her dual sabers. While not exactly the most streamlined way to handle the problem, it worked. If you don’t know that Tano’s sabers are physically connected to her arms, it’s not necessarily easy to tell.
That said, Dawson didn’t have to deal with that issue very long. As they prepared to shoot the Ahsoka series, Roth and his team revisited the dual sabers, redesigning them to allow batteries to fit into the hilt. The change gave the actress more freedom in her movements and fight choreography. And that wasn’t the only lightsaber change that was made for the series.
Roth also revealed that series star Ray Stevenson had input on his own lightsaber, which he wielded in his portrayal of Baylan Skoll.
“Ray wanted to do something very special for this,” Roth said to the Destination D23 crowd. “And he wanted to change the pommel. We changed the pommel working with both [production designer] Doug [Chiang] and [showrunner] Dave [Filoni] and were able to implement a creative choice that Ray had.”
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Ahsoka will be Stevenson’s only Star Wars role, as the actor died earlier this year after he completed filming on the series.
Four episodes of Ahsoka remain, streaming Tuesdays on Disney+.
