Ahsoka Highlights The Mandalorians' History Of Jedi-Slaying
Episode 4 of "Ahsoka" delivers an interesting battle match-up between two characters who both occupy gray areas in "Star Wars" lore: Sabine Wren, a Mandalorian with Jedi training who wields a lightsaber, and Shin Hati, a character also trained in the Jedi arts who is (to paraphrase Britney Spears) not a Jedi, but not yet a Sith. Both were trained by masters who used to be Jedi, but have since turned away from the Order.
Although this isn't a straightforward Jedi vs. Mandalorian fight, it does echo the history of Mandalorians and Jedi as longtime foes. In fact, if the Mandalorians had never clashed with the Jedi in the first place, they wouldn't be the badass, beskar-steel-clad space daddies that we've come to know them as. Dave Filoni, the showrunner behind "Ahsoka," "Star Wars: The Clone Wars" and "Star Wars Rebels," explained to ComicBook.com in 2017 that "their weapons, their arsenal, their technology had a massive increase once they collided with the Jedi and found these Force-wielding people that had abilities they didn't understand."
Thousands of years before the main "Star Wars" storyline takes place, there were a series of conflicts between the Jedi and the Mandalorians that culminated in a scorched earth battle on Mandalore (literally — it scorched the planet's surface into a desert). Though the Jedi were ultimately victorious in that war, the experience of battling them over and over again honed Mandalorians into highly effective anti-Jedi warriors.
The most notable example of this is their armor; it's made from beskar steel, one of the only materials known to be capable of stopping a lightsaber blade. "[Mandalorian] armor is a reaction to the Jedi," Filoni confirmed. "Their arsenal was very much designed to combat the Jedi."
Go-go gadget anti-Jedi missile
It's thanks to beskar steel that Sabine avoids joining the "Star Wars" club of characters who have lost a limb to a lightsaber. After being disarmed herself, she's able to deflect a blow from Shin's saber using one of her vambraces. Sabine's Mandalorian arsenal similarly comes to her rescue when she tries to Force push Shin, but only manages to move her arm back slightly (the matter of Sabine's Force-sensitivity is, as we learned last week, rather complicated). As Shin is gloating, "You have no power," she gets disarmed herself by an explosive projectile fired from Sabine's wrist.
Symbolically, this is Sabine's training as a Mandalorian filling in the gaps where a Jedi would normally have natural talent with the Force. As we saw when Sabine was chasing Shin through the forest and firing off blaster shots, the worst thing a blaster can usually do to a trained Jedi is trigger their carpal tunnel syndrome. Between superhuman reflexes and a heightened sensitivity to danger, Jedi are able to block blaster shots simply by swinging their lightsabers with perfect timing and batting the blaster shot away (kind of like a high-stakes game of "Pong").
Ancient Mandalorians presumably picked up on this pretty quickly, which is why Mandalorian wrist rockets explode on contact. Shin brings her lightsaber up and successfully blocks the shot with the blade, but the explosive dart still knocks the lightsaber from her hand. Sabine's marrying of Jedi and Mandalorian fighting styles also has deep roots in "Star Wars" lore that date back to Tarre Vizsla, the first Mandalorian to join the Jedi Order, and the creator of the Darksaber.
Fallen Mandalorian
If Sabine's use of her wrist rocket in place of a Force push highlights the power of Jedi and Mandalorian training working in tandem, then her abandonment of her helmet may be an omen regarding the dangers of forgetting one half in favor of the other. Sabine's helmet is knocked off when she's thrown against a tree at the start of the fight, and there's a lingering shot of it lying where it fell on the forest floor as Sabine and Shin battle with lightsabers in the background. Sabine ultimately loses both her helmet and her lightsaber in the fight, but when Shin runs off to help her master and Sabine chases after her, she only stops to grab her lightsaber. She leaves the helmet behind, either deciding there's no time to look for it or simply forgetting about it entirely.
It's a stark contrast to the relationship between Din Djarin and his armor in "The Mandalorian." Din follows an orthodox religion called the Way of the Mandalore, in which armor is considered so sacred that no one is allowed to see them without their helmets. For Sabine to leave her helmet behind speaks to her own backstory of being exiled from Mandalore, but it's also symbolic of where her loyalties now lie.
Stopping to grab the lightsaber is proof not of Sabine's dedication to her Jedi training, but to the friend who gave her the lightsaber: Ezra Bridger. Baylan Skoll preys on this when he observes that Sabine feels Ezra is the only family she has left, and tells her bluntly: "Your family died on Mandalore because your master didn't trust you."
If combining Jedi and Mandalorian training made Sabine stronger, then abandoning them both in her search for Ezra could have dire consequences. On the other hand, perhaps she'll end up forging an entirely new path.
New episodes of "Ahsoka" release Tuesdays at 9 pm E.T. on Disney+.