Morgan Elsbeth's 'Gift' From The Night Mothers In Ahsoka Episode 8 Explained

"Ahsoka" just came to an end, bringing an inconsistent season with horrible pacing (yet also some of the best moments in recent "Star Wars" history) to a close. This felt like the most "Star Wars" a "Star Wars" show has ever been, with a true sense of adventure, jokes, lightsaber fights, magic, and actual intergalactic exploration. 

And in classic "Star Wars" fashion we have some great villains. Indeed, "Ahsoka" may have given us the biggest collection of great "Star Wars" baddies since "Revenge of the Sith." While Thrawn and Baylan Skoll got all the attention, the one villain we had met already also deserves some credit. Morgan Elsbeth, who is revealed in "Ahsoka" to be a Nightsister of Dathomir, is an interesting antagonist, and she gets a big glow-up in the finale. 

In recognition of Morgan's work in helping not just Thrawn, but the ancestral Dathmiri on the Nightsisters' original home planet of Peridia, the Great Mothers give Elsbeth the "Gift of Shadows." They perform a ritual that lights the former magistrate's eyes in green fire, leaving her with the same black eyes and facial markings that the rest of them have. The dialogue asking her to pledge herself to the sisterhood suggests that this merely makes her a fully-fledged Nightsister; she only had one small forehead tattoo before the ritual, and may have been too young to complete her training before the purge of Dathomir. However, the black eyes suggest she may also have received an instant promotion to Great Mother.

While face tattoos are cool and all, the real gift is the weapon that comes with the tattoos: the Blade of Talzin. Though Elsbeth doesn't live long enough to show off the scope of her new Nightsister powers, the sword is a cool little nod to the history of the Nightsisters and to "The Clone Wars."

The Blade of Talzin is a sword emanating flaming green ichor, allowing it to withstand lightsaber attacks. Elsbeth uses it to fight Ahsoka, but is ultimately killed by it when Ahsoka takes it from her and delivers a dual slash to the Nightsister's guts with her lightsaber and the Blade of Talzin. This feels appropriate, given how its previous owner met their fate.

The blade both belonged to and is named after Mother Talzin, the leader of the Nightsisters of Dathomir during the Clone Wars. It was Talzin who united all the Nightsisters into a single clan and proved a big enough threat to Darth Sidious for him to eventually want to eliminate her. As we saw in "The Clone Wars," Talzin's attempt to assassinate Count Dooku resulted in Grievous and his droid armies wiping out all the Nightsisters on Dathomir, but it was not enough to kill Talzin.

Instead, the Great Mother used her powers to restore her half-dead son Maul back to health, at the cost of her physical body. Then, in order to gain back her physical body, Talzin gained the allegiance of a cult that kidnapped people to steal their Living Force. After kidnapping Queen Julia of Bardotta to do the same, Talzin inadvertently drew the attention of Jedi Master Mace Windu and unsung hero Jar Jar Binks. Talzin fights Mace, using the cursed green blade, in a cool lightsaber fight. Despite her surprisingly good sword-fighting skills, Talzin was no match for the senator responsible for both Palpatine's right to dictatorship and the saving of Grogu. 

It seems that, no matter the situation, the Blade of Talzin is not really a gift but a harbinger of death.