Ahsoka on Choosing (and Fighting) to Live, and why it matters that Anakin was the one to complete this lesson
Ahsoka has been playing the neutral game for a while now. Don’t engage, it at all possible. Avoid conviction , which Anakin points out that she lacks. Anakin tells Ahsoka that her training isn’t yet complete. There’s still a last lesson for her, and it’s one that transforms her in the end.
That message? Fight.
This is not about merely physical survival. This is about spiritual survival, the survival of who Ahsoka is in the Light.
It’s exactly the lesson Anakin had to learn for himself. He had to learn to fight for the Light inside him; he had to fight Vader to find himself again and protect the core of who he is. He couldn’t teach her that before, all that time ago. He didn’t know. He could teach her to be a soldier, yes, but as Ahsoka knows and as we found out in this episode, her training from him wasn’t complete. Because he had only recently learned t he final lesson himself, which he is now in the World Between Worlds to teach her. He tells her:
He knows it’s already within her, but she resists the message. Ahsoka lives through the past once again, and Anakin is trying to show her how she wasn’t just fighting to live in a physical sense, she was fighting to save her self in the spiritual sense, her soul in the Light side of the Force. She fought to save herself when she left the Jedi Order. She fought for what she believed was right in the siege of Mandalore.
But in one thing, Ahsoka has remained neutral, avoiding a solid conviction. She won’t fight Anakin, she won’t take that step.
But that’s not what Anakin wants. In the same way that Luke initially didn’t want to fight his father and eventually had to in order to protect what is good and true inside of himself, Ahsoka has to choose that, too. Anakin had to learn that and choose to live himself, too. Luke and Anakin have gone before her; it is Ashoka’s turn now. Anakin pushes her.
Ahsoka walks right up to the edge. She engages in the struggle, as she is meant to. She touches the Dark side, and she chooses to back away from it. She chooses to fight for the Light inside her. She chooses to live.
It’s exactly what Anakin wanted her to learn. His reaction is interesting, because he appears almost sad for a moment.
But I think it’s because he’s shocked at how comparatively easy it was for Ahsoka to resist the Dark side, in contrast to himself. He realizes she’s so much stronger on that front than he ever was. He’s surprised, ashamed of himself perhaps, but ultimately proud of her. “There’s hope for you yet,” he tells Ahsoka.
This experience changes Ahsoka forever and from this she becomes Ahsoka the White.
Ahsoka has found balance now. She learns that in the struggle to hold on to the Light inside of her, she has to take a stand in the end. It’s what Luke learned, it’s what Anakin finally learned, and Ahsoka has finally found that hope, too. Anakin wasn’t able to finish her training all that time ago because he didn’t know the lesson yet; now that he does, he has returned to her in the World Between Worlds to finish her training. He brought balance yet again, and Ahsoka has found peace with her past. She was never “just a soldier,” she was always so much more. Anakin brought her hope, and now its Ahsoka’s turn to carry the flame.
