"Ahsoka" brings a controversial animated character to live action with a redesign that has fans questioning how the original character got the green light in the first place.
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00:00 Ahsoka brings a controversial animated character to live action, with a redesign that has fans
00:05 questioning how the original character got the green light in the first place.
00:10 On the latest episode of the Disney+ series Ahsoka, a sequel series to Star Wars Rebels,
00:15 Hera Syndulla's green-haired son wants to be just like his aunt, Sabine.
00:19 "I wanna be a Jedi."
00:21 To Rebels fans, the intriguing part is that little Jason Syndulla, a twi'lek human child,
00:26 doesn't say "I wanna be a Jedi like my dad."
00:29 But Jason's human father, the late Jedi Kanan Jarrus, seems to be a story that Hera prefers
00:34 to explain to him another day.
00:36 Some fans think Leia and Han are the greatest couple in the galaxy, but Rebels fans know
00:41 the one true pairing is the space-married Kanan and Hera.
00:45 The two had what could be interpreted as an epic "will they or won't they" that filled
00:48 four seasons, only to reveal that the two already did the deed when Hera showed up with
00:52 the son at the end of the series finale.
00:54 "I love you."
00:55 "Must be the truth serum talking."
00:59 "No."
01:01 Jason had been a curiosity since his ten-second appearance in the Rebels epilogue, as an awkwardly
01:06 animated child in Hera's co-pilot seat.
01:09 Not only was he confirmation that Kanan and Hera consummated their relationship, but his
01:13 design raised a few eyebrows.
01:16 Some fans found him to be an eyesore.
01:18 Plus his pale orange skin, inherited from his twi'lek grandfather, came off as whitewashed,
01:23 since his father was a brown-coated character voiced by Freddie Prinze Jr., who is of Puerto
01:27 Rican descent.
01:29 It's not the first time the Star Wars franchise presented the offspring of a twi'lek in human
01:33 union, but it was the first time said offspring was more "human-passing" with human hair instead
01:38 of leku.
01:40 Jason's green hair, instead of the usual twi'lek-leku tendrils, has always been a point of contention
01:45 for fans.
01:46 If Ezra Bridger was a blueberry child for his bluish hair, then Jason earned the nickname
01:51 "the broccoli child" for his hair.
01:53 Does a twi'lek's skin tone — Hera's green skin, in this case — really factor into the
01:58 hair color of their offspring?
02:00 Some found the green hair to be inexplicable even by Star Wars standards.
02:04 Some speculated that Sabine, a chronic hair-dyer herself, colored his hair to match his mother's
02:08 complexion.
02:09 "Nice haircut."
02:10 "It's more me."
02:15 So Jason's in-the-works live-action appearance intrigued people.
02:19 When a Star Wars Lego set featured a Jason minifigure with brown hair, Redditors took
02:23 that as a hint of a live-action redesign with brown hair.
02:27 That guess was both right and wrong, when young Evan Witton, his dark hair dyed green,
02:32 showed up as Jason on Ahsoka.
02:34 There's probably a good reason why the animation team for Rebels elected to give Jason hair
02:38 instead of leku.
02:40 If the animators were aware that these characters could one day transfer to live-action, it
02:44 may have been a practical call to not saddle a kid actor with heavy makeup.
02:48 Witton's ears also were hidden by his green hair, which could conceal the green-shaded
02:52 ears that showed up on the cartoon model.
02:54 The Rebels' character sheet reportedly indicated that the animators intended to give Jason
02:58 his father's teal eyes, but the final animated version of the character ended up with dark
03:02 blue eyes.
03:04 Giving a kid color contacts could be troublesome, so the live-action Ahsoka goes with the actor's
03:09 natural brown eyes.
03:11 Witton's Jason also bears his father's complexion, a far cry from the pale orange skin of the
03:15 animated version.
03:17 As a final touch, Jason's suit has a Republic pauldron like his late father's.
03:21 Speaking of Kanan, when was Jason conceived, anyway?
03:25 Apparently it happened in Rebels season 4, episode 7, "Kindred."
03:29 No, Lucasfilm didn't tease that something very adult happened between the two, but Kindred
03:33 instead had a rather tame interaction with them watching the sunset, when Hera finds
03:38 Kanan meditating out in a field.
03:40 There's a time cut or dissolve to the title card after that scene, and at DragonCon 2018,
03:45 Rebels writer Henry Gilroy reportedly told a fan when asked about the nature of Jason's
03:49 conception, quote, "A lot of things can happen in a dissolve."
03:53 Tragically, Kanan would never meet his son, seeing as he sacrificed himself to save Hera
03:58 and the Ghost crew from a fire explosion on Lothal.
04:02 Does Jason know about that part of the story?
04:04 For now, that remains unclear.
04:07 Long before Witton bore Jason's green hair, theories ran wild about the little guy's future,
04:12 given that he would likely inherit Kanan's Force sensitivity.
04:15 In what may be an omen, he shares his name with Leia and Han's son from Star Wars Legends.
04:21 Those acquainted with Legends know that Jason Solo turned to the dark side and killed his
04:25 aunt Mara Jade in the legacy of the Force novels, Sacrifice.
04:29 So Jason Syndulla better not do something terrible to his aunt Sabine.
04:34 Time will tell what Disney has in store for live-action Jason, but it's indisputable that
04:38 he is well-cast, and looks as handsome as his father before him.
04:42 The Twi'lek human seems to have a hopeful path ahead of him, as long as he remains surrounded
04:47 by a loving family.
04:48 [music]