Posted by This series of articles will look at where some well-loved (and/or infamous) characters from the Star Wars galaxy are during the time frame of the Obi-Wan Kenobi show. Let’s start with three survivors of Order 66. The following will contain spoilers for Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, Star Wars: Ahsoka by E. K. Johnston, Star Wars: Rebels, and Star Wars: A New Dawn by John Jackson Miller.
Where are the Order 66 Survivors?
Disney+’s upcoming Star Wars series Obi-Wan Kenobi will pick up ten years after the events of Revenge of the Sith. The return of at least one other major character has been teased, but where are other beloved Star Wars characters during the time in which this show is set? A lot happens between the rise of the Empire and A New Hope with many characters playing a part in both the rise of the Rebellion and in shaping the Empire.
Cal Kestis
Cal Kestis, the protagonist of the 2019 video game Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, is an Order 66 survivor. After a desperate escape from the ship that he and his Master Jaro Tapal were serving on, Cal loses his Master and eventually finds himself on the planet Bracca. Here he befriends Prauf and goes to work as a scrapper- breaking down old ships. Though he tries to hide his past as a Jedi Padawan, his abilities eventually catch the eye of the Empire when he’s able to save Prauf after a section of the ship they were standing on gives way and nearly dumps the pair into the mouth of the giant Ibdis Maw.
Worried that he’ll be found, Cal plans to leave the planet but is stopped by the Jedi hunting Inquisitors. Though the Inquisitors do not know exactly who they are looking for, Cal reveals himself to them after Prauf tries to speak up against the Empire but is unceremoniously killed by the Second Sister. Cal runs and eventually finds himself aboard the Mantis with his rescuers Cere Junda and Greez Dritus. And Cere has a proposal for Cal…
The main events of the game take place about five years after the initial Jedi purge, placing the game five years before the events of Obi-Wan Kenobi.
Major spoilers for Jedi: Fallen Order follow.
In the story of Fallen Order, not only is Cal on the run from the Inquisitors, but Cere, a former Jedi Master herself, asks him to help her find a Jedi Holocron. Contained in this Holocron is a list of Force-sensitive children who could be trained as Jedi… or turned to the Dark Side by Vader’s Inquisitor program. After many trials and battles, Cal heals his connection with the Force and is able to locate the Holocron.
Initially, Cal considers a future where he is able to track down these children himself and train them. But then the Second Sister finds him and takes the prize for herself. The team is able to locate the hidden fortress home of the Inquisitors and are determined to take back the Holocron. But between a final showdown with the Second Sister and a narrow escape from Darth Vader himself, Cal reconsiders his options.
In the closing moments of Jedi: Fallen Order, Cere remarks how the lives of the children on the Holocron’s list are going to be changed forever. But Cal replies:
“Not by us. Their destiny should be trusted to the Force.”
Drawing his lightsaber, he cuts the Holocron in half. “Where to next?” he asks, setting up a potential and semi-confirmed sequel to the game.
With no sequel out yet, it’s not clear where Cal may have gone in the five-year gap between Fallen Order and Obi-Wan Kenobi. But with an eye on potentially helping to rebuild the order, perhaps their paths may cross. At the very least, Cal knows quite a bit about the Inquisitors now, and the concept art for Obi-Wan Kenobi does show an Inquisitor landing on Tatooine…
Ahsoka Tano
Former Jedi Padawan to Anakin Skywalker and Order 66 survivor, Ahsoka is the character that I personally hope for the most to show up in Obi-Wan Kenobi! So where is Obi-Wan’s “grand-Padawan” during the events of his upcoming series? By the time the events Star Wars: Rebels roll around, she’s well-established as a member of the Rebellion. But how did she get there?
Star Wars: Ahsoka, a novel by E. K. Johnston provides some of those answers. Though parts of the book are not quite “canon” anymore due to Disney+’s final season of Star Wars: Clone Wars showing a slightly different Siege of Mandalore, it does show how Ahsoka adopts the Fulcrum code name she uses in Star Wars: Rebels.
The book is set exactly one year after the Empire is established. The opening chapter of the book mentions the first “Empire Day” since Palpatine’s plans came to fruition. And with a visit from the Imperials to the planet Ahsoka had been calling home for about a year, she steals a ship and heads for an even more remote place in the Outer Rim- a moon called Raada.
Of course, the Empire soon arrives on the agricultural moon, too, and Ahsoka (going by “Ashla”) finds herself leading and training a resistance to the Empire. However, when their plans go wrong, Ahsoka is forced to flee and leave her new friends behind once more- though she promises to return.
In the meantime, Senator Bail Organa has heard about Ahsoka’s actions on Raada- though not knowing her identity- and sends two operatives out to find who has been helping the people of Raada as well as other “acts of kindness” that Ahsoka has carried out since leaving the moon. However, since Ahsoka didn’t know who they were working for she winds up knocking them unconscious and only realizes who sent them after running into R2-D2.
Bail offers Ahsoka a place in his small but growing resistance to the Empire, and she agrees on the condition that he helps her figure out who or what is hunting down the Force-sensitive children of the galaxy. With his own personal worries about that, Bail agrees.
After Ahsoka is able to free her friends on Raada and help them escape with the aid of Bail’s ships, she pays him another visit, and the two work out how she can best help the growing Rebellion. She talks about how she wants to find something different to do- not necessarily always fighting on the front lines as she’d done during the Clone Wars. Instead, she and Bail settle on the idea of her helping to find missions for other operatives within the Rebellion- connecting people and resources to the places they’re needed most. And to maintain her anonymity, she adopts the codename used in Rebels: Fulcrum.
Ahsoka does join the Rebellion very early on, adapting her talents to support their cause. Bail does not tell her everything when she joins, though. He hints at Leia’s parentage but does not tell her outright even though he suspects that she may have known about Anakin and Padmé’s relationship. He also does not tell her that Obi-Wan is alive.
In a small cutaway chapter in Ahsoka, Obi-Wan does make a brief appearance. It’s only a few pages long, but it shows that despite his best efforts while meditating on Tatooine, Obi-Wan is unable to sense any other living Jedi.
I sincerely hope that Ahsoka and Obi-Wan will be reunited in this show. Though Ahsoka had been Anakin’s Padawan, she also spent so much time with Obi-Wan and the two were close. Of course, Ahsoka does not find out Vader’s true identity until Star Wars: Rebels so it would be interesting (and heartbreaking) to see how Obi-Wan handles that conversation.
Caleb Dume/Kanan Jarrus
In the opening pages of Star Wars: A New Dawn by John Jackson Miller, Obi-Wan Kenobi is given an idea by a Jedi youngling by the name of Caleb Dume. While demonstrating the signal that could recall all of the galaxy’s Jedi back to the temple on Corascant, Caleb asks if the signal could also be used to send or warn the Jedi away. After briefly considering the possibility, and though he could not think of any reason at the time, Obi-Wan agrees that it could also be turned to that purpose.
Of course, just a few years later Obi-Wan does use the signal to warn surviving Jedi away from returning to Coruscant for their own safety. Caleb Dume barely escapes Order 66 himself, and only with the help of his Master Deba Bilaba and at the hesitation of Clone Force 99. Sometime later, he would take on the name “Kanan Jarrus” to avoid the detection of the Empire.
According to the Star Wars “Wookiepedia,” the Rebels prequel book A New Dawn is set in 11 BBY. The book itself contains no specific reference to what year it is set in, but according to the Wookiepedia the Star Wars Rebels: The Visual Guide states that Kanan and Hera Syndulla met about six years before the TV series starts. Rebels starts in the year 5 BBY so that places Hera and Kanan’s first meeting in 11 BBY- only one year before the events of Obi-Wan Kenobi.
By the time the events of A New Dawn wrap up the infamous Count Vidian’s plans to destabilize the orbit of the planet and moon that Kanan had been living and working on are foiled and the small band of rebels responsible have escaped- Kanan has not used the Force much. He’s had to hide his abilities for years now. And the only one who knows exactly what he’s capable of now is Hera Syndulla, though she does not press him for details.
Still hesitant to join Hera’s “cause” but finding himself drawn to her nonetheless, Kanan joins Hera on her ship, the Ghost. Though she’d expressed disinterest in simply taking Kanan along for the ride when she had important work to do, she agrees to take him on board as crew- someone to help maintain the Ghost.
Though this start of the Ghost team happens only a year before Obi-Wan’s new show is set, it isn’t overly likely we’ll see either Kanan or Hera interact with the Jedi Master. In Star Wars: Rebels’ third season episode “Twin Suns,” none of the Ghost crew believe Ezra Bridger when he insists that they must find Obi-Wan to warn him of Maul’s intent to seek revenge against him.
“If he was alive, do you think he would be hiding on some backwater world instead of helping us?” -Hera Syndulla
True, Kanan himself in the episode doesn’t directly say that he also believes that Obi-Wan is long dead. So there is a tiny chance that he may know different or at least have some part of him that thinks Ezra is right. Time will tell if Obi-Wan and Caleb’s paths will cross again.
But what about other characters that have met or crossed paths with Obi-Wan before? Even those who may not have been old enough to remember when they first met him? Stay tuned for more articles in this series!
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