Well, Deadline has finally confirmed that, yes, Sabine is back and will be played Natasha Liu Bordizzo (The Society) on the upcoming Star Wars: Ahsoka series on Disney+. The outlet didn’t dig up any plot details about Sabine’s live-action debut, but we already know plenty, thanks to the Rebels animated series that concluded in 2018. You can say Sabine’s return has been years in the making. Dave Filoni, who is writing and executive producing Ahsoka, along with The Mandalorian showrunner Jon Favreau, first set Sabine on her current path in the final minutes of Rebels. In an epilogue, Sabine vowed to help Ahsoka find Ezra Bridger, the young protagonist of the series who was sent tumbling through hyperspace with Thrawn during a final Rebel assault to free the planet Lothal from the Empire. (How that happened is a bit complicated, but we get into that a bit here.) When Ahsoka made her post-Original Trilogy debut on The Mandalorian season 2 episode “The Jedi” and asked the cruel Imperial Magistrate Morgan Elsbeth (Diana Lee Inosanto) about Thrawn’s whereabouts, it implied that she was still searching for Ezra five years after first setting out on her quest. Now that Sabine is also playing a lead role in the Ahsoka series, the continuation of the Ezra storyline is all but confirmed. After Bordizzo shows up on Ahsoka, the next question will undoubtedly be who is playing Ezra? (Full transparency: I stan Rahul Kohli for the role.) While The Mandalorian season 3 is currently in production, Ahsoka is eyeing a March 2022 production start date, according to Deadline. That likely means we won’t see Bordizzo as Sabine until 2023…unless she’s first introduced on The Mandalorian, which has proved to be a great platform for backdoor pilots for spinoff series, the first of which will premiere on Dec. 29 and star Boba Fett (Temuera Morrison) and Fennec Shand (Ming-Na Wen). Check out the full release schedule of upcoming Star Wars movies and TV here.
