Just a few months away from the launch of the Disney+ series Ahsoka, a new image has been published that is already sparking plenty of debate amongst the fanbase.
As revealed in an exclusive Ahsoka image on Empire Online, a mysterious masked Inquisitor stands in a battle stance in the middle of a dark forest, but who could this person be?
Theories have been thrown around the internet at great speed since the picture came to light, with many wondering whether it’s a character previously seen, or whether it could be a completely new Inquisitor separate from those that have come before.
In that vein, here are five potential candidates for the masked Inquisitor’s identity, all of whom are well-known to the Star Wars fanbase at large, in the order of likeliness that it truly is them.
The Eighth Brother
One name that has been appearing on social media as a possibility for this Inquisitor, is one that is very familiar to Ahsoka Tano, having appeared in Star Wars Rebels until they seemingly met their demise on the planet Malachor.
The Eighth Brother was a member of the Inquisitorius given the task of hunting down Emperor Palpatine’s former Sith apprentice, Maul. He tracked the former Sith to Malachor, where he became entangled with Ezra Bridger, Kanan Jarrus and Ahsoka Tano until the Fifth Brother and Seventh Sister intervened.
Eventually, trying to claim the Sith Holocron that he believed Darth Vader was seeking, his lightsaber became damaged by Kanan and his spinning blades malfunctioned as he jumped from the high temple ledge, seemingly falling to his death.
It might be difficult to consider the Eighth Brother a truly viable candidate considering his apparent death, but characters have come back to life in Star Wars that many thought dead, including Maul himself.
Similarities in this unknown Inquisitor’s mask and that of the Eighth Brother have led people to speculate that it could be him, in a flashback scene of some description as he faces off against Ahsoka, presumably as an act of revenge for what happened on Malachor.
This could be an option, with Dave Filoni’s work on Rebels creating a link there, but he’s probably the least likely of the four candidates simply because of his previous fate and the fact that other reveals would be far more satisfying.