3 lessons Anakin taught Ahsoka in Episode 5 “Shadow Warrior”

After losing her duel against Baylan Skoll, Ahsoka ends up going on a trip to remember, alongside her Master, Anakin Skywalker. But it’s not the emotional reunion many fans were hoping Anakin and Ahsoka would have. This was something different and perhaps life-changing for Ahsoka. Anakin didn’t come to chat with Ahsoka. Instead, he came to help her move on from her past, start living her life, forgive herself, and realize that the only way to recover from everything that happened to her is to start looking ahead.

Here are the 3 biggest lessons Anakin taught Ahsoka in Episode 5, “Shadow Warrior”.

1. Your legacy is what you do next, not what happened to you in the past

Anakin had no choice but to drag Ahsoka along with him and make her a warrior. Whatever happened to them both as a result of this isn’t Ahsoka’s fault. The way Anakin flickered back and forth between the dark and light shows that the Dark Side was always inside him, and something had to give. Regardless of whether she was there or not, Anakin was going to turn to the Dark Side. The Jedi failed in many ways, and Ahsoka left them to move forward in her life, but she never did. She has lived her entire life gripped by the fear of becoming Anakin, and Anakin put her through one last test to show her that she’s not him. Given the opportunity to strike Anakin down, Ahsoka stops, showing that she’ll never be lured by the Dark Side and that she can finally create her own legacy with the knowledge that she can choose to pass down the good Anakin taught her to her own Padawan. Her legacy is what she makes of it now, and the choices her master made in the past have no bearing on the person Ahsoka is.

2. Stop surviving and start living

Ahsoka has been through the Clone Wars and the Galactic Civil War. She’s lost people she cared about and witnessed the disintegration of the Jedi Order. She lost her identity, became fearful of the Dark Side, and had to fight her own Master in a duel that she barely survived. That’s enough trauma to give anyone PTSD. Ahsoka has become a nomad, traveling from one planet to the next and carrying an ambiguous identity as a Force user who’s not a Jedi. In other words, Ahsoka stopped living her life the moment she left the Jedi Order. Since then, she has survived, but she hasn’t thrived. She has stopped believing that she deserves happiness because she’s ashamed of her past and the failure of the Jedi as a whole. Thanks to Anakin, she has chosen to live, and by the end of the episode, it’s obvious that she’s a lot more optimistic and much happier, a good indication of the change in her mindset.

3. Be yourself, and open your heart again

Ahsoka and Anakin have a lot more similarities than differences, and perhaps that’s why Ahsoka closed herself off emotionally. From the moment live-action Ahsoka debuted in The Mandalorian, fans have noticed that she’s very different from her young, animated version from The Clone Wars. That Ahsoka was happier, chirpier, and full of optimism. She expressed her emotions and her sassy personality is why Anakin began calling her “Snips,” but she lost her snippy attitude and became distant, probably due to her trauma and fear of becoming like Anakin. This is why live-action Ahsoka seems so cold and emotionless, but after this episode, things will change. Being compassionate makes Ahsoka unique, and even in the flashback, we can see her comforting an injured clone. Despite closing herself off emotionally, she still carries the guilt of leaving Anakin and fears that she will become like him. Through her experience in Episode 5, she is freed from everything that shackles her emotionally. At the end of the episode, Ahsoka warmly hugs and thanks Jacen, which shows that she’s beginning to open up and is in a much better place overall. Her promise to Hera that she will find Sabine and Ezra shows how optimistic she feels about the future.

Ahsoka is streaming now on Disney+.