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The live-action Ahsoka series only started shooting earlier this month, but executive producers Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni delighted Star Wars Celebration Anaheim attendees on Saturday with the first trailer for The Mandalorian spinoff. It's set to come to Disney Plus in 2023.
The trailer was shown exclusively at the convention and isn't yet available online. It revealed that former Jedi Ahsoka Tano (Rosario Dawson) will team up with the Ghost crew to find lost ally Ezra Bridger, essentially making the show a live-action followup to CGI animated series Rebels.
Favreau and Filoni also introduced actor Natasha Liu Bordizzo as Sabine Wren, the Ghost crew's Mandalorian member, confirming reports from last year.
Natasha Liu Bordizzo talks about playing Sabine Wren at Star Wars Celebration Anaheim.
Sean Keane/CNET"I feel like I've just been adopted into a new family," Bordizzo told the Celebration crowd. "I know how much Sabine means to you guys. Watching Rebels, she's come to mean a hell of a lot to me too."
Ezra and Ghost pilot Hera Syndulla are glimpsed from behind in the trailer, but it's unclear at this point who they'll be played by, and lovably mean astromech Chopper will appear as well.
Ahsoka is set at the same point in the timeline as The Mandalorian, a few years after Return of the Jedi. The show will hit Disney Plus sometime next year, likely after The Mandalorian season 3 (which begins in February).
Favreau also delighted the crowd by bringing The Mandalorian's beloved Grogu (aka Baby Yoda) onto the stage. The amazingly lifelike puppet gestured, smiled and sat, earning a collective "Aww" from the assembled fans.
Rebels, which ended in 2018, was set in the years before the original Star Wars. Ezra vanished into hyperspace toward an unknown fate, along with Imperial villain Grand Admiral Thrawn, in that show's finale. Saturday's trailer suggests that the pair have been missing for many years, but we know from her appearance in The Mandalorian season 2 that Ahsoka is hunting Thrawn -- presumably as part of the search for Ezra.
Ahsoka made her animated debut as Anakin Skywalker's Padawan in 2008's The Clone Wars (which was set between Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith) and played a pivotal role in the seven-season series that followed. She appeared again in follow-up show Rebels, and was voiced by Ashley Eckstein in both.
Dawson took on the role when Ahsoka made her live-action debut in The Mandalorian season 2 (where she had the honor of revealing Baby Yoda's real name), and showed up in The Book of Boba Fett earlier this year.
