Warning: The below contains full spoilers for Ahsoka Episode 4, which aired on Sept. 5 and is now streaming on Disney+.
Star Wars has always worn its Akira Kurosawa inspiration on its sleeve, and George Lucas himself has made no secret of what he’s learned from the legendary director’s works. And in the latest episode of Ahsoka, “Fallen Jedi,” there’s a direct Kurosawa homage that many fans may have missed – and it involves one of the biggest reveals of the episode.
IGN caught up with Peter Ramsey, who directed last week’s explosive episode of Ahsoka, and it’s not his first brush with Star Wars shows. Ramsey also directed The Mandalorian episode “The Pirate” in Season 3, and I asked him about the differences between how showrunner Dave Filoni approached The Mandalorian versus how he’s approaching Ahsoka, his own continuation of his animated shows. Ramsey confirmed that there’s “definitely” a difference.
"From the start, he really made it kind of clear he was after a little more – he was really interested in focusing on the characters,” Ramsey told IGN. “He wanted the pace to be a little different. People say 'it's slower, it's slower.' Well, part of that is the desire for a little more mood, slightly different nuance to it versus Mando, which is kind of like spaghetti western, kind of like ‘wham, bam, thank you ma'am.’ Dave wanted a slightly different feeling.”
“The other thing that he and I really bonded over,” he continued, “is we just have a mutual love over Akira Kurosawa's films. Kurosawa's a huge touchstone for both of us, and the whole samurai mystic and a lot of that, which obviously, it's right there in the episode. It's in his episodes too. It's in his stuff. He had a feeling in mind for it all along."
That came into play in a big way in a pivotal moment of “Fallen Jedi,” where Ahsoka (Rosario Dawson) faces off against Marrok, the mysterious antagonist who has kept fans guessing all season long. Marrok is a deep-cut Rebels villain, but fans refused to accept that it was just him; was it actually the missing Ezra Bridger behind the mask? Barriss Offee, perhaps?
The answer was: no. It was actually just Marrok. That much was revealed as Ahsoka cut into him, causing a puff of green smoke to violently pour out of the dark armor.
“It’s funny,” Ramsey revealed, “because I don’t think there was a puff of anything originally.”
Ramsey, however, was inspired by Kurosawa film Sanjuro. As he described, there’s a samurai who pesters Toshiro Mifune’s character for a duel, and he finally gives in at the end of the movie. In one swift stroke, Mifune’s character cuts his challenger down, causing a dramatic burst of blood to spill forward.
It’s more than a little similar to the moment where Ahsoka defeats Marrok, and Ramsey jokingly admits, “I mean, yeah, basically I completely ripped it off.”
He was adamant, he explained, in replicating that “big burst” moment, but when he brought it to the creative team, “they were like, ‘well…’ “
“So I was like, 'what is Marrok? Is he human? Is he kind of more machine than man, like how Darth Vader used to be described sometimes?' And that was kind of what we were going on,” he said. “I was like, 'it would be great if something could burst out of him.' Like, what would be his version of antifreeze or whatever it is? Because it couldn't be blood.”
“So in the final analysis,” he continued, “I don't know what it's supposed to be, but I think the assumption we were going on was, 'well, he's in this partially mechanical suit.' Or part of him is mechanical or whatever, so there's some sort of non-human stuff that's bursting out of there at the end. I don't know what it might have been."
When I test out a theory that Marrok may have been some sort of thrall for Morgan Elsbeth – a revived version of the inquisitor that Marrok once was – Ramsey said that there’s a ton that Filoni keeps under lock and key in regards to the future scripts, even for his creative collaborators.
"There was none of that detail,” Ramsay said. “They are pretty tight-lipped about a lot of those details. They don't like a lot of info going out. He may have known that all along and could've said, 'we'll make it something else' [in post]. But what I remember is him saying something like, 'yeah, it's kind of mechanical. He's not entirely human.' "
So if you’re guessing what’s going to come next in Ahsoka, don’t worry: many of its directors are too.
For more from our chat with Ramsey, check out his breakdown of that emotional twist at the end.
Alex Stedman is a Senior News Editor with IGN, overseeing entertainment reporting. When she's not writing or editing, you can find her reading fantasy novels or playing Dungeons & Dragons.
