‘Ahsoka’ to Premiere Early, Stream New Episodes on Tuesday Nights
The Force is with Star Wars fans eager to see the new Disney+ series Ahsoka. Disney+ has announced that the show, featuring Rosario Dawson in the lead role, will now premiere with a two-episode debut on Tuesday, August 22, at 9/8c, one day earlier than scheduled.
Disney+ will release subsequent Ahsoka episodes on Tuesdays at 9/8c, a rare primetime release schedule in a streaming industry dominated by middle-of-the-night episode drops.
Set after the fall of the Empire, Ahsoka “follows the former Jedi Knight Ahsoka Tano, Padawan to Anakin Skywalker, as she investigates an emerging threat to a vulnerable galaxy,” Disney+ says.
Reprising her role from The Mandalorian, Dawson plays Ahsoka Tano, a live-action version of a character Ashley Eckstein voiced in the animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Lars Mikkelsen is playing Grand Admiral Thrawn in the series, a character he voiced in Star Wars Rebels, and David Tennant is once again voicing the droid Huyang, as he did in Clone Wars.
Other cast members include Natasha Liu Bordizzo as Mandalorian warrior Sabine Wren, Mary Elizabeth Winstead as the New Republic general Hera Syndulla, the late Ray Stevenson as mercenary Baylan Skull, Ivanna Sakhno as Baylan’s apprentice Shin Hati, and Diana Lee Inosanto as former magistrate Morgan Elsbeth.
Some lucky Star Wars devotees got to see Ahsoka’s first two episodes even earlier, at fan events Disney hosted on Thursday, August 17, at Disneyland in California, Disney World in Florida, and venues in Hollywood, New York, and San Francisco. “Rosario Dawson killed it,” one attendee said in Disney+’s sizzle reel about the events.
Still to come in Star Wars’ galaxy of live-action TV series are Skeleton Crew, starring Jude Law, The Acolyte, starring Amandla Stenberg and Lee Jung-jae, and Lando, written by Stephen and Donald Glover.