One more spoiler warning… if you haven’t seen the Star Wars Rebels: Season 2 finale, beware!

Okay, if you’re still reading this, I’m assuming you did see the massive events in “Twilight of the Apprentice,” as Darth Maul returned, a trio of Inquisitors attacked our heroes and Ahsoka and Vader came face to face at last. [You can read my review of the finale by clicking here .]After seeing the finale at a screening earlier this week, I spoke to Rebels executive producer and co-creator Dave Filoni for an in-depth conversation about everything that occurred, including a huge question at the end of the episode…

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Is that what you saw? That’s so interesting. That’s so good. You know I think it says a lot about who you are, which is great. You’re an optimist, and I think that that’s strong, I think that that’s strong. [Laughs] It’s an interpretation. I mean, the thing for me in this moment in time with this story – and I was pretty clear about this from the beginning in that Rebels is not Ahsoka Tano’s story, nor is it Darth Vader’s story, and we worked really hard to bring those characters into the story. But ultimately, I have to service Ezra and Kanan, and the crew of the Ghost. So a lot of that episode is portrayed through their eyes, and especially Ezra’s, as he witnesses this kind of titanic thing happening.It’s just so easy – especially in that situation – it’s so easy to have Ahsoka and Vader take over the show. And I think evidence of that is that even though they don’t encounter each other until act three, you immediately get the dynamic of what’s going on. I would say that – while I’m not a huge fan of being tremendously ambiguous as far as what happened – I would say that this is the one case where I think it’s alright with Ahsoka to leave things a bit open-ended. You wondered what happened to her before, but you knew she walked away. Now she kind of leaves in a state of conflict. I would just say that there are probably – and I’ll give you this as we go back a ways – there are probably more stories to tell with Ahsoka Tano, but I would not believe that that would happen necessarily on Star Wars Rebels. I’ve been wrong in the past, but I think that she has served the part of the story that she needed to for our characters here. Then we’ll have to see. I do like the character a lot, obviously, and I think that she’s developed her own kind of fan base within the Star Wars universe. So, you know, I think there are still more stories to be told. I think there are stories to be told prior to Rebels with her. I think there are a lot of stories that happen right at the end of Clone Wars that we’re unaware of yet.You know, I think the thing that I’ve learned is that the character has a lot of strength to be on her own, doing things. And perhaps that means she’s still alive. I don’t know. There are clues to the actual answer in what I think throughout, I will say that. And some kids at the [finale] screening were shooting pretty close to the mark, or at least were decoding the [clues] that I have left for them. It’s one of those mysteries then where maybe, beyond hope, maybe there is a future, but we’ll have to wait and see.Right, they’re actually called Convorees, named after Anne [Convery– Filoni’s wife], but that was back on Clone Wars when I named them that. They appeared first on the Wasskah arc when Ahsoka got kidnapped by the Trandoshans. So that’s where you would first see those types of birds, but I think birds – like many things in the galaxy – appear on different planets so you have different breeds of them. When they get to the Atollon moon, these creatures start appearing.I love the idea of it being an avatar! I would tell you, though, that it is absolutely not an avatar of the Dark Side. Absolutely not. But, you know, we’ll have to see. You’re going down the rabbit hole now. You know me by now – it’s not accidental that this thing is flying around. It’s not accidental that it’s there, and it’s not accidental that it’s bizarrely on this completely different world at the end of that episode. It definitely has a meaning for me, as the storyteller. It’s a subtle thing that if you know what the owl represents, then it deepens the lore of the whole thing and you go, “Okay, there are things at work here that are beyond our reckoning.” In some ways, I could say that it’s a messenger, it’s an observer. It is definitely something. And I would suggest – I would rather have fans debate – but I would suggest to say that whatever that thing is an avatar of has actually appeared in the animated Star Wars universe before. So decrypt from there… Have a fun summer![Laughs]I wouldn’t count on that. What I think is interesting is that Maul has an awareness of him. I think that that’s a particularly interesting thing. Maul obviously has been somehow keeping tabs on what’s going on in the galaxy and probably wishes he was more a part of it. That’s another bit of wonderful story, which is: What has Maul been up to? How did Maul get on this desolate planet? And we obviously don’t answer those questions at this time, but it is stuff we’ve considered when we wrote these stories. It never came to be that he would face off with Vader, at least not yet. Again, the main reason being that, while that’s a fun notion in a lot of ways, the personal story of the relationship between Ahsoka and Darth Vader as Anakin is way too compelling and needed all the screen time. As we were working out how this episode was going to go, it became clearer and clearer to me that I couldn’t have all these other people in play when we got to Darth Vader. It’s too distracting. At one point we had several of the characters still battling Inquisitors and Darth Vader was in the mix. I just felt like everybody kind of had to be thinned out and exhausted, and then here comes the worst thing of all. So you really feel like you have no chance whatsoever. So just organically, it happened that way over a period. We’ll have to see. You never know, you never know. The nerd-tacular obsession with Vader vs. Maul. It’s hard to say – I mean, Vader is hard to top. Something George is pretty adamant of all the time was that Vader, you know… You never want to do anything to diminish him.

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