Nerds in turmoil: Ahsoka Tano has the wrong hairstyle
Ahsoka Tano has been portrayed by an actress for the first time. "Star Wars" fans are divided in their opinion. The main point of criticism: the hair of the Jedi who was cast aside.
Ahsoka Tano, a legendary Jedi, has appeared on Star Wars fans' screens in the flesh for the first time in recent days. Actress Rosario Dawson played the former pupil of Anakin Skywalker in the latest episode of the Disney Plus series "The Mandalorian".
"This is the best episode yet," says digitec editor Luca Fontana.
Fans don't agree with him. A few fans. They are confused. Maybe even angry. They have questions.
The reason: Ahsoka's hairstyle is different than it should be. But the problem isn't that Ahsoka Tano isn't sexy or pretty enough, it's that she's far nerdier. A haircut, if you can call it a haircut with Montrals or Lekku, is simply not possible in terms of time.
So did a hairstyle destroy the continuity of the Star Wars universe?
What the hell are Montrals or Lekku?
Ahsoka Tano is one of the characters with the best looks in the entire Jedi and Sith saga. Her design is simple, easy to understand, iconic and hits just the right level of unrealism.
She has orange skin with lighter-coloured markings - white in "Star Wars Rebels" and light orange in "The Mandalorian" - and blue eyes. Plus the tentacle-like things that are where the hair is in humans. In Star Wars parlance, they are called lekku. That's the plural of lek. Ahsoka Tano's lekku are blue and white. There are also Montrals, which can best be described as horns. In the Togruta, montrals are hollow and are used to sense movements in the immediate vicinity. The older a Togruta becomes, the larger the Montrals. It is exactly the same with the lekku. The older a Togruta, the longer it is.
Why are head tentacles important?
The fans are not particularly upset because Ahsoka Tano has the wrong hairstyle, but because it can't work out purely from hair growth - if you can speak of hair growth with Lekku.
The Mandalorian episode "The Jedi" takes place nine years after the Battle of Yavin, where the Death Star was destroyed. The event was so monumental that the timeline was restarted. "After the Battle of Yavin" is abbreviated to ABY. In the same year, Ahsoka Tano was busy liberating the planet Lothal.
So in 9 ABY, Ahsoka Tano is on Corvus, meets the Mandalorian, reveals Baby Yoda's real name Grogu and defeats Morgan Elsbeth.
There her Montrals and Lekku are quite short.
But: In "Star Wars Rebels" she was last seen in year 5 ABY, where she sets off in search of Ezra Bridger in the Unknown Regions of the galaxy.
There's something wrong. Togruta can't trim their montrals, can't cut their lekku. So why are montrals and lekku shorter than those of the Rebels?
The explanation. Official and understandable
With some fans content to rant online about how the makers of "The Mandalorian" series messed up Ahsoka Tano's design, Twitter user Jack Kennedy reached out to character concept designer Brian Matyas via the platform. The question: "Can you talk about the design process behind the Montrals and Lekku?" In addition to the suggestion that the large Montrals and long Lekku were impractical for an actress.
A question that only Star Wars fans can answer.
Brian Matyas answers.
He spent a long time thinking about the design, writes Matyas, but he had to find a middle ground between the design in "Star Wars: Rebels", a computer-animated animated series, and the fact that Rosario Dawson, as a flesh-and-blood human in the role and costume of Ahsoka Tano, doesn't just have to face the titular Mandalorian in battle. The movements required for the fight scenes were probably too difficult with the long lekku and high montrals.
Brian Matyas hopes that he will soon be able to reveal more about his work and his ideas behind the design of Ahsoka Tano. Perhaps this will be in the sequel to the Artbook "The Art of Star Wars: The Mandalorian (Season One)".
But the answer is not good enough:
Twitter user Logan Harrington disagrees with the man who invented the whole thing and shows a design suggestion that's better. Because the image he found on the internet shows Ahsoka better in relation to her age.
Further comments then completely ignore Brian Matya's statements and blame not only the character designer, but also the director, author of the episode and creator of "The Clone Wars" animated series and Ahsoka Tano, Dave Filoni, as well as the budget. Obviously, in the end, the budget was not enough for 20 centimetres of foam from the DIY store.
"Star Wars" fans, never stop being extremely nerdy.
This is the way.
And it should stay that way.
Journalist. Author. Hacker. A storyteller searching for boundaries, secrets and taboos – putting the world to paper. Not because I can but because I can’t not.
