Dawson no stranger to geek gaze

Things don’t get much bigger in the fandom of Star Wars right now than Baby Yoda and The Mandalorian. Unless you start talking about Ahsoka Tano.

Now imagine the three of them together on the same screen.

That possibility became a reality when it was reported that Rosario Dawson will star as Tano in Jon Favreau’s The Mandalorian, season 2 of which is set to return to Disney+ this fall. Dawson is no stranger to the geek gaze. She has starred in an adaptation of Frank Miller’s Sin City; played a part in Netflix’s now-defunct Marvel live-action universe and has voiced Wonder Woman for DC animation.

Tano debuted in the theatrical release of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, a 2008 animated film that eventually turned into a five-season series on Cartoon Network and later moved to Netflix for one season. The seventh and final season of Clone Wars is streaming on Disney+ weekly and will come to an end in May.

Tano’s growing popularity and rise in Star Wars lore came in part because of who she was so deeply connected to. At the onset of The Clone Wars — which takes place between Episode II: Attack of the Clones and Episode III: Revenge of the Sith in the prequel trilogy — she was the Padawan apprentice to Anakin Skywalker. Skywalker, of course, the greatest Jedi Knight of all time, who eventually fell to the Dark Side of the mystical Force and became the powerful villain Darth Vader.

Dawson as Tano will have great appeal and potential. There’s no reason to think she couldn’t lead in her own series eventually.

Maybe Dawson’s Tano could even make it to the big screen if someone at Lucasfilm finally green-lights a Darth Vader standalone film.