Warning: spoilers ahead for Star Wars Rebels! Read forward at your own risk!
While the Star Wars movies are usually where the biggest Skywalker family drama goes down, we can't forget the small screen action of Star Wars Rebels. The show has done fantastic things with the franchise's mythology, and most recently utilized a bizarre form of time travel by which Ezra used a pathway through The Force to save fan-favorite Ahsoka. That new power raises questions about if and how these pathways could affect other Star Wars properties, but Rebels showrunner Dave Filoni told CinemaBlend that he doesn't really want it to become a standard Star Wars trope. Per Filoni:
No, I hope not. I mean, because this is important for this particular story, and I think we'd have to be very careful about how it would be used otherwise. It's why we destroy the temple in the episode. It's mainly a place that people would go to see the future and the past. It's not such an active place and Ahsoka, for her part when she's pulled out of that moment, is placed back in that same timeline and not very long after she left it. So again, she's smart enough to know that she cannot go back with Ezra, so there is not this big time travel thing. She knows she has to remain a part of her world and her timeline.
So, while it was a big moment to see Ezra use The Force to dip through time to save Ahsoka from her battle with Darth Vader (back in Star Wars Rebels Season 2), don't expect it to become the next big go-to Force power across all Star Wars media. I'm sure many will agree with Dave Filoni in not wanting this to become a retcon mulligan for other movies -- so don't expect to see Luke's fate at the end of The Last Jedi undone, for instance -- and that's one of the main reasons why Star Wars Rebels destroyed the Jedi temple after the rescue.
Beyond that, this explanation also means that, despite the hopes and dreams of some of Star Wars Rebels' biggest fans, the power definitely won't be used to undo Kanan's recent death. There are rules to how this works, after all, so it's not a magic do-over for every tragic scenario.
Elsewhere in CinemaBlend's interview with Dave Filoni, the Star Wars Rebels showrunner and all-around Star Wars guru further clarified elements of that particular power. He explained that the ability to save Ahsoka wasn't even technically time travel in the traditional sense. Filoni continued:
I don't really think of it as time travel. It's not really a thing where you go through one door and out another in a different time. The world between worlds is really about knowledge and gaining knowledge. As the Dume wolf says, what's in there is knowledge and destruction. You can gain knowledge of the future or futures that may happen, and you can see things that happened in the past. You can at times choose to alter them, but it's perilous to do so and when you alter something you don't know if that's not the way it always happened. So destruction is the other half of what's in there. When you go through these doorways, you're in peril of destruction because you're missing all sorts of things that would have happened or things would've happened otherwise, you know, so it's a dangerous game but it's not something we're here going in and out of different doors. It's an extension of the Jedi's ability to perceive the future and the past, as described in Empire Strikes Back.
So without worry that The Flash's Barry Allen will get mixed up in any of these intergalactic time jaunts, make sure to watch out for Star Wars Rebels' series finale Monday, March 5, at 9 p.m. ET on Disney XD. While it's certainly sad to see such a beloved show come to an end, you can also check out our midseason premiere guide to see what major spring debuts are on the horizon!
