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This article contains spoilers for Ahsoka, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, and Star Wars Jedi: Survivor
Ahsoka hasn’t yet been officially renewed for another season, but with all of the loose threads left by the season 1 finale, it’s hard not to dream about where season 2 could take these characters.
With Ahsoka (Rosario Dawson), Sabine (Natasha Liu Bordizzo), Shin Hati (Ivanna Sakhno), and Baylan Skoll (Ray Stevenson) now stranded on Peridea and Thrawn (Lars Mikkelson) returning home with an army of entombed Nightsisters in tow, there is a lot at stake across not just one, but two galaxies. Now that the Nightsisters have officially made a comeback in the New Republic era, I can’t think of a better character to bring into Ahsoka than Nightsister Merrin (Tina Ivlev).
First introduced in the video game Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, Merrin has since appeared in the 2023 sequel Star Wars Jedi: Survivor and the companion novel Jedi: Battle Scars. Like Lady Morgan Elsbeth (Diana Lee Inosanto) in Ahsoka, Merrin is a survivor of the Dathomir Massacre enacted by General Grievous, Count Dooku, and the Separatists during the Clone Wars. However, unlike Elsbeth, Asajj Ventress, and most other Nightsisters that have appeared in Star Wars television shows thus far, Merrin isn’t considered a bad guy.
In Fallen Order, which is set in 14 BBY or roughly 5 years after Revenge of the Sith, the game’s protagonist Cal Kestis (Cameron Monaghan) meets Merrin on Dathomir, where she had been mostly living alone since the massacre. Shortly after Order 66, the former Jedi Taron Malicos crash landed on the planet and manipulated Merrin into believing that the Jedi were responsible for the death of her people so that she would teach him Nightsister magick. Because of this, she was initially antagonistic toward Kestis when he arrived years later.
Once she realized that Malicos had manipulated her and that she and Kestis had more in common than she thought, she decided to partner with the young Jedi on his quest to help Force-Sensitive youth evade capture by the Empire. She has since become a force for good in the galaxy, using her powers to try and stop the Empire from doing what was done to her people.
Merrin’s last canon appearance in Survivor takes place five years later in 9 BBY or roughly 4 years before the events of Andor and Star Wars: Rebels. Though we don’t yet know what happens to her or Kestis between the end of Survivor and the era of the New Republic, there is still a chance that Merrin could have survived the fall of the Empire and subsequent battles.
When we last left Merrin, she and Kestis had taken in Kata, the daughter of Bode Akuna (Noshir Dalal), a former ally who betrayed them in an effort to try and protect her. She and Kestis had also begun to develop a romantic relationship, despite their best efforts to try and ignore their feelings for each other to focus on the greater good of the galaxy.
Bringing Merrin into Ahsoka season 2 wouldn’t be that challenging. For starters, her voice actor, Tina Ivlev, also did performance capture and serves as the face model for the character in the game. Though recasting is always a possibility when bringing characters to live-action from a different medium, Ivlev is close to the same age that Merrin would be in the New Republic era and has already done a great job of bringing this character to life.
Merrin would also be a great contrast to the Nightsisters we saw last season. Elsbeth and Merrin were greatly influenced by the same tragedy, but whereas Merrin decided to help others avoid the fate of her people, Elsbeth seemed to do the opposite. Fueled by anger, Elsbeth became a warlord that used the Empire as a means to destroy planets and subjugate people for their resources. She also wasn’t afraid of allying with someone like Thrawn if it meant bringing her ancestors back from Peridea and resurrecting the Nightsisters of Dathomir.
Merrin, on the other hand, likely helped different rebel cells leading up to and throughout the fall of the Empire. Her ability to turn ships invisible and sneak them past Imperial scanners was likely a valuable asset during this time, as were her other powers. While Merrin does have a dark sense of humor, her heart is usually in the right place. Because the Great Mothers have allied with Thrawn, someone Merrin would have likely dealt with or heard rumors of as part of the rebellion, returning to her people on Dathomir may not be as easy as Merrin would have once hoped.
She would probably feel conflicted about their allegiances, which could prove to be an interesting and compelling arc for her. Since Merrin has also been working to keep other Force-sensitive children safe, there’s also the possibility that Merrin has found other Nightsister survivors or those connected to Dathomirian magick and made her own faction of sorts since the fall of the Empire. Merrin could be useful in helping Hera (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and Ezra (Eman Esfandi) understand the Nightsisters and their motivations on Dathomir, what Thrawn could hope to achieve in an alliance with them, or even in helping them find a way back to her ancestral planet of Peridea in order to rescue Ahsoka and Sabine.
Merrin’s time with Kestis and the crew of the Mantis have helped her see that the galaxy is so much bigger than Dathomir. She’s realized that carving her own path forward does more to honor her people and their legacy than giving in to the anger and hatred she feels for what happened to them. Merrin is such an interesting character in Star Wars canon and would be right at home among the characters of Ahsoka.
The post The Star Wars Character That Needs to Be in Ahsoka Season 2 appeared first on Den of Geek.
