By the time the new Star Wars Ahsoka show begins, the character of Ahsoka Tano has become a legendary figure and a well-known warrior. She is a leader and has earned the respect of figures from Obi-Wan Kenobi to Luke Skywalker, even making friends with Mandalorians and being respected by the New Republic.
However, Ahsoka has, more than most characters, grown up over the course of the Star Wars franchise and the many projects she has appeared in. Over this time, going from Padawan to master of the force, she has made a huge variety of significant, and sometimes costly, mistakes. As her show continues to soar to new heights, it is interesting to see how she has learned over time from past mistakes.
6 Interrupting The High Council
In some of her earliest appearances in the Star Wars franchise, Ahsoka was literally a child, only 14 years old, and still in the early stages of her Padawan training during this time. As such, one of the most important things she had to learn was the simple ability to listen, heeding the words of the Jedi Masters who knew much more than she did.
The most brutal example of her failing to learn this lesson for a long time came in one of the very first episodes of The Clone Wars series. While standing in the back of a meeting that her master was having with the likes of Yoda and Mace Windu, Ahsoka couldn’t help but burst forward to voice her objections to what they were planning. Right or wrong, Ahsoka’s inability to listen got her into huge trouble throughout her youth, but it didn't stop her rising to become one of the most powerful Jedi.
5 Barriss Offee
While there have been many times in the history of the force that Jedi have defected to the other side, nobody ever seems to see it coming. Ahsoka is one of the rare Jedi gifted with the ability to see intentions in others, and so she has little excuse for being as blind as she was to the downfall of Barriss Offee to the dark side.
The apprentice of Luminara Unduli, Barriss had been a big part of The Clone Wars, appearing frequently, from the first season onward. However, she was eventually revealed as the perpetrator behind a bombing at the Jedi Temple, after blaming Ahsoka for it and getting her imprisoned during the final arc of the fifth season. This led to Ahsoka losing faith and leaving the Jedi Order herself, and it was all preventable if she or any of the other Jedi had paid more attention to Barriss. Having said that, leaving the Jedi Order helped Ahsoka survive Order 66.
4 Her Hubris
It is too difficult to choose just one time that Ahsoka almost perished because of her overestimating her own capabilities. From her earliest appearances, Ahsoka believed she could do a great deal in the war effort, but often felt like disobeying orders and thinking she knew better, and occasionally she was right.
But more often, her ideas ended badly in the first couple of seasons of The Clone Wars. As she matured, she learned to reign in her own hubris, and she was quite wise by the end of the war. Unfortunately, she almost died and had to be saved on numerous occasions because her training was happening during a massive galactic conflict. The worst offense was thinking she alone could defeat General Grievous, Asajj Ventress, or Cad Bane, while still only a teenager.
3 Not Mastering Her Emotions
Her overconfidence was just one of the problems that Ahsoka had with her emotions across The Clone Wars series. While her feelings and loss of faith in the Jedi Order eventually led to her leaving them, one of the other critical problems she had when she was younger was getting a crush on the son of a Separatist leader.
Lux Bonteri first met Ahsoka when Padme and Lux’s mother Mina were meeting to try and peacefully end the Clone Wars before any more blood was shed. While she never truly acted upon these feelings, it did distract her and was far from being part of the Jedi way, which might not have helped the other Jedi in trusting her enough to believe her when she was accused of betraying them.
2 Trusting R3-S6
In the first season of The Clone Wars, R2-D2 was lost for a time, and a replacement droid that Ahsoka took a liking to immediately replaced him. Anakin refused to get along with or trust R3-S6, and he turned out to be right as Ahsoka’s trust for the droid almost got them both killed.
It was revealed as they went on a mission to try and recover R2 that R3 was spying on the Jedi for General Grievous. It hasn’t often been seen in the Star Wars Universe that a droid has betrayed the forces of good, so Ahsoka can be excused for not expecting R3 to be evil. Fortunately, once they found R2 again, he did battle with R3 and ended the other droid once and for all, proving he is one of the franchise's best droids.
1 Getting Her Team Killed… Twice
There are few mistakes worse than being put in charge of people who are forced to trust your leadership, only to let them down to the extent that many of them actually die. Ahsoka’s first forays into leadership, while still very young, did not go well. In the first season of The Clone Wars, Ahsoka got her first command over Ryloth and had an opportunity to prove herself a leader right off the bat.
Unfortunately, she chose to disregard Anakin when more Separatists arrived. Her master told her to retreat, and she didn’t, getting most of her squadron killed in the process. This lesson should have taught her to obey orders and be more careful with the lives of her men, but it didn’t. At the beginning of the second season of The Clone Wars, Ahsoka again managed to assume she had all the knowledge and was in the right to keep pushing when others told her to retreat.
Not only did she get men killed and almost die herself on this occasion, but it resulted in the Jedi Council grounding her and confining her to Coruscant for a time. Ahsoka may have grown up a lot since The Clone Wars, but some of these mistakes must still continue to haunt her throughout the many great Star Wars shows she has appeared in.