Is this dialogue in Ahsoka inspired by a scene from The Clone Wars?

Question

In Episode 5 of Ahsoka, Ahsoka relives one of her battles alongside Anakin in the Clone Wars. After the battle, there's a scene with Ahsoka mourning by the side of one of the wounded Clone Troopers, and the following exchange occurs:

Ahsoka: We lost so many.

Anakin: There's always a price to be paid.

Ahsoka: It was my fault. They were following my orders. I got them killed.

Anakin: Come here. This is war, Ahsoka. As Jedi, it's out job to lead. But that doesn't mean we don't make mistakes.

Ahsoka: But our mistakes cost lives. That doesn't bother you?

Anakin: Of course it does.

Ahsoka: This... this isn't what I trained for.

Anakin: We must adjust to the times. Look, when Obi-Wan taught me, we were keepers of the peace. But now, to win this war, I need to teach you to be a soldier.

I am convinced that an almost identical exchange occurred between them in an episode of The Clone Wars TV show. Specifically, I believe it was an episode in which Ahsoka was given command of her own clone squadron, only for most of them to be killed during their first mission together. However, I can't seem to find either the episode or the dialogue.

Does an exchange similar to this occur at any point in The Clone Wars, or am I misremembering?

Answer 1

The exchange you're thinking of is this one from the episode “Storm Over Ryloth” (CW115) and it does indeed take place during that same campaign, albeit in a somewhat different context. For starters as you can see it happens aboard a Star Destroyer instead of on the ground in a frontline FOB, and it seems to refer to the current engagement, rather than the prior running of the blockade in orbit. We never actually saw the 501st on the ground in that arc, with the focus of those episode on the 212th and 91st under Kenobi & Windu respectively.

So yes, this scene in Ahsoka is clearly meant to be set during the Ryloth campaign, (as evidenced by the desert environment, recognisable rock spires in the background, and of course Twi'lek partisans fighting alongside the clone troopers.)

There's a couple different ways to interpret all this; the most straight forward also being the most obvious: it's not a 1:1 factual recreation but a vision, akin to a dream sequence. Both Anakin and Ahsoka in these scenes are fully aware that it's a vision/memory, so what we're seeing is a mix of things they said to each other then, and things said to each other now all in a jumbled up, dreamlike context.

It's also entirely possible that while Waxer & Boil were befriending Numa, Anakin and Ahsoka were meeting up with the local resistance in a different sector in a part of the campaign we simply didn't see. It's also possible that seeing the wounded brought back up some feelings for responsibility from the earlier mission and a repeat of the same basic lesson.

From a production standpoint I suspect that this scene was tapped as the most relevant to Ahsoka's current dilemma, and for the benefit of the audience was reconceptualised as a ground battle to be more visually interesting, and representative of the Clone Wars as a whole (the show and the in-universe conflict.)