The second episode of Ahsoka‘s first season is titled “Toil and Trouble,” explicitly referencing a famous line from William Shakespeare’s play Macbeth. In Macbeth, three witches recite an incantation that includes the repeated line “Double, double toil and trouble; / Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.” The title “Toil and Trouble,” then, points to a prominent motif that Ahsoka and Macbeth share: a trio of witches who, purporting to be agents of fate or destiny, work to bring about the end of one government and the rise of a new ruler.
In Shakespeare’s play, the great general Macbeth first meets the three witches while traveling on the Scottish heath. The witches prophesy that Macbeth will become king of Scotland, and Macbeth subsequently takes action to fulfill this prophecy, murdering the rightful king and usurping his place as a fearsome tyrant. A tension between free will and fate thus runs through the play: the witches told Macbeth what would happen in the future, but if they had not told him, would that future have come to pass?
In “Master and Apprentice” (Ahsoka 1.1), Ahsoka Tano retrieves a map from an ancient chamber with statues of three witches. These three stone witches foreshadow the three living witches on the distant planet Peridea, the destination to which the map leads. The gloomy landscape of Peridea markedly resembles the Scottish heath where Macbeth takes place, and the march that plays when Grand Admiral Thrawn appears evokes the sound of bagpipes (best known as a Scottish instrument, heard nowhere else in Star Wars). Peridea’s three witches frequently speak of the “threads” of “fate” and “destiny” while using their magic to see through time and counsel Thrawn – a great general who, like Macbeth, has been told he is fated to topple an existing government and usurp its place as a tyrannical new ruler.
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Characters: Grand Admiral Thrawn
Shows: Ahsoka
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Concepts: destiny / dreams, prophecies, and visions / government / music / names / tyranny / witches
Influences: Shakespeare
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