Following the “Star Wars: Ahsoka” series created by writer/director/producer Dave Filoni, who wrote all eight episodes himself and directed two, Lucasfilm has named the filmmaker the Chief Creative Officer at the company.
“Now I’m what’s called chief creative officer of Lucasfilm,” Filoni told Vanity Fair this week, and noting the role will place him in the early development process of all “Star Wars” projects and in a much more expansive capacity than his previous advisory duties. “In the past, in a lot of projects, I would be brought into it, I would see it after it had already developed a good ways.”
READ MORE: Dave Filoni Officially Announced To Direct A ‘Star Wars’ Film Set In ‘The Mandalorian’-Verse
The move is arguably a fait accompli. Filoni, as many fans have noted, was seemingly hand-picked years ago by George Lucas to be his heir apparent years ago. Filoni essentially studied under Lucas’ wing during the years of “Star Wars: The Clone Wars,” an animated series years that Lucas co-created with him. The pair introduced many new characters into the “Star Wars” universe, like Ahsoka Tano, Anakin Skywalker’s padawan learner who was never seen in the movies.
After Lucas sold Lucasfilm to Disney, Filoni stayed with the company and co-created and oversaw the much-beloved animated series, “Star Wars: Rebels.” And as we know now, cutting to years later, the current “Star Wars” TV universe, primarily led by Jon Favreau (“The Mandalorian”) and Filoni, is basically built off the back that everything Filoni and Lucas made during those years, including fleshing out the mythology and lore of Mandalore and all its people which was previously unknown in the films.
“Star Wars: Ashoka” has been essentially a sequel to “Star Wars: Rebels” and has reintroduced many vital characters in live-action for the first time. Before it launched, Filoni had been teeing up many of those ideas through “The Mandalorian,” the second season of which featured Ahsoka (played by Rosario Dawson) in live-action for the first time ever.
Knowing the “Star Wars” lore so well, Filoni has also led the company’s bold decision to re-use elements of the old canon, now called Legends, once known as the “Star Wars Extended Universe.” For example, the current villain in the Ahoksa series, Grand Admiral Thrawn, was a remnant from the now not-canon 1990s “Star Wars” books by Timothy Zahn. What happened in those books has been excised from current “Star Wars” history. But Filoni loved Thrawn so much that he reintroduced him back into the “Star Wars” galaxy during the animated ‘Rebels’ series, and it’s a cherry-picking technique Lucasfilm continues to this day.
Filoni is directing his own “Star Wars” movie too. Revealed at Celebration, not much is known about it other than it’s expected to take the ‘Mando’-verse of Lucasfilm TV—“The Mandalorian,” “The Book Of Boba Fett,” and “Ashoka”— and turn it into a big epic facing off against Thrawn, who is essentially the new Darth Vader in this new post-‘Return Of The Jedi’ era (the movie is also expected to be called “Heir To The Empire,” which is also the title of one of Zahn’s classic books).
“Ashoka” ended on a bittersweet note for Filoni, the cast and crew, and all “Star Wars” fans as the actor Ray Stevenson, who played Baylan Skoll, a morally gray ex-Jedi on the series, passed away prematurely at 58 a few months before the show aired.  
How do they continue that story? Filoni acknowledged that that story ends with an ellipsis and could/should continue but stopped short of talking about recasting.
“Obviously, there’s a story there,” he told VF. “We’re in a wait-and-see pattern at this point. But I’m glad the conversation is about Ray and how great he was…. I used to have mini debates with him and say, ‘Ray, you’re the villain here.’ And he’d be like, ‘I don’t think so.’ I was like, ‘I know you don’t think so, but you are. I love that you’re playing it like you’re not.’ Which is exactly the way Baylan thinks.”
As for an “Ahsoka” season two? It’s unclear, but Rosario Dawson said Filoni was working on an outline.
 “I mean, they’ve not said anything officially, but I remember when we were at Star Wars Celebration in London, and they were like, ‘We’re giving Dave a movie!’” Rosario Dawson said in an interview for the story. “And I was like, ‘I kind of feel like that means we’re probably going to get a second season.’ For a while now, and especially now with the strike and everything, no one can say anything. But he did say he was working on an outline. So, we’ll see.”