Rosario Dawson Will Play Ahsoka Tano in Season 2 of 'The Mandalorian' and I Think I Just Had a Nerd-Gasm

Where my Star Wars blerds at?

The Star Wars franchise is about to hit us with possibly one of the most perfect casting decisions since Patrick Stewart was tapped to play Professor Xavier in the X-Men movies.

According to IndieWire, actor Rosario Dawson will play Ahsoka Tano in season 2 of hit Disney series The Mandalorian.

If you are an absolute animation junky like I am, you may remember Ahsoka’s character from the 2008 Star Wars: The Clone Wars which was directed by Dave Filoni, who also directs The Mandalorian. Tano is a member of the alien Togruta race and the former padawan (or Jedi apprentice) of Anakin Skywalker, who, of course, goes on to become the iconic Star Wars villain Darth Vader.

The character was introduced in the Star Wars: The Clone Wars animated film and became popular after the film was expanded into a TV series that recently returned from a six-year hiatus for a final season on Disney+.

In the series, Ahsoka is a teenager, but The Mandalorian timeline would put her in her adult years as she appears in an animated spinoff to the Clone Wars series Star Wars: Rebels.

Dawson not only has the perfect spunky personality to play this role, but she has all of the right features—down to the full lips that have always been part of Ahsoka’s design, prompting blerds like me to be like, “Yeah, she definitely black,” despite her being orange and from another planet.

I mean, come on.

Incidentally, Dawson has been expressing a desire to play the character of Ahsoka as far back as 2017.

From IndieWire:

Dawson is apparently a fan of the character; the actress, who most recently starred in USA Network’s pulpy “Briarpatch” drama anthology series, enthusiastically told a Twitter follower in 2017 that she would be eager to portray Ahsoka in a “Star Wars” project and later told “Good Morning America” that it would be an “amazing” opportunity. Dawson is no stranger to Disney’s biggest franchises, having portrayed nurse Claire Temple in “Daredevil,” “Luke Cage,” and several of Netflix’s other Marvel Cinematic Universe television shows.

Star Wars fans will be seeing Ahsoka’s character in live-action for the first time since she was introduced as part of the canon of the Star Wars universe.

I for one, can not wait.