'Star Wars' fans get a surprise crawl before the first scene of 'Ahsoka' even airs

The new Star Wars series Ahsoka premiered on Disney+ Tuesday, and it didn’t take long — only a few seconds actually — for fans to see something they weren’t expecting: an opening crawl.

The crawl, which is moving text (with space as the background!) that sets up the story, has previously been used only for the nine core Skywalker saga films. The movies Rogue One and Solo didn’t have opening crawls nor have any of the animated or live-action series — like The Mandalorian and Andor — because they technically fall outside the main Skywalker saga, despite existing within and including characters from it.

So there was no reason to expect a crawl for Ahsoka, especially after Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy told EW at Star Wars Celebration in London back in April that even though it would, in fact, be making a comeback, “the crawl is for movies.”

It’s worth noting that in Ahsoka, the crawl did appear a little differently than fans are used to. First, the text was red and not yellow. Second, it didn’t scroll at the same angle as the films do and used a more straightforward approach. And finally, the font was a little different.

It read as follows:

So why exactly did the crawl return for Ahsoka? Well, one thing to think about is that it technically serves as a continuation of the animated series Star Wars Rebels, which ran for four seasons beginning in 2014 and is where Ahsoka became a legendary Star Wars character. It’s also a spinoff series of the uber-successful Mandalorian, taking place in the same universe and timeframe after the events of Return of the Jedi. So there’s a chance that this series just really needed a refresher and a reminder before jumping into things at light speed.

Looking at the bigger picture, the crawl may be because this series is truly important in moving things toward the next round of films that were announced at the aforementioned Star Wars Celebration. That includes a Mandalorian-centric movie from Dave Filoni, who has long been involved in the animated series and now the live-action ones as well.

In that same vein, given the fact that the character of Ahsoka has strong ties to Anakin Skywalker — aka Darth Vader — and Hayden Christensen is set to reprise the role again as he did for the Obi-Wan series, perhaps the crawl means that Ahsoka is indeed a bigger part of the future of the franchise and the story they want to tell.

And while fans don’t know yet what it all means, many took to social media to express just how excited they were to see the crawl.

The first two episodes of Ahsoka dropped on Tuesday, and the remaining six will be released weekly on Tuesdays on Disney+.