Who Is The Inquisitor From The 'Tales Of The Jedi‘ Trailer?
Image Source: Marvel Comics, Lucasfilm Ltd
The D23 trailer for Tales of the Jedi includes a dark cloaked figure with glowing red eyes and a faceplate that looks like a bird’s skull. The typical double-bladed spinning red lightsaber as well as the trailer's subtitles identify this character as one of the Inquisitors, a group of Force-sensitive beings, who were tasked with hunting down the last remaining Jedi after the rise of the Empire.
Shortly after the trailer's release, several Star Wars sites claimed this character to be the Sixth Brother, but now it seems this assumption might have been a bit premature.
We will get to this, so stay tuned.
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What probably led to this claim is the fact, that the trailer clearly shows the Inquisitor fighting against Ahsoka Tano and the climax of E.K. Johnston's novel Ahsoka (2016) has the former Padawan face-off against the Sixth Brother.
This Inquisitor also had a role in several issues of the Darth Vader comic series, which takes place years before the events of Ahsoka. Before joining the Inquisitors he was a Jedi named Bil Valen. The comic depicts him as a grey-skinned alien of an unidentified race with piercing blue eyes and scar-like markings on his cheeks.
Image Source: Marvel Comics
Like all the other Inquisitors (including the Grand Inquisitor), he was trained by Darth Vader, who even cut off one of his arms to ignite his rage and make him embrace a more aggressive fighting style than he had learned in the Jedi Temple. The Sixth Brother later accompanied Vader on a mission to Mon Cala where he fought against an uprising against the Empire.
Later, when he learned about a Force-sensitive being, who might even have had Jedi training, he followed that lead to the agricultural moon of Raada. There, farmers fought against the local Imperial garrison. The Sixth Brother quickly put a brutal end to this revolt while also taking some hostages to lure in the fugitive Jedi or Padawan, who was no other than Ahsoka herself.
When she confronted the Inquisitor, she was in the process of constructing new lightsabers, and during their duel, she heard the kyber crystals in his lightsabers sing to her. Though without any physical weapon, she was still able to defeat and kill the Inquisitor, by tearing at the crystals with the Force, causing the lightsaber to explode. She then purified the red crystals and used them for the lightsabers she later used in Star Wars Rebels and The Mandalorian.
The appearance of the Inquisitor from the Tales of the Jedi trailer differs vastly from how he was depicted in the comics, but this wouldn't be the first time a character from an animated show looks different from in books or comics. When Dave Filoni and George Lucas introduced Darth Bane into The Clone Wars, the ancient Sith bore hardly any similarities with the bald man from the novels and the comics. But back then, written material had a lower level of canonicity than movies or TV shows, while this time, it would be a contradiction within the canon.
But still, there are some good reasons to assume that the fight between Ahsoka and the Inquisitor is indeed the one from Johnston's novel: There is fire all around and also some captives, which would fit the battle against the farmers on Raada (although it is not described exactly like that in the book). And it seems that Ahsoka is not having her lightsabers, as she ducks away from the blade of the Inquisitor instead of blocking it.
And besides, how many more Inquisitors should Ahsoka have to fight anyway, right?
Right?
Well, on September 10, E. K. Johnston herself tweeted that the character from the trailer was a new Inquisitor because "...Ahsoka gets to beat at least 12 of them.", referencing her duels in Star Wars Rebels.
When someone answered that he still believed that the Inquisitor with the skull-like face is the one from her novel, she simply answered: "I like your optimism."
Johnston's tweet doesn't rule out the possibility that the character from the trailer might still be the Sixth Brother, as Lucasfilm has the right to use and alter her creation without asking for permission, but as Dave Filoni collaborated with Johnson on the novel, it seems strange that the author wouldn't have at least known about the fact that the Sixth Brother would appear in Tales of the Jedi.
Ultimately fans will find out the truth in less than two months when all six episodes of Tales of the Jedi will premiere on Disney+ on October 26.
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