Star Wars: Anakin Skywalker Had a Better Apprentice Before Ahsoka Tano
Mike Chen’s Star Wars: Brotherhood novel confirmed that Anakin Skywalker had another Jedi apprentice before Ahsoka Tano came into his life.
In Star Wars lore, Ahsoka Tano has become one of the most pivotal figures in the saga after her shocking introduction in the pilot to Star Wars: The Clone Wars. She quickly grew into a favorite among fans, who appreciated how she humanized Anakin Skywalker as his apprentice. Now, Ahsoka’s in the mainstream limelight after first appearing in The Mandalorian and then starring in her own TV series to detail what happened while searching for Ezra after Rebels. However, as important as she was to Anakin during the Clone Wars, Mike Chen’s 2022 canon novel Star Wars: Brotherhood confirmed he had an apprentice before she came into his life.
Mill Alibeth is a Zabrak female Jedi Initiate from the late Republic Era. Palpatine and the Jedi Council agreed just before the Clone Wars that newbies would get indoctrinated into the military as part of the build-up to the Clone Wars. It didn’t matter if they weren’t knights because it was an all-hands-on-deck situation. Anakin, who had only recently become a full-fledged Jedi Knight, ended up connecting with Mill’s battalion to offer aid to Langston and became her unofficial teacher. Not only does she survive the Clone Wars, but she goes on to have an impact on Galactic Affairs all the way through the rise of the First Order. In the process, she sheds further light on Anakin’s better-known apprentice, Ahsoka.
Updated by Robert Vaux on January 2, 2024: The article has been updated to further develop Mill Alibeth’s story in Star Wars canon. In addition, it addresses the events of the Ahsoka limited streaming series and examines how a previous apprentice would have affected her relationship with Anakin. It has also been reformatted to meet current CBR guidelines.
Mill Alibeth Is More Empathic Than Ahsoka Tano
In addition to mentoring other students on balancing the light with their emotions, Anakin found humanity in Mill. She wasn’t keen on war but hoped to find a path to peace. That’s because Mill had powerful empathic powers, which she found difficult to control. As a result, she got severe nausea whenever exposed to anything relating to combat or violence, feeling the pain of others. Anakin realized she had a strong connection to the Force because even discussing battle made her sick. In fact, the mood on Coruscant got so aggressive that the temple made life unpleasant, to the point Mill tried to cut herself off from the Force. That reminded Anakin of his own struggles after Qui-Gon’s death, especially because Mace Windu kept doubting him. Still, the Force was emboldening him, so he wanted Mill to place faith in it, even as he did self-introspection.
It culminated in both Jedi going to rescue Obi-Wan Kenobi on Cato Neimoidia during a civil war. Mill snuck aboard, risking it all even though this harmed her mentally and physically. She just couldn’t let Anakin do this by himself, and thankfully, they successfully extracted Obi-Wan. However, Mill turned down a chance to officially join the Jedi later on. The swath of death from Cato Neimoidia proved she needed to remain neutral — a path Ahsoka would walk later in her life. The elders were shocked, but Anakin was the catalyst for this, inspiring her to follow her heart. Mill would tell him to do the same, sensing darkness swelling inside, which resulted in Anakin becoming skeptical of the Force.
Anakin Skywalker Succumbs to Mill’s Worst Fears
The time spent with Mill fashioned a more independent thinker in Anakin, but sadly, he would, just as Mill feared, lose himself to the Dark Side. Still, her words kept a door open that reminded him no one’s a servant to the Force. It’s the same door that Luke pushed against during the events of Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi, allowing the younger Skywalker to finally get through to his father after the likes of Ahsoka and Obi-Wan had failed. Anakin revived from his mental prison and helped Luke save the day, thanks to the seed Mill planted in him long ago. In that sense, while Ahsoka was a treatment for his pain, Mill was the unheralded cure.
Mill’s renunciation of the Jedi Order allowed her to survive the Purge of Order 66. She eventually became a bounty hunter and apparently remained gainfully employed for many years. According to the canon 2023 Dark Horse comic Hyperspace Stories 4 (Amanda Deibert, Lucas Marangon, Tyler Smith, Jimmy Betancourt, and Michael Atiyeh), she maintains a friendly rivalry with Mwarr Ja’Render, who Kylo Ren hires to abduct Rey from the planet Kashyyyk sometime between the events of Star Wars: Episode VIII – The Last Jedi and Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker. Considering Mill’s deep empathy toward others, it’s reasonable to assume she’s more moral and judicious in her bounty hunting than Ja’Render: looking for the truly wicked instead of taking the money without questioning who she’s going after.
Ahsoka is unlike Mill in most ways, though they both ultimately act in the name of helping others. She’s exuberant and enthusiastic in her early years, viewing the Clone Wars as a grand adventure most of the time (though adulthood tempers her, and she ultimately leaves the Jedi Order just as Mill did). That had a profound effect on Anakin; Ahsoka’s treatment at the hands of the Jedi Council ultimately sends him to Palpatine, where he falls to the Dark Side and becomes Darth Vader. His experiences with his first apprentice — and Mill’s ultimate rejection of the Jedi — would have exacerbated his belief that the Jedi treated Ahsoka unfairly and therefore were not worthy of his loyalty.
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That, in turn, would have had an effect on Ahsoka herself despite her limited (at best) interactions with Mill. As revealed in Ahsoka Season 1, Episode 5, “Shadow Warrior,” she feels partly responsible for Anakin’s fall and has been harboring guilt about it in all the years since. Her vision of Anakin in that episode allowed her to set that guilt aside and acknowledge that Anakin was ultimately responsible for his own actions, but it clearly wasn’t easy for her. Anakin’s previous apprentice could have readily contributed to her emotional state. With Anakin already “failing” with his first apprentice, she would have worked all the harder to prove herself worthy of his attention, quietly looking over her shoulder at Mill and increasing her resolve in the process. Mill’s experiences might have also alerted her to Anakin’s growing darkness, allowing her to cut herself off from him before it consumed him (despite remaining with him for a longer period of time and almost completing her training). All of that feeds into Ahsoka’s unresolved emotions, which ultimately come into play decades later, with the Jedi gone and Anakin’s successors seeking a way forward.
Mill is a reasonably late addition to the Star Wars canon, which makes it easier to slide her into the story in an organic manner. More importantly, she reveals a great deal about both Anakin and Ahsoka’s journey while in the midst of making her own. She sets the stage for Anakin’s later relationship with Ahsoka while coloring both their reactions to each other and how they are affected as they move forward through the story. Since Mill survived Order 66 as well, she represents another figure with a connection to Anakin who could conceivably shape the direction of Force users in the future. And while there has yet been no word on whether there will be more Ahsoka — the first season is officially billed as a limited series as of this writing — should additional seasons be ordered, bringing Mill into them would be a natural choice for interesting drama. The two apprentices could meet, compare notes, and reflect on their respective experiences with a man who — for better or worse — changed the fate of the galaxy. That Mill makes such an easy potential addition, despite a far less prominent footprint in the canon, speaks well of both how she is presented and the impact she makes on the overall story.
