Details on Ray Stevenson's Character Baylon in STAR WARS: AHSOKA and He Talks About Collaborating with Dave Filoni
If you watched the trailer for Star Wars: Ahsoka, then you saw Ray Stevenson as a badass former Jedi warrior named Baylon. He survived Order 66 by fleeing into the Unknown Regions, and it’s believed that he’s an ally of Grand Admiral Thrawn (Lars Mikkelsen). Baylon is also the master of Shin Hati, who is played by Ivanna Sakhno. Shin wields the Dark Side of the Force and has a loose allegiance with the Night Sisters, who are the Witches of Dathomir that were explored in Star Wars: The Clone Wars. She is unleashed to take down Ahsoka.
These are a couple of very interesting villainous characters, and I can’t wait to see how their stories play out over the course of the season. They are definitely skilled warriors, though, and I freakin’ love Stevenson’s character, and judging from what I’ve seen in the trailer, it looks like he fights with super-skilled precision.
During an interview with CB, Stevenson talked about his experience collaborating with series creator Dave Filoni and how great it was for him. The actor recalled:
“And the thing about Dave that most people probably don't realize a problem with that with that overwhelming talent and skill and command of it is his uh insane ability to collaborate and give you the freedom to have your ideas brought on board and, and, and, and ask the questions and then if it's a good, that's, that's great. Let's, let's throw that in, let's do this.
"And, and that means even from the costume ideas to fighting to this, to certain lines and nothing's fixed in stone, he creates a, a river that flows and he's also free enough to see where that will, that will go. And for an actor, it's just like some, you, you imagine coming into something that's going to be just rigid, this is how it works, this is what we want, but it's not like that at all. So you actually really do feel that you are part of a family that's been, you are brought into this amazing family and everybody works together."
It sounds like his time working on the series was a very positive experience for him. It seems like that’s what the filmmakers hope to give their actors when they come to work with them. Filoni talked about collaborating with Jon Favreau with these characters, saying:
"What's really telling is these are characters, in a lot of cases, in animation that I created, so I know them really well, but then I also like to get Jon's point of view, because he's a person that's seen it but doesn't know it in detail, but he'll know what I think is important about the character. When we bring that together, I think we've got a really good target for, 'Yes, that's the person,' and away we go."
The Ahsoka series is set after the fall of the Empire, and it “follows the former Jedi knight Ahsoka Tano (Rosario Dawson) as she investigates an emerging threat to a vulnerable galaxy.”
Ahsoka and Sabine (Natasha Liu Bordizzo) are on the hunt for Grand Admiral Thrawn in hopes that it will lead them to find the lost Ezra Bridger, the young Jedi who disappeared with Thrawn many years ago. The series directly follows up on several threads from the animated series Star Wars Rebels.
It was also confirmed that Mary Elizabeth Winstead is playing Hera Syndulla, and the droid, Chopper, is also back. The series also stars Hayden Christensen as Anakin Skywalker, Ivanna Sakhno, Eman Esfandi as Ezra, and Ray Stevenson. The limited series is written by Dave Filoni, who executive produces along with Jon Favreau and Kathleen Kennedy.
The series will debut exclusively on Disney+ in August 2023.