In the ranks of voice actors, Clancy Brown stands as a legend. Over the course of his four-decade career, Brown has voiced more popular and familiar characters than most people realize. While he may be best known for voicing Mr. Eugene H. Krabs, Brown has also dubbed as Lex Luthor, X-Men villain Mister Sinister and multiple characters in the Star Wars universe including Star Wars: The Clone Wars baddie Savage Oppress. As Ashley Eckstein fans know well, rarely do voice actors get to bring their animated characters to life; however, in the Disney Plus streaming series Ahsoka, Brown was given the opportunity to do just that.
Episode One of Lucasfilm’s latest Star Wars streamer, entitled “Master and Apprentice”, saw Brown bring the character of Ryder Azadi, who he voiced on Star Wars Rebels between 2015 and 2018, to life. Once an Imperial governor of Lothal in the early years of the Empire’s reign, Azadi became a loyal supporter of revolutionaries Ephraim and Mira Bridger and was later imprisoned for his betrayal to the Empire. Later, Azadi befriended and aided their son Ezra and his Rebel friends in their efforts to liberate Lothal from the Empire’s rule.
In “Master and Apprentice”, Azadi is revealed to once again govern under the now free Lothal and is seen presiding over a ceremony in which a monument to Ezra is being dedicated. Azadi was often one of the funnier characters on the long-running animated series and Brown is given an opportunity to play up some humor in live-action as his plans to have Sabine Wren help dedicate the monument go–predictably–awry. It remains to be seen what role, if any, Azadi and Lothal may play over the rest of the 8-episode series but given the importance of the setting to the particular cast of characters at the heart of Ahsoka, it wouldn’t be too surprising to see more of the character as way to further understand what’s become of Lothal since it was last seen.
