Grand Admiral Thrawn was such a beloved character among Star Wars fans invested in the now-defunct Legends continuity that in 2016, he was introduced to the official canon in the animated series Star Wars Rebels, which is definitely worth viewing as you make your way through the Star Wars movies in order. Then in 2023, five years after Rebels’ conclusion, the villain made his live-action debut in Ahsoka, where he was reprised by Lars Mikkelsen. Ahsoka also brought back Kevin Kiner, the composer behind Rebels, The Clone Wars and other Star Wars projects, to handle music duties, and while speaking with CinemaBlend about his first live-action outing set in a galaxy far, far away, Kiner discussed how one of Thrawn’s coolest elements actually makes it a “challenge” to score for him.
I had the pleasure of speaking with Kiner about his work on Ahsoka, which, just like with The Bad Batch, Tales of the Jedi and Tales on the Empire (all of which are viewable with a Disney+ subscription), he tackled with his children, Sean and Deana. In the middle of our conversation, I mentioned that I read Dave Filoni didn’t want to do a straightforward full rendition of Thrawn’s theme when he was brought into Ahsoka, so the Kiners instead to a slowed-down approach with the music. That left me curious about if there were any other musical challenges that they ran into with properly representing Thrawn, and Kevin Kiner answered:
I will tell you one thing, and this was a bit of a challenge in Rebels as well, but Thrawn’s nature as a bad guy is how softly he speaks. It’s so cool from a bad guy’s perspective, the opposite of Darth Vader, who has this booming, mangled electronic voice. I think by speaking so softly, you can just feel this simmering anger and evilness. So you have to be really careful in scoring that because we need to hear his dialogue, and yet still convey the mood of him. So you have to be less thick, you try to stay out of the frequencies of his voice. Those kind of things are almost technical challenges, but they wind up being creative challenges because you need to express a character, [but] at the same time you need to not get in the way of his dialogue.
Thrawn’s soft-spoken demeanor does indeed make him stand out from Darth Vader, as the former relies on strategy, tactics and study of culture to defeat his enemies rather than brute force (you can compare their differing styles in the book Thrawn: Alliances). However, because Thrawn rarely raises his voice, Kevin Kiner has had to make sure the music he composes for scenes featuring the character doesn’t drown out his voice, and this has stretched all the way back to Star Wars Rebels. Plus, like he mentioned, that music that needs to hit the right balance also needs to properly convey the kind of mood you expect from a Thrawn scene.
Listen to Ahsoka’s rendition of Grand Admiral Thrawn’s theme below, which is found on Part 2 of the Disney+ show’s soundtrack, covering Episodes 5-8.
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The end of Ahsoka Season 1 saw Thrawn and the Great Mothers arriving on Dathomir, and with Ahsoka Season 2 officially on the way, fans can look forward to seeing both what the blue-skinned antagonist is plotting next and hear more of Kevin Kiner’s music. Keep checking back with CinemaBlend for news on how the next season is progressing amongst the other updates concerning upcoming Star Wars movies and TV shows.