Why Does Anakin Call Ahsoka “Snips” in ‘Ahsoka’?

In the fourth episode of Disney Plus’s Star Wars series Ahsoka, Rosario Dawson’s title character reunites with ex-mentor Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) in the World Between Worlds, a mystical realm connecting all of time and space.

Even before we see Anakin, though, we hear him greeting his former padawan with a pet name.

“Hello, Snips,” he says, from behind her back.

“Master?” she says, not sure whether to believe her ears.

“I didn’t expect to see you so soon,” he says.

Snips? Who’s Snips?

To find out, you’d have to delve into Clone Wars lore from more than a decade and a half ago. Read on for the lowdown on these two characters’ relationship and that head-scratching nickname.

In the 2008 film Star Wars: Clone Wars, Anakin Skywalker and a young Ahsoka Tano start trading nicknames after Yoda sends the young Jedi to become Anakin’s new padawan.

In one scene, Ahsoka gets irritated when Anakin refers to her as a youngling. “Stop calling me that!” she says. “You’re stuck with me, Skyguy.”

Anakin reciprocates the irritation. “What did you just call me?” he asks. ‘Don’t get snippy with me, little one. You know, I don’t even think you’re old enough to be a padawan.”

To that, Ahsoka says, “Well, maybe I’m not, but Master Yoda thinks I am.”

Later in that film, as Anakin and Ahsoka work to thwart Count Dooku’s Separatist army, Anakin settles on a shorter nickname. “If we survive this, Snips, you and I are gonna have a talk,” he says at one point.

Anakin drops the nickname again in Ahsoka Episode 5 as he tells the Togruta fighter that he’s there to finish her training. She protests, saying it’s a little late for that, but Anakin disagrees. “One is never too old to learn, Snips,” he says.

The Ahsoka–Anakin scenes in Ahsoka mark the first time the two characters have appeared together in live-action Star Wars content, but they had plenty of screen time together in both the Clone Wars film and the animated TV series of the same name.

In that series, Ahsoka bids farewell to Anakin after being framed for the murder of a fellow Jedi and ousted from the Order, as Time recaps. And in the follow-up series Star Wars Rebels, Ahsoka comes face to face Darth Vader, and she realizes that it’s actually Anakin under the Sith lord’s helmet and armor. They duel, and Ahsoka nearly loses her life, but her friend Ezra Bridger uses the World Between Worlds to rescue her before Death Vader kills her.

Off-screen, Ahsoka and Anakin’s live-action portrayers are thick as thieves. Rosario told Entertainment Weekly that she and Hayden — who also co-starred together in the 2003 film Shattered Glass — had “so much fun” on the Ahsoka set.

"I tell you the entire crew made an excuse to be on set those days,” she added. “It just brought tears to all of our eyes. It was wonderful. I love Hayden. He's such a wonderful man.”