Filoni is an avid “Star Wars” fan with lots of knowledge of the franchise and its extensive universe, so he would know there was no way Anakin had a padawan.

“I suppose I could go on arguing this point in and out and bring the textbooks in,” Filoni added. “But, you know, I preferred the choice to say, ‘Well, okay, why does he want to do that and let me talk about it with him and let’s see where we can go with this.'”

This turned out to be significant for the history of the franchise. As Filoni himself admitted, “I really like Ahsoka. You know, she’s become one of my favorite characters,” and you can tell, given how the director went from teasing the character’s death to voice actor Ashley Eckstein to then making Ahsoka one of the few Jedi who survived Order 66 as well as an essential part of the Rebellion in “Star Wars Rebels” and now giving the character her very own spin-off TV show. And all of this considering that, as Filoni admitted in that same interview, Ahsoka’s been “a struggle to fight for and get up on screen” due to initial backlash from certain fans.

Lucas’ involvement in the creation of Ahsoka is just part of his larger involvement with the show — involvement which was not supposed to be significant, at least at first. Instead, he was originally going to just leave all decisions to Henry Gilroy and Dave Filoni but later changed his mind. In the end, Lucas not only suggested creating certain characters or bringing some back from the dead, but also entire arcs, like how Filoni tells the story of Lucas asking the writers to do a 3-episode arc all about bank deregulations.