I mean . . . it's a number. What is there to discuss? Before they said August. Now they've said which day in August. What else is anyone supposed to do with that information? We don't have a more specific release window for any other project in the pipeline beyond a vague notion of Skeleton Crew being slated for the end of the year, so we can't even infer what the knock-on effect will be. I suppose one could interpret this as meaning it's likely going to be more at the December end of things than November, but it's all guesswork. Personally I'd have thought the revelation that one of the Joe Johnston bubble cockpit shuttle concepts from RotJ (or something very much like it) making it onto the screen would be of more interest. Sure I guess there's that, but I never saw that as a serious concern given how deep into post the show was at the start of the strike.
Like I said, mostly small. When you have anxiety but also support every aspect of what the writers do and their need to strike, it still stood out, even just a little.
Are you alive at the start of A New Hope if you time travel from the day right after Order 66 to after Return of the Jedi? Mostly nitpicking on the word “confirmed”, since nothing has been outright confirmed until it airs and we know the world between worlds is somehow involved, otherwise it's about right.
Prety much all the Jedi Knights are gone by A New Hope. There may be Padawan left around, or people that have fallen to some extent to the Dark Side, or given up on the Force and have cut themselves off from it. Luke Skywalker being the only Jedi Knight by Return of the Jedi's end. Ahsoka, at least at the time, is no Jedi Knight. She's quite easily the next best thing, but she left the Order, and has not come to terms with the idea that she's still a Jedi in all but title. Yoda likely knows she should be Jedi, but respects her wishes enough to no include her as Jedi. Ezra's a Padawan (and missing in action). No telling what happened to all those Jedi that disappeared via The Path. Though again, most of those would have been Padawans, Younglings, or simply children who have the Force. Sure there were people like Vos who was helping out, or Kestis even, but their stories are only told up to about nine years before A New Hope, when the Empire found The Path. After that we just don't know. Only that by A New Hope, "the Jedi are all but extinct". And by the Rise of the First Order, even with Luke Skywalker around, the Jedi are still mostly legend in the Galaxy at large.
Yeah, the galaxy is a big place, and the Empire gave whatever other Jedi survivors we don't know about almost 10,000 reasons why they should each find the deepest darkest hole of a planet they can, and just stay very very quiet. Also as we saw in Rebels; Yoda is not omnipotent. While he could see much from Dagobah, he couldn't seen Kanan until he started back in the Jedi path and set foot inside a temple, Padawan in tow. It's safe to assume that the same applies to the other surviving Jedi who like Kanan, lost their way, or otherwise chose to abandon the path and (unlike Kanan) never return. There may be living people out there who were Jedi, but are Jedi no longer. This kind of gets back to something I often lament: Star Wars really needs a word that is to Jedi what Ronin is to Samurai. (First person to suggest "Grey Jedi" gets a flick round the earhole and has to wear the dunce cap for today.) Probably something derived from sanskrit as is Padawan -- which supposedly means "learner" or "follower of the path" depending on where you look it up, but the etymology seems to be literally "foot in forest" or more correctly; "walks in the forest", which I'm given to understand has a heavy metaphorical spiritual overtone to it. So I guess whatever the sanskrit antonym for that is. I thought maybe "stands (still) in the forest", but that seems to translate to 'Padastha' which seems to be an actual thing in Hinduism and yoga meditation, that doesn't really equate to what I'm looking for here. I thought maybe something derived from either 'Padasaya' ("sleeps in the forest" . . . I think) or 'Paksahara' ("apostate") might work, though that last one may be a bit harsh since it also means "traitor". Of course it'd take an actual sanskrit scholar to figure out something appropriate. Poking around online dictionaries and glossaries for a language one can't grasp (especially one steeped in religious significance) is probably not the best approach. Also, so far as her not being involved in that story is concerned: she can't be the one to do what Luke has to do. She faced Vader already. She can't defeat him. Probably couldn't bring herself to kill him if she did, and she certainly can't turn him back towards the light. Indeed her very presence would be counter-productive as she's just another reminder of his past; a thing he wants to destroy above all else. She is of the past; Luke is of the future. Luke gave him hope. A way forward.
Even if Tarkin knows about other Jedi and force users you don't just bring that up in a conference filled with many people who don't know that. If the propaganda says they all died you got to say they all died in front of others, even if you know personally it's a lie. Plus no of them prevented the Empire from being created so Tarkin is someone who likely doesn't even fear or respect the Jedi enough to even consider them a threat anymore.
And let’s face it: at the time of ANH the Jedi haven’t been a threat in a long time, pretty much all their survivors are old and in hiding.
We just, as of yet, don't know what Ahsoka was doing during the OT. First she would need to escape the planet she was on. After that? Don't know.
My rhetorical question concerned Baylan Skoll. Thankfully, we barely known anything about him other than he survived Order 66, and that he – despite hiding from the Empire – is enough at odds with the rebels, or this part of rebels, to be the villain. With the involvement of the World Between Worlds, we can't be sure* where he was when. I was entertaining many things that could be involved in inflaming the conflict here, and I've imagined options from something alike to Reva's seduction to the dark side to avenge her fate to attempting to misuse the World Between Worlds and break the law of time like the Son did. Ahsoka was confirmed alive. (And even if Ezra had pulled her into the future, that was still before the battle of Yavin.) (* I accidentally made the mistake of watching the new Celebrations exclusive clips yesterday, which were more spoilery than expected, and they nearly rule out some alternative options for Baylan's padawan, but my point still stands)
we don’t really know that: she went back to sometime AFTER she was pulled in the world between words, but it’s not yet possible to tell if we’re talking moments or years.
Granted if you watch that on a phone you can barely see her, but yes Ahsoka descends down into the temple. That’s the least we see of her until the final s4 scene post-ROTJ
The interesting thing about that whole sequence when you line it all up, is that Morai is in two places at once . . . which given what she probably is, is hardly beyond the bounds of possibility (with or without WBW shenanigans.) I mean even ignoring this incident, she can clearly teleport across the galaxy at will. Oh and related side note for those that didn't make the connection; the alternate version of that music on the official soundtrack is titled 'Where the Sun Sails and the Moon Walks', which is a Gandalf quote from The Hobbit. (Tolkien was also making a literary reference with this IIRC, but I'm pretty sure Filloni and/or Kiner were going for the Gandalf of it all.)
There are also multiple time-cuts in the sequence, and she returns from the World Between Worlds via a different portal than Ezra. There's nothing to establish exactly when she walks down those stairs.
Going back to surviving Jedi for a moment. George himself imagined there being 50-100 survivors post ROTJ. https://twitter.com/pabl0hidalgo/status/1665070097394958336?s=46&t=GJ4lIGndtLwuph_LJO2AJw But we all know he’s not great with numbers.