There are a lot of “what ifs” in Star Wars. What if Anakin hadn’t fallen to the Dark Side? What if Luke hadn’t blown up the Death Star? What if R2-D2 had never been manufactured? Some of these are pure speculation because they could never feasibly have happened, but there is one that came close to being answered, what would have happened if Luminara Unduli had trained Ezra Bridger?

The young orphan from Lothal was of course famously trained by Order 66 survivor Kanan Jarrus in the animated series Star Wars: Rebels, but in one episode, Kanan discovers that Luminara is apparently alive and being held in an Imperial prison after surviving the Clone Wars. It all turns out to be a trap set by the Grand Inquisitor, and Luminara is yet another victim of the Jedi Purge, but it does leave the interesting question of what would have happened if she’d gotten a chance to train Ezra.

One thing that always bothered Kanan when he was training Ezra was his own lack of teaching. He was still only a padawan when Order 66 happened, and went into hiding for more than a decade after, barely using his Force skills during that time to avoid detection. While he realised he needed to train Ezra, he was sometimes overwhelmed by the responsibility and his own failings as a Jedi. At times, he didn’t give Ezra the lessons he needed, which led to him reaching for the easy path of the Dark Side, like when he sided with Maul or used the Sith holocron to gain knowledge quickly.

Luminara, on the other hand, was a respected Jedi, and a senior member of the Order. She had experience of training at least one padawan in Barriss Offee, seeing her training through to the end and her inauguration as a Jedi Knight. She served as a general during the Clone Wars and was more experienced in every way than Kanan.

One of Luminara’s foremost qualities was her adherence to the Jedi was, even if that meant she could appear cold and emotionless at times. During the Second Battle of Geonosis, she feared that her padawan had resigned died and resigned herself to the fact. Not in a cold hearted way, but in the balanced way of the Jedi, coming to terms with the loss rather than becoming frustrated as Anakin Skywalker did.

If she had survived the war, it’s possible she would have changed out of necessity, but it seems to be such a central part of her character that she would have remained more or less the same, and she would have had a very different opinion on the way Ezra should be trained.

She had a high standard of training for her padawans and expected a lot from her students. She even went so far as to expect Barriss to remember the complex network of catacombs that spread below the droid foundry on Geonosis.

Kanan wasn’t anywhere near as demanding of Ezra, partly because he was unsure how best to act as a mentor, and partly because he was less aligned with the ways of the Jedi after so long on his own. While this had its downsides, it also worked out well for the two of them. Ezra was far from a normal padawan. He was fourteen years old when Kanan found him, much older than usual Jedi younglings, who would start training around four or five. This was coupled with Ezra’s years of independence, living alone on the streets of Lothal City, which made him a particularly difficult student, so much so that he often grumbled about having to put up with Kanan’s lenient teaching style. It’s possible a stricter teacher such as Luminara would have only made this worse, perhaps even making him give up on the training altogether and go back to his old lifestyle, or else reach for the Dark Side in an attempt to speed things up.

It’s interesting to note that the only other Jedi Ezra had any real relationship with was Ahsoka Tano, who had become less aligned with the Jedi teachings after leaving the Order, and combined with the fact she was Anakin’s padawan, made her a particularly unconventional Jedi. Ezra never had a chance to experience what a real Jedi was like, and it’s possible that he would have been less eager to learn their ways if he had.

This also leads to a big point about Barriss Offee. After becoming a Jedi knight, Barriss turned away from the Order, instigating a terrorist bombing of the Jedi Temple and trying to pin the blame on her friend Ahsoka. Despite the rigorous training Master Unduli had put her through, she still reached for the Dark Side and became disillusioned with the Jedi. Considering Ezra’s tendencies and also the situation he was in as a member of the rebellion, it’s possible he would have turned out the same way as Barriss, trying to fix everything through violence. We get a glimpse of this at the beginning of Rebels season three where Ezra is using the Sith holocron to learn new powers.

That’s not to say Luminara was a bad Jedi or poor teacher. In fact, she could be seen as a model of what a good master should be, but that was at the time of the Republic, when the Jedi were still strong. The Clone Wars took its toll on the Order and their beliefs, and the war against the Empire was even more brutal. That coupled with Ezra being an unconventional student and everything that he had to deal with, it’s likely her way of doing things, and her slightly arrogant nature, would have made her a less than ideal master for the scrappy kid from Lothal. As it was, Kanan was able to find a balance, as a unique teacher for a unique student, and considering how they both turned out in the end, it was probably for the best.