This year at Star Wars Celebration during the “Rebels Remembered” session, executive producer Dave Filoni was asked about the place main character Ezra Bridger goes when he enters a black and white world filled with many portals to past and future events; Filoni replied that he was inspired by the Wood Between the Worlds in C.S.Lewis’s story, The Magician’s Nephew. He said:

For me one of the inspiration points though was definitely in C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia when he talks about a “wood between worlds” you know, and I was fascinated by that concept as a child, and like how you could go into this place that was between places and into these pools and into different worlds…

In The Magician’s Nephew, Digory’s Uncle Andrew tricks Digory and his friend Polly into using his  magic rings. They then find themselves in a mysterious wood filled with many pools.  

He was standing by the edge of a small pool—not more than ten feet from side to side in a wood. The trees grew close together and were so leafy that he could get no glimpse of the sky. All the light was green light that came through the leaves: but there must have been a very strong sun overhead, for this green daylight was bright and warm. It was the quietest wood you could possibly imagine. There were no birds, no insects, no animals, and no wind. You could almost feel the trees growing. The pool he had just got out of was not the only pool. There were dozens of others—a pool every few yards as far as his eyes could reach. You could almost feel the trees drinking the water up with their roots. This wood was very much alive.

Then Digory realizes where they are.

“I’ve just had a really wonderful idea,” said Digory. “What are all the other pools?”

“How do you mean?”

“Why, if we can get back to our own world by jumping into this pool, mightn’t we get somewhere else by jumping into one of the others? Supposing there was a world at the bottom of every pool!”

While the pools in Lewis’s Magician’s Nephew do not allow access to any place in the past or future as Filoni’s World between Worlds does, the inspiration is readily visible. Fans of Narnia and Lewis alike may find it heartening that 64 years after its original publication, the Magician’s Nephew (and likewise other novels in the series) continues to inspire the storytellers of today.