How The Mandalorian Forges New Links to the Star Wars Sequels

Warning: this article contains full spoilers for The Mandalorian: Season 3, Episode 7! If you haven’t already, be sure to check out IGN’s review of “The Spies.”

Leave it to The Mandalorian to pivot from a silly episode full of unexpected celebrity cameos to what may be the most ambitious and game-changing episode of the entire series. Giancarlo Esposito’s Moff Gideon is back, and he’s declared all-out war on Din Djarin and Bo-Katan’s growing clan.

Not only is Season 3, Episode 7, “The Spies” crammed full of epic action scenes, it fills in a surprising number of gaps about the post-Return of the Jedi Star Wars timeline. Thanks to this episode, we have some major new insight into the fate of the Empire and how this dying organization transformed into the First Order featured in the Sequel Trilogy. Here’s what we learned in the penultimate chapter of Season 3.

Grand Admiral Thrawn and the Imperial Shadow Council

Chapter 23 opens with a major nod to a fan-favorite Star Wars villain. We see the recently freed Moff Gideon meet with his peers in the Imperial Shadow Council – including Commandant Brendol Hux (Brian Gleeson) and Captain Gilad Pellaeon (Xander Berkeley) – to discuss the potential return of Grand Admiral Thrawn. Pellaeon sees Thrawn as the last, best hope to restore the dying Empire to its former might. Gideon doesn’t seem to be won over by Thrawn’s mystique. He sees himself as the best candidate to rule the Imperial Remnant.

This is the first time the Shadow Council has appeared in a live-action Star Wars project. This secret cabal was first introduced in writer Chuck Wendig’s Star Wars Aftermath novels, which detail the collapse of the Empire following Palpatine’s death and their crushing defeat at the Battle of Jakku. The Shadow Council was formed by Fleet Admiral Gallius Rax shortly after the Emperor’s death, with the idea being that the council would be the true, secret power behind Grand Admiral Rae Sloane’s command. Rax himself attempted to usurp control of the Empire during the Battle of Jakku, but he was killed and the Shadow Council was believed to be eliminated. Not so, it turns out.

We’re not clear on the identities of every Shadow Council member seen in “The Spies.” But this episode does confirm the Council still exists, and that men like Hux and Pellaeon still believe the Empire can be steered back on the path of victory. Unlike Gideon, they seem to be placing all their faith in Thrawn’s strategic brilliance. Fans of the Star Wars Expanded Universe will remember that Pellaeon is introduced as Thrawn’s right-hand man in 1991’s Heir to the Empire. The Mandalorian may be setting him up for a similar role in the Disney timeline.

This is the second time the series has hinted at Thrawn’s eventual return. When Thrawn was last seen in the series finale of Star Wars Rebels, he and Ezra Bridger were trapped aboard a Star Destroyer as it was dragged to the far reaches of the galaxy by the same kind of hyperspace whales glimpsed in the Season 3 premiere. His whereabouts have been a mystery ever since, though we know Rosario Dawson’s Ahsoka Tano has lately been searching for him. And judging from the trailer for Star Wars: Ahsoka, she’s eventually going to track him down.

Even though Thrawn doesn’t actually appear in this episode, we do get a better idea of how he fits into the Empire’s plans in this chaotic period. As in the classic Expanded Universe, Thrawn is now in a position to emerge from hiding and rally what remains of the Empire. That may happen in the Ahsoka series, but we’d instead put our money on Dave Filoni’s Star Wars movie giving fans a full-fledged adaptation of Heir to the Empire. Whenever it comes out.

Brendol Hux and Project Necromancer

Chapter 23 also serves as the live-action debut of Brendol Hux. Hux is a character who’s played a key role in several post-Return of the Jedi books, like the Aftermath trilogy and the Phasma novel. As his name suggests, Hux is the father of Domnhall Gleeson’s Armitage Hux, the ruthless First Order General from the Sequel Trilogy. The apple didn’t fall far from the tree there.

The elder Hux’s appearance in this episode is key, as it creates a clear link between the dying Empire and the First Order. Hux is among those Imperial officers who retreat into the Unknown Regions after the Empire finally collapses (probably after Thrawn fails to halt the inevitable). He becomes one of the most important figures in the formation of the First Order.

After his disappearance from the galaxy at large, the newly minted General Brendol Hux is tasked with building out the First Order’s Stormtrooper ranks. He’s the one who popularizes the method of kidnapping young recruits and mentally conditioning them to become obedient soldiers. The younger Hux may take credit for that conditioning program in the Sequels, but it was always obvious that Armitage is too young to have built an army all by himself. He merely joined the family business.

Hux also has a habit of finding and grooming promising recruits to be his protégés. Those protégés include Captains Cardinal and Phasma, whom Hux pits against one another as they vie for his approval. That eventually winds up being Hux’s undoing.

But The Mandalorian is set before all of that. At this point in the timeline, Hux is still serving the Empire and overseeing Project Necromancer. Given the name and Gideon referring to Hux’s obsession with cloning, we can infer that Project Necromancer involves the effort to resurrect Emperor Palpatine in a young, healthy, Force-sensitive body.

Thanks to The Rise of Skywalker, we know Palpatine’s spirit survived his death in Return of the Jedi. However, Palpatine is clinging to life inside a decrepit body on Exegol, a fact known only to Hux and a select few others. He’ll eventually begin using Supreme Leader Snoke bodies as vessels when the First Order begins to emerge from hiding, but Palpatine’s ultimate goal is immortality through cloning. Based on what we know from The Rise of Skywalker, Project Necromancer is never successful in creating a Palpatine clone that can use the Force. It only results in a non-Force sensitive clone who becomes Rey’s father.

None of this even gets into the fact that Gideon himself seems to have several cloning vats in his secret Mandalore base. We’re not sure why Gideon is so dismissive of Hux’s cloning experiments when he himself seems to be in the same business. These tanks look similar to the pens we’ve seen before containing Supreme Leader Snoke bodies, so it’s possible Gideon is the one responsible for creating Snoke while Hux is more focused on actually cloning Palpatine. Different solutions with the same end goal – bringing back the Emperor.

The Praetorian Guards and Beskar Stormtroopers

The Empire may be severely weakened, but it still has some impressive weapons to bring to bear. That much is made obvious in Chapter 23 when Moff Gideon unleashes an army of Beskar-armored Stormtroopers. Gideon makes it clear his philosophy is to steal the tactics and weapons of his enemies in order to create the perfect fighting force. And so his new troopers wear the blaster-proof armor and jetpacks of Mandalorians. Gideon himself even shows off the latest iteration of the Dark Trooper armor, complete with a Mandalorian helmet.

These Beskar Troopers (for lack of a better term) may be a callback to George Lucas’ early ideas for Boba Fett. At one point, Boba’s backstory would have involved him being an elite Imperial soldier known as a Super Commando. Artist Ralph McQuarrie’s original concept art for Boba depicts him in stark white armor, just like the Stormtroopers. The Beskar Troopers appear to be a new take on the Super Commando concept, though it’s doubtful whether these soldiers are actually Mandalorian.

We also see the return of another familiar Trooper type from Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Gideon is given a complement of Praetorian Guards when he receives authorization to attack Din and Bo-Katan’s group. These are the same bodyguards that defend Supreme Leader Snoke in his throne room, though these characters are also wearing Mandalorian helmets rather than the more samurai-inspired designs of The Last Jedi. But they still carry those nasty, lightsaber-resistant melee weapons.

The return of the Praetorian Guards creates one of the most tangible links yet between the Empire and the First Order. We now know the Empire was making use of these elite warriors even before evolving into the First Order. We also learn that the Praetorian Guards aren’t simply tasked with protecting Snoke/Palpatine, but can be contracted out to any Imperial warlord who needs extra muscle. They’re clearly adept at killing Mandalorians, but we’ll see if the Praetorian Guards survive the inevitable rematch with Bo-Katan’s forces in the Season 3 finale.

For more on the current state of the Star Wars franchise, brush up on everything announced at Star Wars Celebration 2023 and all the upcoming movies and shows.

Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.