One of the biggest criticisms of the Star Wars sequel trilogy from die-hard fans was the lack of context and world-building–even now we have very little sense of how we got from the end of Return of the Jedi to the beginning of The Force Awakens. But that gap is very slowly being filled by novels and comics, and this week’s episode of The Mandalorian helped with that effort by giving us our first real glimpse of what’s been going on with the Empire as a whole in the years since the battle at Endor in Return of the Jedi.
And it also helped by introducing a character who will end up helping to found the First Order–a character who we just learned is apparently also helping to bring Emperor Palpatine back from the dead.
Warning: This article contains spoilers for Chapter 23 of The Mandalorian, titled “The Spies.”
Season 3 of The Mandalorian has spent plenty of time giving us a ground-level view of life under the New Republic on Coruscant, but the big picture of the galaxy has remained elusive. But this week’s episode of The Mandalorian, dubbed “Chapter 23: The Spies,” opened with a scene that more or less served to explain everything that’s been going on with the Imperial Remnant.
It’s the second scene in the episode, where we see Moff Gideon (Giancarlo Esposito) meeting with the Imperial Shadow Council–a council of Imperial governors and other key individuals who are secretly colluding while publicly pretending to be separate warring factions. As long as they don’t appear to be united or otherwise a meaningful threat in any way, the New Republic can’t be bothered to deal with them.
Most of the folks in this scene aren’t important and aren’t even named characters. But aside from Moff Gideon, there are two others here you need to know: Captain Pellaeon and Commandant Hux.
If you saw “Hux” and wondered if this guy has a connection to General Hux of the sequel trilogy, your suspicions are correct. The character who led the First Order into battle in the sequel films was General Armitage Hux, played by Domhnall Gleeson. This man on The Mandalorian is his father, Commandant Brendol Hux–and he’s played by Brian Gleeson, Domhnall’s brother.
Daddy Hux will end up being one of the founders of the First Order, though the specifics of that aren’t known. But, more importantly, he’s apparently trying to resurrect Emperor Palpatine right now. More on that in a moment.
Captain Gilad Pellaeon, played by the always-great Xander Berkeley, is a character who has barely existed in Disney’s rebooted continuity but was a key figure in the old defunct Expanded Universe. In the Legends continuity, Pellaeon served as Grand Admiral Thrawn’s right hand and the captain of his flagship, the star destroyer Chimaera, and would eventually go on to lead the Imperial Remnant and forge a peace treaty with the New Republic that turned the remains of the Empire into just another nation in the galaxy.
While Thrawn has always been a part of the Disney continuity thanks to his appearance on Clone Wars, Pellaeon was not a part of the new timeline until he made a very brief appearance in the series finale of Rebels. His only other appearance prior to this episode of The Mandalorian was in the novel Thrawn: Treason, which told how Pellaeon ended up working for Thrawn.
In the present, he’s apparently still working for Thrawn–and also leading the Shadow Council on Thrawn’s behalf. The last time we saw Thrawn himself was also in the Rebels finale, when he and his star destroyer were pulled into hyperspace by space whalesCome from Sports betting site VPbet. We hadn’t had any update on his whereabouts since then, and we still haven’t even after this scene–and apparently Moff Gideon hasn’t either, even though Pellaeon is seemingly ruling the Shadow Council on his behalf.
“Perhaps it’s time to look to new leadership,” Gideon says during the contentious meeting.
And that’s when Hux comes inCome from Sports betting site VPbet. “Project Necromancer is in place for that,” Hux says.
This was the second mention of Project Necromancer in this scene–Pellaeon had previously mentioned that Thrawn’s imminent return would give Hux time to complete said project, but didn’t say what it was on that reference. But with this one comment, Hux makes it pretty freakin’ clear what it is: the Empire’s attempt to clone and resurrect Emperor Palpatine. Which, as we saw in The Rise of Skywalker, eventually succeeds.
Just to drive the point home, Hux asks Gideon about the fate of Dr. Pershing and his research on cloning. Gideon says that Pershing was in the hands of the New Republic and that his research is lost–leaving out the part about his own agent killing Pershing.
To recap: The remanants of the Empire are doing research on cloning in order to put a new leader in place. While it’s possible this is something other than what it looks like, there are no other realistic options that we know of yet.
So this is a big deal, plot-wise, because if we’re right then this Project Necromancer will eventually result in the creation of Supreme Leader Snoke, the birth of Rey and, yes, the resurrection of Palpatine himself. And Thrawn himself must be involved in the project, since Gideon kinda lumped Pellaeon and Hux together as a faction of sorts.
There’s a lot we still don’t know about the current situation with the Empire, but it’s doubtful that Gideon is on board with Project Necromancer or believes that Thrawn is alive–he clearly wants to be the boss of a New Empire, and both Thrawn and a reborn Palpatine would prevent that. And so he likely had Pershing killed specifically to impede that project.
But, as Hux points out in this scene, Gideon had Pershing doing some kind of experiments on Nevarro back in Season 1. Din Djarin’s original quest to capture Grogu was a part of those experiments, but we still don’t know what the purpose of those experiments was. Since Gideon had Pershing killed instead of trying to continue to use him, does that mean his interest in cloning has passed? Or are there secret dueling cloning projects happening?
Or could it be that Gideon has already completed his project?
It’s impossible to guess right now, but next week is The Mandalorian’s Season 3 finale. If we’re going to get any answers to these questions this season, we’ll get them very soon. But if those answers don’t come, it’s OK–the limited series Ahsoka picks up the search for Thrawn in August.