3 Star Wars characters who could appear on The Mandalorian this season

Grand Admiral Thrawn

There has been a great focus on the Empire’s cloning experiments in Star Wars media lately, including in the third episode of The Mandalorian. We catch up with Dr. Penn Pershing, who is living on Coruscant and enrolled in an amnesty program for former followers of the Empire.

Pershing meets back up with Elia Kane, who he previously worked with aboard Moff Gideon’s ship. Pershing was conducting cloning experiments on Grogu before Din Djarin rescued the child. But now Pershing is supposedly rehabilitated and living a boring life as a pencil pusher for the New Republic. That is until he gets the urge to continue his cloning work “recreationally,” which Kane urges him to do despite the New Republic’s regulations.

Kane manipulates Pershing into gathering cloning supplies. When Kane and Pershing break into an abandoned Star Destroyer, she turns him into the New Republic. Kane then wipes Pershing’s mind with the mind flayer device. It is assumed that Kane is working for Moff Gideon, as earlier in the episode other people in the Imperial rehab center bring up how they heard Gideon escaped before his tribunal. Another person says they think that was a cover story, and that Gideon’s mind was also wiped by a mind flayer.

In any case, Gideon is probably not the biggest player in the Imperial remnant. That title belongs to Grand Admiral Thrawn, who was last seen in the final episode of Rebels. Thrawn and Ezra Bridger were aboard a Star Destroyer when a group of purrgil whales flew them into hyperspace and they disappeared. Ahsoka Tano thinks Thrawn is still out there, as she demanded to know his location from Elsbeth in season 2 of The Mandalorian.

The Imperial remnant could be being controlled in secret by Thrawn, who has the cunning and intelligence to quietly rebuild the Empire. That could revolve starting up cloning experiments again, which is also being covered in Star Wars: The Bad Batch. This emphasis on the cloning could form a narrative bridge connecting The Mandalorian to the original trilogy and the divisive sequel trilogy. We know that all of this cloning eventually leads to Palpatine’s confusing return in The Rise of Skywalker. That storyline received a lot of backlash, but perhaps the writers of The Mandalorian can salvage it somewhat by giving us the long-awaited debut of live-action Thrawn.

Thrawn and Ezra’s return was teased in the season e premiere of The Mandalorian when Grogu sees a group of purrgil while he and Djarin are traveling through hyperspace. Will the blue guy himself turn up this season?

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