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Quick warning, this episode will contain spoilers
for "The Mandalorian" up through season three,
episode three.
Hey brother, got a little timber in my voice today.
What if I told you that Grogu,
sweet little 50-year-old baby Grogu,
was also Supreme Leader Snoke?
Sort of.
Guys, it is one of my absolute favorite times of year.
It's Mando season.
I mean, it's never a bad time
to be getting new episodes with Grogu
and seeing him and the Mandalorian travel across the galaxy
and fight monsters and heal century-old wounds
between the Jedi and the Mandalorians.
But as of the third episode of season three,
which is the most recent episode as of recording this,
I think we're starting to get a much clearer vision
of the big picture.
Like, what is the real reason for the show, if you will,
which actually I think is like five-fold
but we'll get to 'em because here's the thing-
Well, one of my absolute favorite things about the show
is that it stands completely on its own
and feels very disconnected
from the rest of the Star Wars universe,
minus a few bits of what I would call excellent fan service.
I mean, who doesn't love to see Boba Fett
or Ahsoka, or Luke show up, right?
And don't even get me starting about the stormtroopers
missing the rats from pointblank range with those blasters.
I mean, classic, classic.
But at the end of the day,
if the Mandalorian doesn't have any significance
to the greater Star War story,
then we might all start to wonder,
like, what was the point of it?
And I don't necessarily mean relevance
to the Skywalker saga,
although I do think some of that is in there.
But I have to tell you,
I think the significance of this show
and specifically Grogu's significance, is massive.
Like, bigger than you think.
Like, it is quite possible Grogu
is the most important person in all of Star Wars.
The more I watch,
the more it feels like Grogu is not just Star Wars present,
but also maybe it's past,
and quite possibly it's future as well.
That he's not just a Jedi and a Mandalorian,
but also might be responsible for the rise
of the First Order.
Yeah, this is a cool one.
Today we reveal how Grogu is everything.
(upbeat music)
♪ Hey, brother ♪
Well, I think it goes without saying
that Grogu is a perfect example
of something we never knew we needed
but absolutely positively could not live without him.
Look, I'm so cute.
I love him so much.
I mean, I've been so cautiously optimistic
about the use of this character,
but blown away how all of the cute stuff he does
does not get old.
(imitates Lone Ranger theme song)
(imitates Grogu babbling)
But like we said, beyond possibly being the cutest thing
in the entire Star Wars galaxy, there's almost no doubt
that Grogu is going to have tremendous significance
to the greater Star War story,
possibly even the Gro-glue that holds it all together.
Am I right?
Thank you.
I'll be here for like 15 minutes.
You could laugh next time.
That would help because if you think it's funny.
they'll think it's funny.
For real though, let's get into it.
The plot of the first two seasons of the Mandalorian
has largely been driven forward by Moff Gideon.
Get back here.
He doesn't make many appearances
but his behind the scenes puppeteering
is what's causing most of the problems
for Grogu and Din Djarin.
Mainly what he wants to do though is kidnap Grogu
as part of some larger plan
that thus far, we don't know much about
other than that they took his blood.
What we do know is that his efforts involve
putting a large bounty on Grogu's head,
which Din Djarin takes up in the first episode
and succeeds with.
But of course, as we all know, he immediately regrets this,
uses his payment to create some armor,
and then comes back and rescues lil' Grogu.
But while he is swift,
he is not in time to stop Dr. Pershing
from taking a small amount of blood from Grogu
and what the remains of the Empire want with his blood
at the time is pretty unclear.
But as the show has gone on,
we've been given a lot of hints
and they all seem to point to the same thing.
They want to bring back Palpatine
to which you might be saying like, what?
When have they mentioned that?
And you're right, they certainly haven't come right out
and said it or even mentioned Palpatine's name
as far as I can remember.
But it is almost what everything is pointing to.
Allow me to explain.
The idea of cloning someone is certainly nothing new
in Star Wars.
I mean, they fought an entire war with clones.
(grunts)
Oh, no.
You dropped your little ball.
You dropped that.
Hold on.
Ooh.
And we've seen how it works.
You take one man's DNA, clone him a bazillion times,
and then just age him up really fast.
But there actually is a second type of cloning out there
known as Strand-Casting.
- Strand-Cast.
- And this works a little bit differently
although it does source inspiration from the Kaminoans
who are the ones who originally created the Clone Army.
Namely that instead of just cloning one person
and aging them up really fast,
you can combine the DNA from multiple sources
and clone them directly into an adult.
In fact, we get a very good explanation
of how this works from Dr. Pershing,
the guy who took Grogu's blood at the beginning
of episode three, season three of "The Mandalorian."
So basically, even though he claims his motives are innocent
that he just wants to clone organs
so that he can save people's lives, like his mother's.
And who knows, maybe he does, but it doesn't really matter
because the Empire's intended use for his research
is almost definitely more nefarious.
In fact, we get a pretty good explanation from him
about what he's trying to do with Grogu's blood
back in season two.
"We replicated the results of the subsequent trials
which also resulted in catastrophic failure.
There were promising effects for an entire fortnight
but then sadly the body rejected the blood.
I highly doubt we'll find a donor
with a higher M-count, though."
"Unfortunately we have exhausted our initial supply
of blood.
The child is small and I was only able
to harvest a limited amount without killing him.
If these experiments are to continue as requested,
we would again require access to the donor."
And while he's saying that,
what we, the audience, are seeing is a look
at all of the failed experiments
or should I say, Strand-Casts.
And you might think, well hold on.
He doesn't outright say these are Strand-Casts.
Can we prove that that's what they are?
And yeah, I mean that's exactly what he described
at the beginning of season three, for one.
But also this isn't the first time we've seen
what failed Strand-Casts look like.
It requires us to fast-forward a little
in the Star Wars timeline,
but you can see them in "Rise of Skywalker"
right here when we go to Exegol
and you see all the failed versions of Supreme Leader Snoke,
to which if you're now wondering,
"Wait, Snoke was a Strand-Cast?"
Yeah, he is.
Which also then explains why such an old-looking
super-powerful being wasn't present for anything
prior to "The Force Awakens"
which is something that always bothered me,
like, if he's so powerful and has been around for so long
that like, where was he during the Clone Wars and stuff.
But the answer is he wasn't there yet
because he hadn't been made yet.
Now, in true super villain fashion,
apparently attempts to clone, or Strand-Cast, Palpatine
were in effect long before the beginning of "A New Hope."
All of which are just part of Palpatine's larger
contingency plan in the event
that he ever happened to lose his mortal body,
then he'd have a new vessel
for his surviving soul to go into.
And yet they were not successful.
So we have to ask ourselves,
what X-factor showed up that suddenly made it possible
for Snoke to become a successful Strand-Cast?
Hmm...
Not that I think it's your fault.
I know you didn't do anything wrong.
But if you're not sold to this idea yet,
hold on to your butts
'cause I have one more bomb to drop on you.
And this one kind of blew my mind.
But if we go back to that scene
where Mando and friends are examining
all the failed Strand-Casts while Dr. Pershing is talking,
they start to play this ominous, eerie,
almost familiar music underneath the scene.
And you could totally be forgiven
for not knowing what it was
because one, I don't think almost anybody noticed it.
And two, they're playing some extra Mandalorian music
on top of it.
But do you know what theme that is?
(ominous music)
Man, Snoke really got the short end of the stick here.
I mean, can you imagine commissioning someone
to write you some theme music
and they just come back with (imitates Snoke's theme).
I mean, I guess Snoke liked it.
It was John Williams though.
It's more than I can say.
Anyway, as I'm sure you're aware,
YouTube is like super finicky about music
and copyright stuff.
So that's all I'm gonna play from that theme.
But I would super encourage you to do some homework
on this one.
Like, go listen to that theme and watch this scene.
I'll link to the video down below so you can do that.
But it is-
I guarantee you that is Snoke's theme right there.
And why else would you play that there?
All right, guys.
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Link is the descruption down below.
Descruption, that's the description.
I think you know what I meant.
Interestingly though,
do you know who else was Strand-Casted with Palpatine's DNA?
Rey's father, which is great for a couple of reasons.
First, it means that Palpatine never actually procreated
with another living being, which I thank the maker.
- Do it.
- And two, if Grogu was actually part
of Rey's dad's Strand-Castiness,
then it means that Grogu is a part of Rey.
How did Pershing put it?
The best parts of two people
- Replicas that incorporated the best genetic attributes
of both donors.
- Oh gosh, if only there was like a signature move
that Grogu and Palpatine each had
that we could like look for and Rey like-
I don't know, maybe the Emperor's lightning blast
or Grogu's healing ability or something.
Oh, wait.
(electricity crackling)
Actually, fun fact,
the first time Grogu healed someone on screen
and then Rey healed someone on the screen
like out here in the real world,
like when that came out on Disney Plus
versus came out in theaters,
those were only three days apart.
Coincidence?
I don't think so either.
And now before we continue,
I do wanna take 10 seconds to address some deep lore here
because I can already hear some people's keyboards
just cracking away in the comments.
According to the Star Wars novel "Shadows of the Sith,"
Rey's father Dathan,
'cause yes, I guess we do know his name.
I like to think it's short for JoDathan.
He's a 33-year-old in 21 ABY,
meaning that he would've been born in 12 BBY,
thus apparently disproving Grogu's involvement
in Strand-Casting Palpatine.
Because it means he would've been born
before the Empire had access to Grogu's blood here.
But honestly I think that's bad or at least unreliable math
because all the Strand-Casts we see
are of full grown adults.
Pershing even says they looked great for two weeks
before things went south.
- There were promising effects for an entire fortnight,
but then sadly the body rejected the blood.
- Meaning that only two weeks after being Strand-Cast,
they already looked like adults, right?
So it makes more sense to me
that Rey's dad was Strand-Cast as a 33-year-old,
not that he was alive for 33 years.
Does that make sense?
That's a serious question.
I mean, we're talking about brand new
cloning technology here.
If you Strand-Cast a 33-year-old,
does that make you a 1-year-old or a 33-year-old
or a 1-year-old, 33-year-old?
God, this is-
this is confusing.
- I was born yesterday.
- But look confusing clone math aside,
here's what it comes down to.
The Mandalorian is taking place
during when the First Order would be being formed.
And in the Mandalorian,
we know that the Empire is trying
to make a Strand-Cast of Grogu
and there's only two important Strand-Casts that we know of.
One of them is Snoke and the other one is Rey's father,
who of course goes on to have Rey,
who then shares an incredibly unique ability with Grogu.
It's just math and not the confusing clone kind.
And what's cool here is that it makes Grogu really important
to the greater Star War story by way of blood
but also leaves room for him to be really important
in his own right.
For example, another thing we know from the Mandalorian is
that long ago there was someone known as Mandalore the Great
and according to the armor, he waged war against the Jedi.
And according to the plaque
next to the living waters down under Mandalore,
he also tamed and rode a Mythosaur.
Now, not for nothing,
but if you ask me there's an awful lot of vagueness
around the name Mandalore the Great
and who this ancient Mandalorian actually was.
But at the same time,
there's really only one other ancient Mandalorian
who seems to be of any significance at all
especially as it relates to this story.
And that is Tarre Vizsla,
the first Mandalorian to ever join the Jedi order.
And the one who created the dark saber
who then, just like Mandalore the Great,
went on to rule Mandalore.
Which is weird though, right?
Because it doesn't seem very Jedi
to allow one of their members
to just go rule an entire planet, does it?
Then you also have to consider
that Mandalorian armor and all their different weaponry
is specifically designed to help fight the Jedi.
Beskar is even one of the only metals
that can withstand a light saber.
So my theory is that Tarre Vizsla
was just also Mandalore the Great
and he used all of his knowledge of how the Jedi worked
and what kind of powers they had
to help craft Mandalorian armor
and then led a war against them
which also seems in keeping with his family
based on the few other Vizslas we know of.
First we have Paz Vizsla.
That's this guy who keeps challenging Din over everything.
And then there's Pre Vizsla
who is a character from Clone Wars
and is the leader of Mandalorian terrorist group
called Death Watch.
So overall I would say the Vizslas seemed
like conflict-driven people.
Lest we also forget that the name
of the dark saber is the dark saber.
So it doesn't really sound like the weapon
of a good guy, does it?
So if I had to guess, Tarre Vizsla became a Jedi,
then left the Jedi order, became the ruler of Mandalore,
and led a fight against the Jedi.
Which brings us back to Grogu,
another Jedi turned Mandalorian,
foundling turned back to Jedi
turned back to Mandalorian founding.
And almost definitely the eventual welder of the dark saber.
Can't you just see him with a light saber?
(imitates light saber)
But how perfect would that be?
Where a millennia ago Tarre Vila started a conflict
between these two groups
and now in the present Grogu will be the one
to put an end to it.
Thus far, he's already trained at the Jedi Temple
and with Ahsoka and with Luke,
who actually offered him a choice
between Jedi or Mandalorian.
And Grogu, of course, chose Mandalorian.
But at the end of the day,
I don't think the answer is going to be choosing
between the two.
It's going to be creating harmony between the two.
And Grogu is going to personally be the symbol
of that harmony.
Of course, where that leaves him and Din Djarin
during the times of the First Order and the sequel trilogy,
I suppose that's still unknown.
But really it doesn't matter because at the moment,
Grogu is just a wee child of 50-years-old
and we know, thanks to other members of his species
like Yoda, that they can live to be over 900.
Thus, Grogu is poised to usher in a new millennia of peace
between the Jedi and Mandalorians.
You can easily fast forward the story like 500 years
and have Grogu be the central character
and he would still just be middle-aged.
I mean, think how formidable he is now as almost baby.
How crazy is he gonna be as a fully-trained Mandalorian
slash Jedi who's like in his prime.
But that is why Grogu is the most important person
in the Star Wars galaxy.
Like, you needed anyone to tell us that though, did we?
I don't think so.
(upbeat music)
Guys, thanks as always for watching today's video.
Don't forget to leave a like if you haven't already,
and subscribe so you don't miss any future
Star Wars action from us.
If you wanna see what each different light saber
color means, you can check out this video right here.
But otherwise, until next time,
Ben, I will see you in another life, brother.