Welcome back everyone
it's Charlie The Mandalorian.
Season 3 has been teasing Grand Admiral Thrawn.
We'll explain what's going on.
We got an Easter eggs for him in previous seasons,
and obviously he was a big character during Star Wars Rebels.
They're bringing him back in a really big way
during the events of The Mandalorian, the Ahsoka series.
So we'll break it all down.
If you're brand new to the channel, be sure to subscribe to get all the episodes.
I will be doing videos for the Ahsoka series as well.
We'll get another trailer for that pretty soon.
Thrawn will be a much bigger character during that than he is
during the Mandalorian Season three.
Where's your master?
Where is Grand Admiral Thrawn?
Currently, during the events of the Mandalorian Season three grand,
Admiral Thrawn has already returned to the known galaxy
after being lost in the unknown regions since about a year
before the events of a New Hope at the end of Star Wars Rebels.
Like right before a new hope,
Ezra Bridger had used the Ghost ship to summon a pot of pearls, which we saw.
The Mandalorian Season three Episode one The Space Well's basically
to take his seventh Fleet of Star destroyers into the unknown
regions, sidelining him from the events of the original trilogy, giving the rebels
the ability
to come together in a more cohesive way and start the galactic civil war
that you saw during the original trilogy, implying that had Thrawn
not been sent to the unknown regions, the rebels would not have been successful.
Thrawn is one of the major characters from Star Wars legends that Dave
Filoni brought back into the canon during Star Wars Rebels.
So most of his backstory was also made canon with that too.
There've been a couple updates across the years in the new Thrawn novels,
but for the most part his original backstory
is pretty similar to what it is in present day with the new canon.
He comes from the ships race in this part of the unknown regions.
His race was relatively small compared to the Empire in the New Republic,
but the main advantage they had up to the rise of the Empire was that
because they been in the unknown regions and unmapped part of space,
they've been relatively hidden from the rest of the galaxy
and been allowed to develop in relative peace.
So they still had their own problems.
There's still a lot of threats in the unknown regions.
It's just that it wasn't
nearly on the scale that you saw between the Empire of the New Republic.
During the events of the prequels, the Emperor learned about the ships
and when he tried to make them join the Empire, like leading up to the events
of Revenge of the Sith or the period right after the rise of the Empire.
He wanted to exploit that
just the same way that he did with every other race in the galaxy,
just using them to his own ends, just using up all their resources
the same way that he tried to do with the Mandalorians
so much earlier in the timeline.
When this is happening, a young Thrawn most brilliant military commander
in the history of the galaxy started playing
four dimensional chess with the emperor, sacrificed himself for the most part,
saying that he would join the Imperial Navy
and serve him to the best of his abilities and give the Empire access
to the maps of the unknown regions that he didn't have access to.
Like the New Republic.
Even the Jedi didn't have maps of a lot of the unknown regions,
but the charts had already map large portions of it,
so the Emperor agrees to his terms.
The Empire largely leaves the chess race alone
in exchange for Thrawn service and all these maps of the unknown regions.
Then, through the early years after Revenge of the Sith,
he rises quickly through the ranks of the Imperial Navy.
He's a genius, so he runs circles around all the other imperial officers.
It impresses the Emperor and the other Imperial Commander enough
that he gets his own fleet of star destroyers.
They're called the Seventh Fleet.
They were meant to be
this special extra fleet on top of the Empire's normal forces.
Usually when you become an admiral in the Appeal Navy,
they give you a fleet of star destroyers.
But the thing is, is that most of the rest of the Empire hated Thrawn.
They didn't want anything to do with him.
Even Darth Vader hated Thrawn.
The Emperor himself had a history of hating non-humans and didn't openly
want to show a lot of favor to Thrawn just because it wasn't very popular.
So for the most part, the Imperial Navy, the rest of the Empire doesn't
really think too much of from.
They don't consider him a big deal, but the Emperor
does know how good he is and how valuable he is.
So he largely has Thrawn running stealth operations stuff on the side, secret
missions that he doesn't tell the rest of the Empire about.
So he did want to use Thrawn as much as possible.
Darth Vader had the weirdest of relationships with Thrawn
because the Emperor eventually grew to value Thrawn as much as he did Vader.
Just because Darth Vader's big thing was eliminating
all threats to his position in the Empire.
He didn't even like the Emperor.
They were always plotting against each other.
And because Thrawn was so smart, he was one of the very few people
inside the Empire that actually knew Darth Vader used to be an again Skywalker
and would teased him about this all the time.
He rarely showed emotion, unlike Darth Vader.
So Thrawn didn't hate Darth Vader the way that Vader hated him,
but he knew to be very careful of Vader.
They worked together
on a lot of missions when necessary, but otherwise avoided each other
during the events of Star Wars Rebels, Thrawn is mostly busy hunting down
the early versions of the rebel alliance as it starts to come together.
This is right around the beginning of the events of Andor
the Rebels had actually started to come together
during that in a more organized way, whereas before they were meant to be
a bunch of disparate cells across the galaxy, all kind of doing
their own thing.
Loosely connected through Luton's character, we'll start to see the rebels
come together in a more organized way during Andor Season two,
which will jump forward in the timeline way faster.
Theron's other mission during this early period, like right before a new hope
before he disappears into the unknown regions, was developing the tide
Defenders, which is another big thing that Dave Filoni pulled out of legends.
Canon
Thrawn is still like the biggest thing that he's pulled out of the canon so far.
We'll see if he ever brings Mora Jade back into the canon.
They'd be really cool.
She was also a big part of the heir to the Empire storyline.
If you played the classic Star Wars tie defender video game back in the day on
DOS How to Prevent Zorin Forces from stripping
the research platform where he led development of the tie defender.
Tie defenders were introduced during that.
Then later Dave Filoni brought them back into the Canon
Rebels like a lot of other things he's brought back during the events of rebels,
Thrawn started using Luthor as a Bridgers homeworld to build the Tide defenders.
That's why they have this final battle there at the end of Rebels with the goals
the space whales.
Ezra Bridger used the ghost to summon the Pergolas.
They live in hyperspace. They can navigate it naturally.
They pulled Thrawn seven fleet of star destroyers, including his main
star destroyer, the Chimera, into the unknown regions.
It was implied the area of space that they took them to wasn't
part of the unknown regions that Thrawn already had secret maps of in
that event basically sidelines Throne's entire Seventh Fleet for the events
of the original trilogy.
Like I said, allowing the rebels to finish
coming together, destroy the tie defender factories
in a place they wouldn't have been able to defeat the Empire
during the original trilogy had Thrawn not been taken to the unknown regions
then, like right after this event, the events of Andor start happening.
So during and or season one Thrawn the Seventh Fleet were believed
to have been lost, just disappeared in the unknown regions.
Most of the Empire, even the Emperor himself, had no idea what happened.
So Caetano Sabine Wren vowed to find Ezra
and bring him back at the end of Star Wars Rebels.
There's another time jump to right after the destruction
of the Second Death Star and Return of the Jedi.
You see Sabine reunite with Ahsoka and head off to continue
their search for Ezra Bridger during the Ahsoka trailer last year.
Like the live Action Ahsoka episodes, they had a live action version of Sabine
touching the mural just like this in Dave Filoni said the live Action Ahsoka series
will kind of serve
like a sequel to the events of Rebels picking up where it left off,
but taking place around the same time where The Mandalorian Season
three is happening.
So I think we all believe that
Ahsoka is going to cameo during The Mandalorian Season three
and by the end of her episodes or her storyline during the Mandalorian Season
three, they'll set up the beginning of the Ahsoka series
as The Mandalorian Season two.
Ahsoka learned that Thrawn had returned from the unknown regions
at some point after Return of the Jedi when she encountered his former aide,
Morgan Elsbeth, on the Chaldean planet in the outer rim,
she verbally asked where Thrawn is because she knew
that Elsbeth had been in contact with Thrawn again since his return.
Because the key droids, which are also now canon again
had Thrawn insignia of the Seventh Fleet on them.
H droids had originally been from the Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic game,
so at some point around season one, maybe just before the events of season
one, Thrawn had been able to map the unknown regions where he was stuck.
Use those to get back to the outer rim, where he started to rebuild his forces
in the Empire.
Just in general, with the help of Moff Gideon and the adapting
a live action version of the Heir to the Empire Thrawn trilogy.
Couple characters a little bit different. Couple.
The plot detail is going to be a little bit different,
but during that story, Thrawn uses a clone Jedi master to strengthen his forces.
He also eventually tries to use a clone of Luke Skywalker.
Right now they're trying to do that with Grogu you also, during that story,
Thrawn was trying to find a lost fleet of battleships
that would give him extra power to defeat the New Republic.
Right now
it seems like Thrawn is doing all those things with Moff Gideon
to help slowly rebuilding his forces, preparing to strike the New Republic
while also trying to create ultra powerful force sensitive
clone troopers with Grogu making him nearly invincible.
Dave Filoni also just introduced another major Easter egg for the heir
to the Empire Story during the bad batch episodes, which take place way earlier
in the timeline.
Like right after Revenge of the Sith, he just re canonized Mount
Tantalus on bad batch.
They're using that as the Emperor's secret base
where he was developing his new cloning program.
More Grogu for sensitive clones during the original Heir to the Empire
storyline, Mount Tantas was just one of the secret bases
the Emperor had where he kept really dangerous force artifacts or things
that he didn't want other people to find or other secret weapons
is also where he kept Luke Skywalker's severed hand
that they used to clone Luke Skywalker during that trilogy.
So just a lot of force sensitive cloning experiments going on at Mount Tantalus,
both in Legends and now in the new canon as well in the new shows.
And when we start talking about the relationship
between Moff Gideon and Grand Admiral Thrawn, it's a little bit
like Theron's relationship with Grand Moff Tarkin during the Legends.
The way the hierarchy of power in the Empire worked is that Mofs were like
the space governors, like they represented the political arm of the Empire.
A map is the governor of a sector of space which contain many different systems.
So remember Moff Gideon, He's supposed to be in charge of an entire sector.
Very powerful.
On top of that grand Moff Tarkin was like the governor of an over
sector of space which contained a bunch of sectors.
And becoming a grand admiral
doesn't make you more powerful than a grand Moff necessarily.
They're kind of separate.
Under normal circumstances, Grand Moff Tarkin would have had
more authority than Thrawn because the military works for the government.
Technically, in Tarkin
was the arm of the Imperial government in most of the galaxy,
so normally he'd be the one telling Thrawn what missions to go on,
with the exception that Thrawn was sort of like a secret member
of the military that the Emperor personally gave missions to.
So Thrawn had a level of autonomy within the Imperial Navy
that most of the other commanders didn't.
So think will get into this relationship between Moff Gideon and Thrawn eventually,
through all these other spinoff series in the future Mandalorian seasons,
where both of them think that they're the one
in charge of the remnants of the Empire like Thrawn is the genius
with this grand plan.
But Moff Gideon considers himself to be the one in charge of everything
because he's a moth in by the end of Ahsoka's cameo scene or episodes
during the Mandalorian Season three, she'll have learned where Thrawn is,
and we'll get a teaser for the Seventh Fleet
in the Chimera Star Destroyer, his main star destroyer.
Normally I would assume they'd use the original voiceover actor
for the live action version like they did with Bo-Katan being Katee Sackhoff again.
But Lourdes MIKKELSON, who's the original voice actor for Thrawn,
made it sound like he hasn't been contacted yet.
I think that's a lie.
I think he's just pretending that Star Wars has not reached out to him.
It probably will wind up being him.
Most of you remember him from Sherlock. He was amazing actor.
He's been on a bunch of different stuff
and I think we'll get a teaser for Thrawn at the end of The Mandalorian
and he'll become a much bigger character during the Ahsoka series,
just because so much of her storyline seems like it's connected with Thrawn
in Ezra Bridger, who they have already cast with a live action actor.
I don't know if he's going to cameo during The Mandalorian Season three
or if Sabine Wren is going to show up in the Mandalorian Season three.
But Dave Filoni helped write three episodes of The Mandalorian Season three,
so I'm assuming Ahsoka will be
part of one of those three episodes, if not more than one.
I'll do more bonus videos for Thrawn
as we get more Easter eggs and teasers during future Mandalorian episodes.
If you have any big questions to leave them in the comments below.
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Thank you so much for watching. Everyone stay safe.
And this is the way.