Books Thrawn - New canon Star Wars book by Timothy Zahn (Spring 2017)

Well it starts to be crowded now, look at Vialco, Charlemagne19 and some others who spend their time accusing Thrawn of all the misery and evil of the galaxy (in all the topics they can find about Thrawn), even when everything (quotes, books) prove them wrong or when there are no proof anywhere to support their accusations.

I don't see any haters of the Emperor around. But I see quite a lot of haters of Thrawn.

 

I really don't think anyone's a Thrawn "hater."

 

I love Thrawn. Thrawn is one of my top 5 in Star Wars.

However, I like Thrawn with a bit of edge. It's like Soontir Fel. Soontir Fel isn't an interesting character if he joins the Rebellion but Soontir Fel as the worthy opponent of the Empire is an interesting character. I want my Grand Admiral Thrawn to be a ruthless space fascist who just happens to be the kind of guy who you could be happy to follow into battle.

Palpatine is Sauron and Vader is Doctor Doom

GTA should be Caesar mixed with Rommel. A guy you can understand fascination with but someone you should check yourself before white washing. Even if he is a Napoleon figure (Leia jokes aside), I remind people Napoleon was also the general Bad GuyTM of Europe in historical literature until the Great War.

 

I don't know about Thrawn being responsible for all the evil in the galaxy, but long-time Legends readers haven't forgotten he tried to kidnap the Solo twins (the very first person of a very long list of such people, can you imagine?), kept the Noghri in slavery, killed hapless troops for tractor beam mistakes (yes, he said he wasn't trained for the scenario or whatever, but this guy didn't even get a court-martial or trial or anything), put his whole army under the control of C'baoth (who ended up mindwiping 1 or 2 when Thrawn wasn't looking, including messing with Pellaeon's brain to make Luuke), etc.

However, unlike Vader and Palpatine who stopped pretending they were anything other than evil years ago, Thrawn keeps up this act that he's this noble hero and his worst deeds are justified because it will save the galaxy from the Vong/Unknown threat/whatever. And people feel a need to call out his hypocrisy (Thrawn never asked Luke--a powerful Jedi you'd surely want on your side against the Vong--for help, never mentioned the word Vong once in the entire campaign, etc.), although maybe they go overboard with it.

So I personally think the dislike for Thrawn in some areas of fandom came about once he started making "excuses" for his evil deeds (ironically no different from how Cris Pieterson was making excuses for his tractor beam mistake). When Thrawn started portraying himself as this hero/savior, people called him out.

I think Zahn should have a new book post-ROTJ where Thrawn tries to kidnap Ben Solo for Snoke, as a wink to long-time readers . But I have a feeling many people would now say that canon Thrawn would never do such a thing, despite the fact that Legends Thrawn did exactly this...

In fact, it would be hilariously funny if Snoke is the Guardian of Mount Tantiss on Wayland. He was sitting around minding his own business and ruling over the Wayland people when Thrawn showed up and asked for his help in defeating the New Republic (just like in Heir to the Empire). Snoke says he wants Jedi in return, and Thrawn says I'll hand over Ben Solo. Everything runs parallel to the Thrawn Trilogy, except in the end Maz Kanata gets Luuke's lightsaber, and Snoke escapes to take over the First Order. So TFA and everything after it is all Thrawn's fault...

 

Thrawn wasn't kidnapping anyone. He was rescuing at-risk children from their brutal terrorist families so he could give them a proper imperial upbringing. .

Ok, no, he was totally going to steal babies to give to an insane old jedi clone.

 

- Charlemagne19: it's your own interpretation of the character, and the mark people leave in history depend also on the point of view. Of course we do not see Napoleon as the "big bad guy" in France. Just like in Greece they do not see Alexander the Great as a "big bad guy" but his enemies did at the time, of course.

I admit I like the dark Thrawn we have in TTT, but I think it's quite naive to call him evil for things such as "he wanted to give Luke, Leia and her babies as apprentice to C'baoth"! as I said, the Jedi were doing exactly the same thing during the Old Republic, taking babies from their families and make people like C'baoth train them. Thrawn was not killing babies or anything. You can blame him for the destruction of that planet he talked about or stuff like this, but compared to that, "capturing 2 babies" seems like a real small fact. And claiming he poisoned the Noghri's ground without proof, even if it's obvious that it's Vader who did it quite quickly after the crash on Honoghr... just sounds like you WANT him to be responsible of all the evil of the galaxy even when he's not.

And about his "noble goal", well it's there, what can you do. You can't start denying it. I think it's more interesting to have him have a goal behind his acts than just "nothing" like a regular villain who would "be a villain just because I like being a villain".

And we see in that new book (or at least it's my interpretation) that

Spoiler

this goal is not so noble, as he had thought about the option to sacrifice all non-Chiss civilization just in order to "gain soem time" for his people. That's evil (and that's the most evil thing I accuse him of because it's so large-scale). And if it's not his idea but the other Chiss' idea (I think he was not the only one thinking about that, as they gave him the mission in the first place), the Chiss are kinda evil too. "Hey let's sacrifice all these billions of people over there, we don't care, they don't have blue skin so we can use them as preys for the invaders".

 

It's been a while since I read EU on the topic, but I'm fairly certain the Old Jedi Order asked permission before taking babies to train as Jedi. Going purely by movie canon, Qui-Gon definitely got Shmi's permission first before taking Anakin. I don't remember anywhere in the Thrawn Trilogy where Thrawn gets permission from anyone.

Thrawn didn't start the enslavement of the Noghri, but he sure kept going along with it. To quote Revan's words to Darth Malak (as Malak contemplates the evil deeds he did under Revan): "I am sorry I started you on this path. But you chose to continue down it".

As far as Legends Thrawn's noble goal, yes it's there but he takes the most violent approach without first trying the peaceful one (it's not like he had a talk with Luke first or anything). At some point, if you are going to wipe out whole civilizations etc (continuing the Noghri enslavement even if he didn't start it, etc.) and justify it with noble goals... well, people have problems with that.

And I don't think that just because someone comes from a certain country automatically means people in that country won't see him as a "bad guy". Not going to name names, but there are quite a few Americans who feel that some of their presidents were "the big bad guy".

 

I don't necessarily think the Noghri's decontamination plot was created by Vader as it didn't have to be a new plot.

Thrawn could well have come up with it if the planet was starting to recover.

 

In fictional character terms: Thrawn is the Khan Noonien Singh of Star Wars. (The original, from Space Seed).

 

There's nothing to suggest that Vader didn't come up with the notion of keeping the Noghri in perpetual servitude. You just have to look at his actions on Bespin and his "deal" with Lando, it's certainly not out of his wheelhouse.

 

So Thrawn is "honorable", except when he's following a very dishonorable Sith Lord?

Who's more dishonorable, the crook or the crook who follows him?

 

I'm all for Thrawn being dishonorable.

 

You mentioned honour, not me. I just pointed out that Vader could very well have been the one to come up with the scheme.

 

I know you didn't mention it, but a lot of other Thrawn fans say he's honorable. Also, it was a great way to sneak an Obi-Wan quote into this thread.

 

Well I'll say this on honour, having read a lot of A Song of Ice and Fire I'm of the mind that honour is a very broad thing that doesn't always look the same to everyone.

Honour is a horse, after all.

 

To me, and as seen in the book Thrawns preferred mode of action is honorable. It's just that when results and honor get in a fight Thrawn always chooses results, and it doesn't take much to convince him honor and results are getting in a fight. He doesn't have a ton of moral fortitude and justifies more and more dishonorable actions in the name of what he sees as his honorable end. In legends this is ultimately what dooms him when Rukh sticks a literal knife in his back as repayment for the figurative knife hes been sticking in the Noghri for years.

 

I must have been the only one who read this new novel and came away with the notion that the Chiss Ascendancy was itself a Galatic superpower, even if they were incredibly isolationist and basically in a part of space plagued by superstorms, black holes, gravity wells and strange creatures.

 

We don’t know yet what Thrawn’s ultimate goal regarding the Empire is. What is he doing: is he trying to undermine the Empire or to make it stronger? What does he think will serve better for the benefit of the Chiss? I won’t be surprised if Thrawn is the one who found Snoke and brought him to the Empire. Thrawn might even be the real mastermind behind the First Order.

 

I think he lays it out pretty clearly in the chapter near the end there. He wouldn't argue so stubbornly in defence of the Empire (and authoritarianism in general) if he planned on destroying it.

And I'm willing to say that chances are that Snoke IS the threat from the Unknown Regions. He's the only thing that makes any kind of sense to me as a viable factor that could be seen as a great enough threat to everything in the Galaxy. The alternative is the Vong, but I can't imagine that LFL would bring in something so divisive, and with so much baggage.

 

Disney is planning Star Wars movies for who knows how long. They aren't going to stop at 9. I can certainly see them dragging this out, i.e. the heroes defeat Snoke in Ep. 9 and he says, "You think I'm so bad? Do you have any idea what is in the Unknown Regions??"

Why the sudden jump to Snoke = Unknown Region threat, to the point of assuming Thrawn would never work with the First Order because "obviously" Snoke is the Unknown Regions threat. The hinting in the Aftermath books is just that--hinting. Nowhere does it say Snoke is the Unknown Regions threat at all...

Disney don't have to bring in the Vong, but they could certainly make up their own threat or take cues from the EU. I am thinking along the lines of Celestial/Rakata type threat, complete with Star Forges, Darth Nihilus world consuming powers, etc.

 

Well, to take your logic, nowhere does it say Snoke isn't the Unknown Regions threat.

You want to know why I'm assuming that Snoke is the Unknown Regions threat? It's because it would be monumentally stupid if all those hints, in a trilogy of the books that was filled with elements that directly affected the state of the Galaxy in the ST (the founding of the First Order, seeds of what could become the Knights of Ren), didn't have any payoff to the immediate saga. When you look at it, there's a connection to Ben Solo in the womb, there's a source of power so intuned with the Dark Side that only Sidious could sense it, and it just so happens that the burgeoning First Order is heading out to its position. All of that points to Snoke more so than anything else at play within canon.

 

I certainly agree the Unknown Regions will play a big part in the sequel trilogy, but this doesn't automatically mean Snoke = Unknown Region threat. Snoke could, be trying to stop them. Or the Unknown Regions threat could actually be the "good guys" (a race of Bendu's/Celestials/whoever) that the conquering militant Chiss feel are a threat, etc, and Snoke is a defector from them, Snoke could be a lifeform created by Plagueis to combat the Unknown Regions threat etc

If Snoke is the Unknown Regions threat (I'm not saying he isn't, just that we can't jump to this conclusion and base whole arguments around it, i.e. Thrawn would never join FO), there are some logical inconsistencies that need to be addressed.

We can base things on what we do know:
Snoke is a dark-side Force user. He specifically senses "an awakening", and he's obviously dark-side because he blows up planets, etc.

It's not clear why Thrawn would side with Palpatine to stop Snoke if Snoke is the threat. Palpatine and Vader killed the Jedi, obvious light-siders who would be against someone like Snoke. Palpatine is seeking the source of the Dark Side in the Unknown--it sure doesn't seem like Palpatine wants to kill it, but revere and side with it, etc.

Who typically take down darksiders? Jedi. Does Thrawn ever talk about converting Jedi to his side to fight an obvious darksider threat to the Chiss? He threatens to kill Kanan just to leverage Hera in Zero Hour of Rebels. He asks "What Jedi devilry is this?" when faced with Bendu. Wow, Bendu, this guy would be a real asset against someone like Snoke right? Thrawn reacts to Bendu by trying to shoot him in the head.

If Snoke is a darksider threat to the Chiss, Thrawn going to Palpatine for help makes little logical sense. If you've watched X-Men movies, this would be like Moira MacTaggert going to ask Magneto to help against Apocalypse instead of Xavier when Magneto and Apocalypse share a lot of the same ideas.

Again, Snoke might still be the threat, but there's going to be a lot to explain in the remaining 2 movies and tie-in material to try to understand why Thrawn is going against basic "enemy of my enemy is my friend" logic.

I would further go into Episode 8 trailer details to make my case, but I don't know if that's allowed here.