The Mandalorian The Mandalorian 2.04 - Chapter 12 - Discussion Thread (Spoilers Allowed)

Wow

Great episode, the tanks, the mysterious troopers and of course baby yoda goes to school.

But, i've been wondering where's the armorer?

 

I don't think the armorer is quite as important as people think.

 

Easily my favorite episode of this season so far. Loved it. Been underwhelmed so far but this episode has me very excited.

 

Well, that certainly does look like Snoke. I still have no idea why they would do this in the Outer Rim and not the Unknown Regions though. I guess Faveau and Filoni simply want to make connections. That's all well and good, but it's a bit lazy IMO. We could have had an episode where we actually went to the Unknown Regions to see something like this. Why Nevarro?

 

Much better than I anticipated. In general, I'm somewhat torn. I think the show is at its best when it is using western tropes (i.e., Chapter 2, Chapter 9, etc.), but that limits the show's scope. If they're going to broaden things, they might as well swing big sometimes, and this episode suggests swinging big.

Your points are reasonable. But there's meat to what the NR officer was saying near the end. Even if there's something going on, which he believes to be the case, the NR has no will to investigate.

 

Isn't snoke meant to be a failed Palpatine clone?

 

Easily my least favorite episode of the season so far but I still quite enjoyed it. A lot of great plot material moving forward but not as great on the personal interaction scale. (Carano did alright early in the episode but really bombed the later scene that should have been really powerful, in my opinion.) I think my daughter will love the baby moments this time around. (Oh, and as one of the few people that liked the mythrol in the first episode, I felt he was not well used this time around... I just felt like a lot of the acting was slightly off in this episode. Not terrible, but noticeable.)

Very excited though that we have seen everything from the trailers and are in the dark about upcoming episodes.

 

@The Chalk Jedi :

My thinking is that some of these scientific processes were in place by Palpatine before his fall and heavily protected as legacy projects. I also think that isn’t necessarily Snoke DNA there but a very early version of the technology and methodology that is ultimately used to create Snoke. These specimens died. They may find the Snoke specimen later that doesn’t. Similarly, Gideon, like so many before him, may think he has relative autonomy and is in control but could still answer to someone who we later know does have first order ties and takes Gideon’s work and continues it elsewhere. Think Krennic and Tarkin dynamic for an example of what could happen later.

 

No a new source book mentions that Snoke is created with several dna's from severel sources. Maybe he's part Plagueis. Maybe Mando will explain futher with Filoni doing some explaining on Snoke. I think this is plot thread that will be followed in future seasons like Gincarlo teased.

 

What did Gincarlo say regarding plot that you’re connecting this to? Just curious.

 

That questions would rise and we would wait until seasons 3 and 4. Snoke might be one of the questions that will slowly be awnsered.

 

I'd say the Empire, or more specifically Palpatine, had a load going on in secret when he was still alive. So the labs on Nevarro pre date his demise but they are conducting research that was part of Palpatine's cloning operations so the lab stays and continues it's work. It's location in the outer rim still serves the purpose of being hidden for all intents so why move it. Whatever the empire was called, Galactic or First Order, his overall aim was to bring back the Sith Empire and the work on Nevarro aids that.

I'm also thinking Gideon was a Purge Trooper in his younger days and that he's got a load of original Jango stock Purge Troopers in his refrigerated cargo bay. If he was, when he says "Long live the Empire" he could be referring to the SIth Empire.

 

Well, this would be the start of the experiments, perhaps. They were probably doing tests and experiments prior to Palpatine's death, that didn't require them to be hidden away in the UR. This is only 5 years after, in a huge galaxy, that we see the New Republic have a hard time to even control the Outer Rim. They probably took the foundings of what his lab had achieved and implemented them into finally creating Snoke and Palp clones in the UR. So we can probably expect the labs in the Mandalorian to get wiped at some point in time within the 25 years between the Mandalorian and TFA.

And I don't think Gideon is necessarily part of the First Order, but he does appear to be higher on the totem pole in the Emperor's Contingency plan. Infighting most likely caused a split between the Remnants, which caused those highly dedicated to the Emperor's Contingency plan to continue with the plan with some changes, and the First Order branched off from it entirely because of the Infighting, becoming their own thing (or becoming the puppet Order they were created to be).

As for the Snoke theme, I mean, this is Star Wars. They usually directly link music with what they're implying.

And yeah, I don't think the Dark Troopers are Snoke clones. Perhaps they were other experiments that happened in that lab that were successful. Probably midichlorian infused cyborg troopers or something.

 

I would prefer a looser connection like this as you describe, but I still don't see the logic of the First Order being involved in an experiment in the Outer Rim when they can do it more securely in the Unknown Regions. But I suspect Favreau and Filoni may be valuing connection over logic. It's not a huge deal but I expected a little bit more from them.

 

This is probably only the starting point for origin tie-ins for the sequels. all they can really do is hope enough backstory can make fans connect to the sequels better at this point.

 

With this early Snoke reveal i could see in later seasons the real Snoke.

 

That imperial inspecting the Suits/Droids at the end, has the Legends logo for the 'Imperial Department of Military Research' on his outfit.

 

It’s easy enough for me to believe that the First Order assimilated in several old Empire factions who were out there during this time period. Uniting them around the notion of the First Order. Just because Gideon isn’t there yet doesn’t mean he won’t be later. Maybe Gideon’s operation moves to the Unknown regions later.

Within the series I don’t think we will go too heavy into the beginnings of the First Order or Snoke overall. I think there will just be these little bread crumbs that we see from time to time that connect into what we know happens later. Almost like when we saw the hologram of the Death Star on Geonosis briefly with Dooku. They won’t go too heavy into the hows or specifics but they will drop little bread crumbs from time to time.

 

Yeah i agree, i think we get teases of the first order/final order little by little each season, with Snoke, Sloane, and other things.

 

I appreciate your thinking above in the bolded section. I hope Filoni and Favreau are thinking similarly. It makes more sense to me that Palpatine was working at this prior to the Empire's defeat, and what we see in this episode is simply that this tech is shared by different factions of the Empire. So this is not necessarily a First Order project.

I still think the Dark Troopers are likely connected to these experiments. It would be too convoluted, too coincidental to have them appear in the same episode as the experiment.

 

I'd say the captioning and music choices solidify that we're looking at Dark Troopers and pre-Snoke cloning experiments. Which are some pretty cool tie-ins and references!

As to why the Empire is doing this in the Outer Rim as opposed to the First Order in the UR, there could be any number of reasons. One that strikes me as inherently plausible is that the First Order isn't working on force cloning at all; this was something the Emperor had started work on when he began to suspect Vader may turn on him. The First Order didn't seem to know about Palpatine's resurrection and cloning at all; it may be that Moff Gideon and/or his subordinates will take this technology and process to the Sith Eternal and that's where Snoke is created. Like, maybe Gideon's people have solved some part of the Force-sensitive cloning problem, but don't have enough to make it work. The Sith Eternal have other parts of the problem figured out in their work to resurrect Palpatine. The Sith Eternal hear of Gideon's work somehow, and eventually bring him to them and create Snoke as a test.

After the test proves at least partially successful at blending their two approaches, the Sith Acolytes actually attempt to resurrect Palpatine, but do so on a much slower timeline to get it right. This would harken back to the old EU, which did make mention that the time in creating a clone had a lot of influence on the viability of it. They send Snoke out, and the physically weak resurrected Palpatine is created, very slowly being developed. But, Palpatine can influence (if not directly control) Snoke even in his physically weak state.

 

Listen to 1:23 I can hear a faint rendition of Kylo Ren/The First Order's theme