The Mandalorian Ahsoka Grand Admiral Thrawn

Thrawn: Eliminate the space whales with extreme prejudice!

All the whales escape.

Thrawn: Everything is going to plan!

EDIT: Joking aside, as I've said before I have a feeling that Thrawn is NOT going to start a full scale war against the New Republic. He might not even come in contact with the NR at all. Dude's probably going to be on Dathomir for all or most of the time and all the heroes will go to him. The whole Thrawn story will happen in a vacuum so as to not seemingly retcon anything leading up to the ST.

 

Lol.



He's got the style. Even some blue.

I reckon Thrawn will rally the Imperial Remnant, including those elements in the NR, but they are mostly all defeated (in the proposed Filoni film). As in the HTTE books, Thrawn is killed by someone close to him (he can't be outmaneouvred surely!).

The NR then believes they have finally gotten rid of the Empire. The Emperor, its enforcers, the witches, the Sith Lords and its warlords. The First Order is not seen as a threat.

But...the NR hasn't defeated every ex-Imperial. Brendol Hux (?) or others that remain in hiding become the First Order and build Starkiller while Project Necromancer grows Snoke.

I don't know enough to speculate on the Final Order's fleet creation, General Pryde, and the fleet of planet-'sploding star destroyers. But I do wonder if Thrawn has something to do with the idea. At the same time, Snoke is working on young Kylo.

 

I like seeing Thrawn observe the Nightsister ritual. No doubt, he pays close attention to everything they do and records it all in his mind. Someday, he'll need to exploit their weaknesses.

 

Just on case no-one has said this...

Can I say how badass it was for Thrawn to quietly say "Long live the Empire" - taunting and victorious - and then depart in a cool superfast, classic ship, leaving the good guys sucking on cosmic dust and fumes.

 

I think my overall thoughts on how Thrawn was handled in this show are that it wasn't a success.

Mikkelsen's acting was excellent and I enjoyed his dialogue/language on an aesthetic level.

However, the writing didn't sell him as the intimidating evil genius we're meant to think he is. Filoni couldn't come up with a scenario where he convincingly outthinks our heroes - it's just several scenes of him standing over a holotable and claiming that setbacks are actually victories. Because of that the writing relies on us being impressed by or afraid of Thrawn for the sole reason that other characters are.

This kind of Holmesian character is always tricky to write of course, because the writer needs to be almost as clever as the character is purported to be - but that means that you simply shouldn't use such a character if you're unable to properly convey their genius.

 

I think they were severely limited on run time to show Thrawn as a truly intimidating military mastermind. All they showcased was him stalling. He wasn't exactly facing a large military force either. Maybe next season or in Filoni's movie.

 

The limited setting and lack of resources makes it somewhat forgivable, but I think the problem wasn’t so much Thrawn himself but how Filoni wrote the heroes. They basically just bulldozed through everything to the point where it made them feel unbeatable.

 

This wasn’t a problem with rebels. Thrawn won in season 3 the only thing that really beat Thrawn was admiral Constantine’s incompetence and space whales.

 

I have some hope that once the narrative shifts into more conventional space battles we might see some more of Thrawn’s effectiveness demonstrated there. Filoni used the Marg Sabl once before on screen, during TCW, it might be something that gets used again closer to its original placement.

 

The interesting thing about Zahn and Filoni is that each of their respective strengths is the other's weakness. Zahn is great at writing highly competent military professionals thinking their way through problems and achieving results. Thrawn and Mara are excellent characters, and Zahn writes them wonderfully when they are out doing their jobs, but they are both characters that play to his strengths. Where he struggles imo is writing characters who aren't no nonsense professionals, and his writing overall can be cold. That's fine for the books he writes, but Star Wars is a Saga that resonates on a deep, emotional level with its audiences, and that's why I was always skeptical before the ST came out when people used to say the Thrawn Trilogy should be adapted into Episodes VII, VIII, and IX.

Filoni on the other hand writes some of the most emotionally poignant stories in all of Star Wars imo. What he isn't great at is the more left brained, tactical side of Star Wars. You could argue that isn't part of the Star Wars DNA outside of the books, but it has to be when you are using Thrawn. What makes Thrawn threatening is his ability to outthink and outmaneuver his enemies in ways that often feel mind blowing. The blue skin, red eyes, and calm demeanor are great, but that alone doesn't make him a great villain. Vader, by contrast, is relatively easy to make a threat. All you really need is the costume, James Earl Jones' voice, and him killing people. Thrawn's presence as a compelling antagonist lives or dies by him being a tactical genius, and that is hard to write.

I think it would be good if Filoni's movie (trilogy?) lifts some of Thrawn's strategies straight out of the Thrawn Trilogy. That could be a way to combine their talents, but with Filoni remaining the creative architect. Just a thought I had.

 

I didn’t think Zahn portrayed Thrawn’s tactical genius well either.

 

Grand Admiral Thrawn, i think worked great here like in Rebels. We only got three episodes with him, but i think they showed him well enough for audiences. This is just act one of a larger story. He is not going to be the book Thrawn. He seems smart like Tarkin and Palpatine. He uses his tactics against space wizards who are enigmas to him. We see him ally himself with witches that Palpatine has previously tried to genocide. I liked his reaction and thoughts about Anakin.

 

Rebels made the best use of Thrawn.

 

I do. At least, minimize the nonsensical tactics to the point I can live with it. Even at their best, SW tactics tend to be borderline sensible and barely up to maintaining my willing suspension of disbelief.

But, hey, that's just me.

 

If I could unlike this, I would.

 

I think the problem has little to do with the actual tactics and more with not giving Thrawn enough victories

it should be easy for Filoni to apply his action scene mentality to making Thrawn look cool, and that would do more to make him formidable on its own than improving the battles realism

This was marketed as Thrawns return in the first trailer but he hasn’t returned yet. It feels like we were tricked and they used him as advertising before they’ve written any scripts about him

teasing Thrawn for the next series doesn’t build him up so much as it deflates the importance when we get his actual introduction. I think a lot of these series should cancel the in between parts and just get straight to what we’re waiting for. Same with Mandalorian, just skip to when Grogu’s older if you’re done with Din. But they want to milk it for a while

Think about it, Ahsoka is 8 episodes, a good chunk of the time it takes to watch the whole six movies. In the time it took for Thrawn to return in Ahsoka the movies showed 40 years of events. Because there was no filler every scene was integral and quick as possible. A television show should use its longer nature to give us more story total, not less of it per hour spread over two seasons.

 

mmmm, that's the stuff. Now we just need this theme music set to Thrawn actually doing something more than just stalling.

 

Loved everything about Thrawn, but his hair. I realized after a few viewings, Thrawn's creep factor was enhanced by his voice's similarity to his brother's, Mads. Thrawn with Hannibal undertones, was shivering at times.

 

In terms of the performance and the characterisation of Thrawn, I have no notes. Lars did a tremendous job and Filoni was able to write the character in a way (particularly in that last episode) where there are hints of Thrawn’s unique moral perspective without stripping him of his ruthlessness.

It’s really just going forward that they’re going to have to rethink how they utilise this character in the plot. Something a little bit closer to what we got in the season 3 finale of Rebels would go a long way, where he was able to pin down the Phoenix fleet through the use of Interdicter cruisers (again another lift from Zahn’s work.)

 

Dude, he ordered whales to be killed to kill Ahsoka, not to just…kill whales. Them escaping is of no consequence to him.

That said, yes, he did fail to kill Ahsoka. But he did set things up so Ahsoka would go to Sabine first, rather than come directly to the tower. So there’s some logic in that. Even though he didn’t know Ahsoka was coming when he sent Sabine away…

 

He did it better than Filoni in Ahsoka