Spoilers The Mandalorian Season 3

[The Wormhole]

Am I right in thinking though that the Emperor was supposedly holding a lot of Imperial forces together through the Force and sheer willpower? I thought I'd read that somewhere but maybe I imagined it!

IIRC, the old Legends continuity suggested Palpatine had the Empire intentionally designed so that should he be killed, it would collapse in short order without him. Basically an insurance policy to make sure that anyone who staged a coup, even a successful one, would regret it.

As for the current Canon, we've seen in the ISB scenes on Andor an extension of what we saw in the Death Star briefing room scene in ANH that many of the Empire's authority figures are constantly at each other's throats. It's reasonable to conclude without a supreme authority figure like Palpatine or even Vader or Tarkin, that those pissing matches could degrade very quickly to infighting causing very real damage to the Imperial infrastructure.

I guess there may still be a decade or so of relative peace before the rise of the First Order or is my understanding of the timeline way out of whack?

IIRC, the New Republic didn't become aware of the First Order until six years prior to TFA.

 

[fireproof78]

I guess the Rebels made the classic mistake, they spent so long focused solely on defeating the Empire that they didn't necessarily give enough thought to what would come next, but that's understandable, they only found out late in the day about the second Death Star and that Palpatine would be on it, and I'm guessing even then they probably didn't expect much of the Imperial infrastructure to collapse on the back of Palp's death.

Nation building is a long term project. The Rebels had the main objective, but they struggled in the bringing the pieces together, especially with various warlords so use to power and control that giving it up was difficult.

Reminds me of a passage from the ROTS novel as Mace discusses arresting Palpatine for treason. Yoda notes that removal is not enough. Palpatine's reign had been legitimized by constitutional amendments and senatorial emergency authority that allowed him to wield great power with public support. By removing him the Rebels underestimated how he had set up the system to keep him in power, legitimately, and not just as some backwater warlord. Palpatine had the trust of the public just enough that they would find his absence jarring.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

The other thing I despise is the whole: "okay, the 'mind machine' it set - NO NEED to have an actual New Republic medical doctor/tech monitor the equipment; and yes, this former old Imperial Comm. officer is SOOOO trustworthy; we can leave her with the scientist she outed as a traitor...<--- Spare me but I'm so tired of the New Republic being constantly portrayed as so inept. It's getting really old for me.

Again, I could be wrong, but that could be explained, if the doctors had been taken over and compromised by being mind-controlled by the Imperial loyalists.

 

[David cgc]

IIRC, the New Republic didn't become aware of the First Order until six years prior to TFA.

And, even then, there was the "First Order," as in the breakaway systems that wanted a return to authoritarian rule as opposed to the ineffective New Republic, and the "First Order," the secret army of Imperial dead-enders that had been hiding out in the unknown regions and building their forces since the war had ended (and, then, the "Final Order," which is sort of the last one but not quite, and was doing the same thing, but with superlasers).

 

[fireproof78]

I would imagine that the First Order of Breakaway systems was being organized in part by former Imperial leaders now in the First Order in the Unknown Regions.

 

[Set Harth]

Am I right in thinking though that the Emperor was supposedly holding a lot of Imperial forces together through the Force and sheer willpower? I thought I'd read that somewhere but maybe I imagined it!

It was in Heir to the Empire.

 

[Reverend]

It's also worth keeping in mind that the Clone Wars is still within living memory, so there's a HUGE chunk of the galaxy that were Seperatist worlds, many of which are likely going to be less than enthusiastic about joining a New Republic. They left for a reason, and suffering a war plus a generation under occupation and puppet governments hasn't likely to have warmed many of them to the concept.

Even a number former loyalist Republic worlds likely want nothing more to do with yet another centralised authority, given how the old one up and turned evil on them. IIRC Ryloth for example declined to join, and remained an independent system right up to the ST era. That has economic knock-on effects that disrupts already taxed supply chains,

All that combined, it's no wonder the Republic is having a hard time getting everything settled. Remember that the dark side is quicker, easier and more seductive. That doesn't just apply to space-wizarding, but to everything. The light side is always going to be the greater trial, but also the most rewarding.

 

[cooleddie74]

We like to think in the real world that the citizens of a totalitarian state will all rejoice or at least breathe a sigh of relief when that system is brought down. That's not how it usually works. Look at Putin's Russia and all the citizens who to this day wish the USSR were still around and still in its Cold War heyday as a global superpower to rival America. They eat fast food, buy Western clothes and consumer electronics and surf the Internet for music they like but they still long for the comfort of a top-down state that issued directives and watched those directives get followed.

The New Republic in the Star Wars universe would be no different.

 

[Morpheus 02]

Did they use the same earth location to film the base planet where Bo-Katan was residing? It felt a lot like Luke's place in The Last Jedi.

I think the New Republic is stretched pretty thin, so a lot of things aren't going to work very well. I mean, Pershing's "counselor" isn't very perceptive unlike an organic being. A person might see the visual cues and dig deeper.

When was the battle of Jakku? Could any surviving Star Destroyers be out there?

 

[cooleddie74]

Right after the Battle of Endor. 4 ABY, thirty years before the events of TFA.

 

[fireproof78]

People want fairy tales.

 

[JD]

The phrase "wipe my mind" was used. I think the implication is that she has effectively erased his memory/personality. Which seems to have been her ultimate aim, at least given what we've seen so far. First she discredited him (he's just an Imperial recidivist as far as the NR goes now), then keep any information he has on lockdown by deleting it.

OK, yeah.

I'm mostly curious who she's working for. Is she still working for Gideon, or is there a new player in the game? Combined with the line at the end of the Mando/Bo fighter chase, about how that's a lot of fighters for a normal Imperial warlord, it kind of suggests a larger Imperial faction we've not seen before. But, on the other hand, bombing Kalevala is a very Gideon move. Could go either way.

If not Gideon than my next thought would be Thawn, as a set up for Ahsoka. I'm not sure if it's still being planned, but at one point all of the series that take place in that era were going to get a big crossover, and if that's going to involve Thawn, then they're probably going to want to include him in The Mandalorian too, so people who only watch it are familiar with him when he shows up in the crossover.

Or the heroes discovering that restoring freedom and democracy is not easy.

Yeah, that's true.

 

[cooleddie74]

Those swarms of TIE Bombers and Interceptors have Thrawn's fleet written all over them.

 

[fireproof78]

Those swarms of TIE Bombers and Interceptors have Thrawn's fleet written all over them.

Oh, with the Chimera symbol?

 

[Tuskin38]

'March of the Resistance' was playing in the background when Pershing and Elia Kane were at Monument Plaza.
I don't know if it was background music or in-universe music. Certainly sounded like In-universe music.

 

[TRON JA307020]

So far this season is excellent. So glad we finally get to see more of R5 after just getting glimpses of him previously in Season 1 and 2. He's exactly as we think he should be. I also like the detail that where his bad motivator was in star wars there was a oil or dirt stain there before pilli gave him his oil bath. Great bit of detail to let us know who the little fella is. Lol

 

[Ithekro]

If I recall the Star Wars Radio Drama, Darth Vader has the droid pump Leia with drugs, and then he used the Force to mind probe her with suggestion. She was very strong to resist him.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Those swarms of TIE Bombers and Interceptors have Thrawn's fleet written all over them.

That would be very interesting.

 

[Xerxes82]

Those swarms of TIE Bombers and Interceptors have Thrawn's fleet written all over them.

That they do. Short range fighters with no obvious support vessel. Either the Imperials have a pretty major base somewhere WITHIN the Mandalore system, which would be pretty hard for Bo-Katan to not notice, or they have a pretty major ship(s) somewhere close.

And there's a pretty good reason not to show that ship or ships if this is Thrawn. The Chimaera is awfully difficult to hide, given the big mural painted across it.

Not definitive, Gideon could have just access to a lot more resources than other warlords, or had been hiding his full strength. But I'm definitely leaning towards the idea of a new Imperial threat. Just a question of how blue that threat is.

 

[Ithekro]

That many fighters and bombers would require a base on the planet...or a Star Destroyer. (or at the very least a carrier)