The Night of a Thousand Tears happens during the Andor time frame. The nuking of Mandalore's inhabited surface with untold loss of life. The Empire is more than capable of hideous war crimes even without a big bad to head up a new series' cast.
Ya but the show may not actually be about any of that. Obi Wan had some of those Jedi hunters.chastizing another one for being too rough with the locals. It's actually pretty rare we ever get to see the empire do evil stuff or learn why so many would hate them. Maybe expanded universe people can tell me if it goes into more detail. Are they human supremacists? Are they strip mining and famine farming the colonies to supply the big worlds ?
I think blowing up Alderaan (Star Wars), enslaving Wookies (Solo), and invading planets because...reasons (Solo) is evil enough for my tastes. Yes, and yes.
The Imperial Senate at first glance does appear to be overwhelmingly human in makeup and in the old EU the Empire and Palpatine were notoriously humancentric and racist towards non-human species within the Empire's boundaries. I won't be shocked if most or even all Imperial Senators are humans and the Emperor issued a decree banning most non-humans from serving in the legislature.
I am expecting the main baddie to be the ISB agents (white uniforms). With maybe a new actor for Wulf Yularen.
Though the old Legends continuity did depict the Empire as human supremacists, the new canon seems to be steering away from that. Though the Imperial military does remain nearly completely human with Thrawn being the only non human to serve, the Imperial government has plenty of non humans in key roles, indeed, Mas Amedda from the prequels is next in the line of succession after Palpatine.
It's the "because reasons" that I was mostly wondering about. Obviously the Sith want to take out the Jedi what what was the point of the Empire
No one. Just power and control in the name of security. That's what Palpatine promised was an end of the Separatist conflict and peace and security. That's what Vader stated he was fighting for but it's a battle for control over the galaxy. Why? Because they want power and control.
The new canon has also made the Imperial military less sexist, though there are still a lot less female members than male. Palpatine isn't depicted racist or sexist either, he doesn't care what you are as long as you serve him. The Empire did wipe out the Geonosians to keep the Death Star a secret. They helped design the thing, and the initial construction was over their planet and used Geonosians slaves and droids. So it was less racism and more OpSec.
Because the Empire being racist wasn't something Lucas himself came up with or considered canon. Hence the number of aliens in Palp's inner circle in the PT. It was always a dumb idea, made by unimaginative EU writers to make the Empire more cartoonishly evil while seeking to "justify" why there weren't any visible aliens in the Imperial ranks in the OT. 90% of the old EU was comprised of similarly stupid "pet theories" by writers who were looking to "explain" away concepts or ideas that should have just been left alone.
I'm trying to think of any direct racism towards Thrawn in the new Thrawn novels. I don't remember any, but I only read the books once. I remember there were teachers and students at the officer academy who looked down on him because he was an outsider, not part of any important family, classism and such. Some also disliked how clever he was. Plus privileged because the Emperor got him in.