Did this fan-favorite character really die in ‘The Mandalorian’ season 3 finale?

This article contains spoilers for The Mandalorian season 3 finale

The Mandalorian season 3 just went out with a bang. The finale – “The Return” – sees Bo-Katan finally retake Mandalore, successfully launching an offensive against Moff Gideon’s Imperial base and reigniting the Great Forge, but the big bad didn’t go down easily.

As shown last week, he’s been working on a major tech upgrade and is sporting a powered exoskeleton, allowing him to hold his own in combat against both Din Djarin and the Darksaber-wielding Bo-Katan. If it wasn’t for Axe Woves crashing the Mandalorian cruiser into his base then Gideon may have come out on top, but the last we saw of him, he was screaming in rage as he was engulfed by an explosive fireball.

So, is this really the end of Moff Gideon? We can see at least a couple of ways he can still return. First and foremost, he was clad in his full armor when the explosion hit him, and though his cloak was incinerated, we didn’t ever see a body. Perhaps notably, the episode sees multiple instances of Din’s Beskar armor protecting him from flamethrower attacks, indicating there’s at least some degree of heat resistance.

But even if Moff Gideon really did die in the explosion, we may not have seen the last of him. Just prior to their fight, Din discovered that he was cloning Force-sensitive copies of himself to form an invincible new army. Din seemed to have destroyed these clones, but it’s not too difficult to imagine that there’s a backup set elsewhere waiting to be activated. Or, alternatively, maybe the Moff Gideon in this episode was a clone of the original who’s off elsewhere cooking up another evil plan.

It’s also worth underlining that Star Wars isn’t shy about using cloning to resurrect dead villains, so perhaps in season four we’ll hear Bo-Katan utter the immortal words “somehow Moff Gideon returned”.