Despite taking place in the period between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens, The Mandalorian has so far avoided major nods to Disney’s Sequel Trilogy. This makes sense given that the show’s setting is the aftermath of the fall of the Empire, depicting the New Republic establishing itself and the last Imperial remnants fragmenting. But that may have changed with the most recent episode, “The Siege.”
It followed Din Djarin and friends assaulting an isolated Imperial base on Nevarro. All information indicated that it was a semi-deserted military outpost, though upon arrival, they discovered that it was actually some kind of laboratory complete with weird deformed creatures floating in bacta tanks.
Then we saw a holographic message from Dr. Pershing that revealed these experiments are why they’re pursuing Baby Yoda, whose blood has the high ‘M-count’ (midi-chlorian count) they need to proceed. Of course, we’ve seen bodies like these before in The Rise of Skywalker, where it was shown that Supreme Leader Snoke was a cloned puppet, and fans immediately began theorizing that this base on Nevarro is a cloning facility and that resurrecting the Emperor/creating Snoke is Moff Gideon’s true aim.
The cherry on top is that as the characters were staring at the strange bodies, we heard a snatch of the Supreme Leader’s theme mixed into the score. Given that the place exploded soon afterwards, Nevarro clearly isn’t the actual location where the aforementioned villain and the new Emperor were ‘born,’ but we can presume that it’s one of several research facilities used to create the clones.
This pushes the plot forward in a big way, as we now have a very good idea of why the remaining Imperial commanders so desperately want to get their hands on The Child. We know that these experiments did ultimately succeed (kinda), so I hope this doesn’t mean that something’s going to happen to Baby Yoda. In any case, the next episode of The Mandalorian, “The Jedi,” looks like it’s going to be key to finding out more answers.