Set roughly five years after Return of the Jedi‘s conclusion, The Mandalorian occupies the middle ground between the Original and Sequel trilogies, giving the Disney Plus show unique storytelling opportunities to connect to both. So far, any references to other movies have largely been fleeting, but with Boba Fett back in the picture and on the hunt for his armor, those connections are set to be deepened substantially throughout the rest of season 2.
Last week’s episode made it clear that the animated canon is going to factor heavily into the narrative, with Bo-Katan debuting in live-action and pointing Mando in the direction of Ahsoka Tano, as well as telling us that she wants the Darksaber back from Moff Gideon. One of the smaller and yet more interesting reveals from “The Heiress,” though, was that it confirmed that Gideon still holds allegiance to the Empire.
Darth Sidious may have met his apparent demise at the end of Episode VI, but his loyalists are very much still out there in great numbers. Of course, The Rise of Skywalker showed us that the Emperor wasn’t dead and has in fact spent the intervening years creating the Final Order, and it may yet be revealed that Moff Gideon is fully aware of the fact that his leader isn’t gone for good.
As ScreenRant explains:
The Mandalorian is rewriting fans’ understanding of galactic history. While the Galactic Civil War officially ended, it looks as though it was replaced by smaller-scale conflict between the New Republic Defense Fleet and Imperial holdouts. It’s possible these skirmishes continued for decades, explaining why the New Republic remained so paranoid about Imperial activity in Claudia Grey’s novel Bloodline, nearly 20 years later – just before the First Order emerged from the Unknown Regions.
The Mandalorian treads a fine line between telling a new story but setting it in a distinctly familiar world, and now that season 2 has confirmed that remnants of the Empire are still around, we could see the series tie itself even closer to the established mythology, especially with Ahsoka Tano and the Jedi set to make their debuts very soon.
