Were The Mandalorians Framed for Moff Gideon’s Escape?

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Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers from Season 3, Episode 5 of The Mandalorian.This week’s episode of The Mandalorian, “The Pirate” ended in a big cliffhanger, with Captain Carson Teva (Paul Sun-Hyung Lee) discovering the Lambda-class shuttle that was carrying Moff Gideon (Giancarlo Esposito) adrift in space, its hull breached. The villain was nowhere to be found, all New Republic personnel were dead, and to make matters worse for Captain Teva, there was a fragment of beskar alloy embedded on the shuttle internal wall, making it almost obvious that the ones responsible for Gideon’s extraction were Mandalorians. There’s no need to go far to establish a logical conclusion as to what happened based on the evidence we have.

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Captain Teva finding the Lambda shuttle works almost as a “post-credits scene,” so to speak, a shocking closure after such a positive episode for the Mandalorians. They answered his call and agreed to go with Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) and Bo-Katan Kryze (Katee Sackhoff) to Nevarro and answer High Magistrate Greef Karga’s (Carl Weathers) plea for help against the pirates of Gorian Shard (Nonso Anozie). The whole episode is really about who Mandalorians are and how they want to be perceived, so the disappearance of Moff Gideon makes us question if we should really be celebrating them. It’s almost as if someone was trying to tell us something, right?

RELATED: ‘The Mandalorian’ Season 3: Why Did the Armorer Tell Bo-Katan to Remove Her Helmet?


Is the Evidence Really Against the Mandalorians?

Image via Disney+

When things smell fishy, it’s always a good idea to put all our cards on the table and analyze what could really be going on. No one on The Mandalorian knows they don’t have a full deck yet, not Captain Teva, not Din Djarin, not other Mandalorians. But we do, and our cards go way back to Season 1. Back then, we learned that Mandalorian armor is sacred and a crucial piece of their identity. It being made of beskar is what sets it apart from other armors in the galaxy for two reasons: first, they are the only ones to wear it, and second, beskar is nearly indestructible.

That is already something curious. In the past, we’ve seen Din Djarin face off against blaster shots multiple times, and it always resulted in the shot bouncing off his beskar armor. We’ve seen him fight against the brute force of Imperial Dark Troopers and have his helmet-protected head be punched into the wall of Moff Gideon’s cruiser, and his helmet remained intact. He also protected himself against Ahsoka Tano’s (Rosario Dawson) two lightsabers at once when they met. Not a scratch.

So, how come there was residue of beskar alloy embedded in the walls of that ship? What could possibly be strong enough to leave it like that? So far, the only material we know that can damage beskar armor is, well, a beskar weapon, as the Armorer explains when she forbids Din Djarin from keeping the beskar spear he defeated Moff Gideon with. Still, it would require a Mandalorian to do something against a peer to leave residue on that wall. It’s possible, but not likely.

There are many other Mandalorian factions scattered around the galaxy, and any of them could have tried to kidnap Moff Gideon. But, right now, they all have to live in hiding, without a base or home, moving from one place to the next. If the Armorer (Emily Swallow) and Paz Vizsla (Tait Fletcher) didn’t do it — and we know they didn’t, because they were on Nevarro —, what other Mandalorian would have the resources to? It doesn’t make sense, there has to be someone else behind all this.

Could Someone Have Worked With Moff Gideon to Frame the Mandalorians?

Giancarlo Esposito as Moff Gideon in The Mandalorian Season 2 Episode 4
Image via Disney+

Moff Gideon is hated by all Mandalorians worth their beskar, and we’ve seen the resentment they hold towards the Imperial warlord many times throughout the series and its spin-off, The Book of Boba Fett. The Armorer and Paz Vizsla, for example, have made clear their discomfort with him being in the New Republic’s custody. The man committed genocide and attempted to purge Mandalorian memory from the galaxy, so it would make sense for Mandalorians to extract Gideon from the hands of the New Republic and give him their own justice.

Or at least that’s what we’re supposed to think. We’ve looked at our full deck of cards, but the beskar residue on the wall of the Lambda shuttle may still not be enough for some people, and that’s fair. There is another factor we haven’t looked at, though, which is that there’s another player at the table, one who does know what the full deck looks like and knows how to play even other players’ cards: Grand Admiral Thrawn (Lars Mikkelsen).

Ever since Season 2, Thrawn has been a figure lurking in the background as the big villain of the so-called “Filoni-verse” — the corner of the Star Wars universe that’s currently being developed by Dave Filoni and Jon Favreau. Although nothing has been confirmed, there is the possibility that Thrawn could return in the upcoming Disney+ Ahsoka series. In current Star Wars canon, Thrawn is a Chiss Imperial Warlord who became known as the main villain of animation series Star Wars Rebels. A formidable opponent, he is gifted with a highly strategical mind and has an unquenchable thirst for art and knowledge. And, although not a bad person himself, he does hold a great deal of respect for Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid). But he’s been around even longer than the current canon, and in Legends he almost brought back the Empire in Timothy Zahn‘s Heir to the Empire book trilogy. The Filoni-verse could feasibly adapt this trilogy with its multiple Disney+ series, and Moff Gideon’s extraction could very well be a first concrete step in that direction.

Thrawn is known for putting his enemies against each other before he really makes a move in war. Being the mastermind behind the Imperial Remnant in the Outer Rim after the fall of the Empire, he’s surely aware of how Mandalorians are starting to reorganize. He’s dealt with them before on Rebels, and is familiar with their tribal and warring ways. Framing Mandalorians for Moff Gideon’s disappearance is just his style, and would serve as a way of pitching the New Republic against the Mandalorians, while he was really the one to do it. Beskar doesn’t “rub off” on walls, and Thrawn knows it, so the whole operation could have been designed to plant evidence against the Mandalorians.

This might seem like a stretch at first, because the evidence of Mandalorian involvement is just too good and obvious to pass. Knowing Thrawn’s usual modus operandi, though, it makes perfect sense to see him as the one behind it. It’s unlikely that Captain Teva and the New Republic will connect all these dots, unfortunately, but it finally seems like The Mandalorian has a story for Season 3.

New episodes of The Mandalorian Season 3 come to Disney+ every Wednesday.

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