Star Wars: The Mandalorian Drops New Hints About What Happened After Rebels’ Ending

The Mandalorian Chapter 11 featured a game-changing character reveal, which has helped to begin filling in some major blank spaces in Star Wars canon. (Spoilers) The Mandalorian's "Chapter 11: The Heiress" episode saw Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels' female Mandalorian leader Bo-Katan Kryze introduced into live-action, played by her animated voice actress, Katee Sackhoff. In Bo-Katan's first meeting with Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal), the two Mandalorians experience a serious clash of ideas about their warrior way. In the midst of that uneasy alliance, Bo-Katan reveals small details of the information that point to the series of events that played out after Star Wars Rebels' pivotal ending!

In the final arcs of Star Wars Rebels, Mandalore was plunged into a second Civil War over whether or not to swear loyalty to the Empire, which had occupied the neutral planet. That civil war was fronted by two opposing great houses of Mandalore: Clan Saxon and Clan Wren. Rebel operative Sabine Wren turned the tide by recovering the legendary Darksaber from where Darth Maul had stashed, after his time occupying Mandalore. Sabine passed on the Darksaber as a mantle of leadership to Bo-Katan Kryze, who had the respect and loyalty of many clans and factions. Rebels ended with the inspiring hope of Bo-Katan leading a rebellion on Mandalore alongside the rising Galactic Rebellion that would ultimately defeat the Empire.

However, The Mandalorian Chapter 11 confirms a major dark truth that Star Wars fans always loosely knew: Bo-Katan's rebellion on Mandalore failed.

Chapter 11: The Heiress is titled so because the plot of the episode follows Bo-Katan's mission to raid an Imperial weapons ship. While getting more weapons is the obvious primary goal, what Bo-Katan doesn't tell Din Djarin is that there is a second objective. The ship belongs to Moff Gideon (Giancarlo Esposito), and Bo-Katan storms the cockpit to capture the leading officer and interrogate him about the location of something she wants back from Gideon: the Darksaber, which the Moff revealed he has, during the final scene of The Mandalorian season 1. As the official mantle of leadership for Mandalore, Bo-Katan needs the iconic lightsaber back, to prove her warrior might, and lead a successful re-taking of Mandalore.

It was pretty clear in season 1 of The Mandalorian that the Empire's "Great Purge" of Mandalore had splintered its warrior culture and cost them valuable resources like their Beskar steel. In fact, a big subplot of season 1 was Din Djarin and The Tribe's attempt to avoid Imperial detection as they rebuilt their Beskar reserves and increased numbers, by taking on bounty hunting missions and other jobs. However, what exactly happened in the Great Purge is still one of the biggest unanswered questions in the Star Wars saga. Hopefully, the story of Bo-Katan Kryze and Ahsoka Tano crossing paths with Din Djarin will reveal that key flashback, while also opening the door to an exciting new chapter of those Clone Wars heroes returning to Mandalore fo finish the fight with the Empire.

Star Wars: The Mandalorian is airing new season 2 episodes every Friday on Disney+.