Star Wars: The Mandalorian Finally Solves Empire Strikes Back Mystery

After nearly 40 years, Star Wars: The Mandalorian has given fans an answer for why one resident of Cloud City was carrying what appeared to be an ice cream maker during its evacuation in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. Mandalorian creator Jon Favreau initially teased the prop from the sequel being used in the series when it was in production, with the third episode of the series now giving us the context of how the device would be utilized and why the character, known as Willrow Hood, would be taking such close care of the device in a moment of emergency.

WARNING: Spoilers below for Episode Three of The Mandalorian

In the debut episode of the series, The Client (Werner Herzog) offered the Mandalorian (Pedro Pescal) a “camtono of beskar steel” in exchange for retrieving a bounty. At the time, most of these comments sounded like Star Wars jargon, but with the latest episode seeing the Mandalorian hand over the bounty to The Client, we now know that a “camtono” is the storage device Hood was carrying on Cloud City. When The Client opens the device, it’s clear that it’s some sort of secure container used for a number of purposes.

While this reference doesn’t explicitly reveal the backstory of Hood, it now makes much more sense that, when fleeing Cloud City, the character would grab something that was clearly full of something important.

Hood only briefly appeared in Empire Strikes Back, but over the course of 40 years, has taken on a cult following, thanks to fans dissecting every frame of the franchise.

When the originally unnamed character debuted, he looked like he was carrying an intergalactic ice cream maker, earning him the nickname “Ice Cream Guy” among the fan community. The character was ultimately given the name “Willrow Hood” and his backstory was crafted to reveal that the piece of equipment he was carrying was a computer’s memory core containing important Rebel information. This still largely lines up with the use of the camtono in The Mandalorian, with the prop’s inclusion in the new episode surely delighting fans who have wondered about Willrow Hood for all these years, even if it’s not the same exact device seen in the 1980 film.

With virtually every episode of the series featuring Easter eggs to all corners of the franchise, we doubt this will be the last obscure reference that appears in the first season.

New episode of Star Wars: The Mandalorian debut Fridays on Disney+. If you haven’t checked out Disney+ yet and you want to give it a go, you can do that here.

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