Star Wars: The Mandalorian Finale Just Gave Us Our Biggest Clue About Mandalore’s Destruction

The final episode of The Mandalorian finally filled in a lot of gaps in the Star Wars canon with a major tease into the main character’s past, finally revealing that Baby Yoda’s caretaker is actually named Din Djarin and even unmasking the bounty hunter at one point in the episode. But avid fans who have kept up with both Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels will likely be excited by the major tease of an event that seemingly killed off most of Mandalorian culture. Not only does this fill in gaps of the original trilogy, but it also finally explores an era of history not seen in live-action Star Wars projects.

Warning: Spoilers for Star Wars: The Mandalorian, Chapter 8 – “Redemption” below.

The last we saw of Mandalore, it was a warring planet of different factions, all of them vying for control over the homeworld while debating whether they should support Imperial rule or reject it. Much of this division was exacerbated when the planet’s elite group of warriors called the Death Watch were taken over by Darth Maul, who attempted to use the crew to exact his revenge on Darth Sidious.

But even after Mandalore expelled Maul, it took a while for those wounds to heal. Only Sabine Wren retrieving the Darksaber and uniting under the leadership of Bo Katan finally brought the clans together, in which they rejected the Empire’s rule and aided the Rebellion as they fought Grand Admiral Thrawn’s forces. This was the last we saw of the planet and culture, shown in the events of Star Wars Rebels and occurring before the films Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and Star Wars: A New Hope.

It was such a shock to find out about Mandalore’s purge in this new Disney+ series, especially when Moff Gideon spoke of the Night of a Thousand Tears in the season finale. The Mandalorian has often teased what occurred throughout the previous seven episodes, but here we learn that Moff Gideon was present when Imperial forces destroyed their training areas, killing many Mandalorian warriors.

It seems that the Empire pulled off a sneak attack to eliminate a formidable foe that was once an ally, perhaps punishing Mandalore for their transgressions in an effort to make an example of them to the rest of the galaxy.

We’ll likely learn more details about the Night of a Thousand Tears in future episodes, especially with Moff Gideon surviving (while wielding the Darksaber, no less) and the series already in production.

The second season of Star Wars: The Mandalorian is set to premiere Fall 2020. If you haven’t signed up for Disney+ yet, you can try it out here.

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