The Mandalorian: Secrets of Moff Gideon Role Revealed by Giancarlo Esposito

While The Mandalorian has offered up a villain-of-the-week story through several of its episodes, the over-arching threat of Giancarlo Esposito’s Moff Gideon has been looming throughout. The character, once the one wielding the Darksaber, has been in pursuit of Grogu for reasons which have not yet been revealed. Could there be someone trying to harness the Force with Grogu’s blood? Is this related to the creation of Snoke? Does he want to use the Child’s blood to clone Darth Vader or revive Emperor Palpatine? Only time will tell, assuming the character survives his punishment at the hands of the New Republic after being defeated in combat by Din Djarin. 

While speaking to ComicBook.com at Star Wars Celebration, Esposito shared his perspective of and experience with the secrets of Moff Gideon’s motivations throughout The Mandalorian. “When I first came on, they didn’t tell me anything because I felt like they wanted to see what I would do. That’s really smart,” Esposito said. “Sometimes when you say too much, you overload the actor and the actor’s brain is fritz-ing out and going crazy. I keep vying for clues and different things to know that I was doing right and they would give me certain things but they wouldn’t give me everything which I thought was really brilliant because, then if you have everything your imagination doesn’t work.”

Esposito was cooking up ideas of his own for decisions while acting as the Star Wars villain, sharing them with the creative team to try to get insights about how to conduct himself while in character. “It’s like, ‘Yeah, it could be this. It could be that.’ Dave Filoni is like, ‘It’s a good idea!’ And Jon [Favreau] is like, ‘Let me think about that,’” Esposito explained. “So, I always feel, when you have to have something, keep something away from the audience, you have to have some idea in your head that there is something else going on with the character in its inception and in its execution, so the audience can be, not thrown by it, but can see a depth and a through line.”

With Season 3 on the way, Moff Gideon’s fate is unclear. The character was not featured in the Season 3 trailer shown at Celebration but Esposito’s presence might seem to imply there is more story to come from him. The character was not killed off on screen but Din Djarin presumed he would be executed for his crimes while the Armorer doubted such an outcome.

“[Fans] come up to me at my table and they say, ‘When you said this, what did you mean?’ I go, ‘Oh, I don’t really want to tell you what I mean yet because you’ll find out when you see it if there is something else I meant,’” Esposito said. “So, holding back from an audience is sometimes good, allowing them to see the world inside of your eyes, especially when you’re working inside of the volume, you have to be the mirror for everything that the audience sees because the surroundings aren’t there. They’re gonna put it in later. So, you want to be in sync with that surrounding when you don’t know what it’s gonna be. There’s something great about spontaneity and not knowing everything.”

What do you think Moff Gideon’s plan was for Grogu’s blood? Share your thoughts in the comment section! The Mandalorian will return for its third season in February of 2023.