The Mandalorian Reveals Moff Gideon’s Dark Troopers

As teased in the closing moments of The Mandalorian Chapter 13, Moff Gideon (Giancarlo Esposito) has managed to build a squad of dark troopers, a beloved set of characters from deep within the Star Wars Legends mythos. Fast forward a week and the Imperial baddies appear in their full robotic glory in one of the show’s most explosive episodes yet, checking off another Expanded Universe live-action adaptation for Jon Favreau, Dave Filoni, and company.

Full spoilers up ahead for The Mandalorian Chapter 14, “The Tragedy.” Proceed with caution if you’ve yet to see the latest episode of the hit Disney+ show.

“The Tragedy” wasted zero time in getting Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) and Grogu to Tython, a planet thought to be the initial home of the Jedi. As explained by Ahsoka Tano (Rosario Dawson) in “The Jedi,” it’s here Grogu — or Baby Yoda, if you’re still aboard that hype train — would be able to use a seeing stone to reach out to other Jedi.

Though the young Jedi has some difficulties understanding the stone at first, he quickly figured out how to use the Force. The moment encapsulated him in a fiery blue forcefield of sorts, so that Djarin — or anyone else on the planet, for that matter — could reach him.

After Boba Fett (Temeura Morrison) managed to track Djarin there with his new sidekick Fennec Shand (Ming-Na Wen), gunfights quickly broke out with Stormtroopers sent to the planet on Gideon’s behalf. With Djarin, Fett, and Shand now in an alliance and distracted by Imperial forces — combined with the fact Baby Yoda passed out after his signal-boost — Gideon sent his dark troopers in, even going the length to mention them by name.

While we’ve seen Gideon experiment with organic genetic material, dark troopers are droids — at least if they adapt the characters fully from the source material. Dark troopers first showed up in LucasArts’ Star Wars: Dark Forces, as the weapons crafted as part of the Dark Trooper Project.

In live-action, the troopers look nearly identical to their video game counterparts as they flew through the air, straight from Gideon’s fancy new Imperial cruiser down to Tython. In a twist most probably saw coming, the troopers then snatched Grogu up and took him back to Moff Gideon, where the Jedi’s first major fight scene appeared as a delight to Star Wars fans everywhere.

New episodes of The Mandalorian are added to Disney+ every Friday.

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