The Mandalorian’s Dark Troopers Get a Legends Origin in Finale Episode

Introduced earlier this season, Dark Troopers belonged to the Imperial remnant led by Moff Gideon (Giancarlo Esposito). Though they were shrouded in mystery for nearly the entirety of their on-screen existence, the Season Two finale answered some lingering questions about the Imperial baddies. This includes providing them with an origin, thanks in part to the reemergence of cloning expert Dr. Pershing (Omid Abtahi).

Spoilers below for the finale of The Mandalorian Season Two. Proceed with caution if you’ve yet to watch through “The Rescue.”

“The Rescue” begins with Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) and his band of misfits in pursuit of an Imperial Lambda-class shuttle. It’s quickly revealed they found the location of Pershing and are in pursuit. One thing leads to another and Djarin and Cara Dune (Gina Carano) eventually board the shuttle and apprehend the Imperial sympathizer.

Shortly after that, Pershing starts to spill the beans, helping the team by providing them various pieces of intelligence — such as the fact Dark Troopers aren’t soldiers with souped-up Stormtrooper duds. Rather, as Pershing points out, Gideon’s current batch of Dark Troopers are the third iteration of the group — and the first set to be built as droids. Pershing suggests the one thing holding Dark Troopers back from becoming the best weapon they can be was the human operating them from the inside.

As such, the origin is a direct nod to the characters’ debut in Star Wars Legends lore, especially within the events of Star Wars: Dark Forces. In Dark Forces, Rom Mohc has gone through two phases of Dark Trooper development before reaching maximum success with phase three.

“I think what you see in a lot of the work that I get to be involved with is that I have a tremendous respect for all the people that worked through that era,” Star Wars icon Dave Filoni previously told ComicBook.com in an extended conversation about the Expanded Universe. “I felt like those storytellers were really able to keep Star Wars alive and very vivid for a bunch of people, myself included. I don’t think you can ever take anything away from that effort. I would never frankly, personally, try to marginalize it. A lot of it is very good. I didn’t read everything. I don’t know it in detail as some of the fans do, and so that’s why I would hesitate to say that I’m this mega EU fan. I just have a tremendous respect for it all, and I have a tremendous respect for the fact that people love it. I knew, many of us did inside Lucasfilm, how difficult it would be when we’re saying, ‘Okay, these are now Legends regardless of how much that makes sense.’”

Both seasons of The Mandalorian are now streaming in their entirety on Disney+.

What other pieces of Star Wars Legends lore would you like to see adapted in live-action and made canon? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section!