Mandalorian Chapter 19: is Dr. Pershing's cloning tied to Snoke?

From the beginning, The Mandalorian has taken on the ambitious task of contextualizing and deepening the lore of the Star Wars sequel trilogy era, the way Dave Filoni and his team did for the prequel trilogy with The Clone Wars and other titles. Chapter 19 was the biggest leap yet in that direction. It follows Dr. Pershing on Coruscant, inside the post Empire amnesty program, as he struggles to continue his cloning research and gets caught in a wider conspiracy of ongoing Imperial activity.

The Mandalorian (2019) is the Disney+ series starring Pedro Pascal. Here I'm connecting the dots on what was going on with the New Republic at that point, how it ties into The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker, and why The Bad Batch looks like it's playing a role too. My Wookieeleaks cohost Tommy Bechtold joined me for this one.

Aftermath and Bloodline are the key sources for the New Republic era

The best canonical sources for this period in Star Wars history are Chuck Wendig's Aftermath and Claudia Gray's Bloodline. Aftermath focuses on the origins of the New Republic government shortly after the Battle of Endor. Bloodline covers the later stages of the New Republic from the perspective of Leia Organa, six years before The Force Awakens, as she splits away from her political position to form the Resistance.

There's also the game Battlefront II, which shows Palpatine's posthumous Operation Cinder.

Chapter 19's Monument Park on Coruscant shows the war isn't settled

In Chapter 19, Dr. Pershing visits Monument Park on Coruscant. The opening scene of Aftermath takes place in that same park. That's where the celebration on Coruscant turned into a riot between Rebel supporters and Imperial loyalists, so things are not entirely settled.

Tommy Bechtold compared that to real life, arguing that just because a war ends doesn't mean the people involved are over it. He pointed to the story of the Japanese soldier who stayed out in the woods for something like 40 years after World War II, refusing to believe Japan would ever surrender.

That period was followed by the activation of Operation Cinder, Palpatine's plan, issued as an order he left behind, to scorch the surfaces of Naboo and other planets with climate disruption arrays. That plan gets stopped, at least as long as you play the game well enough.

Coruscant is no longer the New Republic's capital

Coruscant is no longer the seat of government at this point in Star Wars history, something a protocol droid at the Nevarro school explained back in Chapter 12. Chandrila is the homeworld of Senator Mon Mothma, who featured heavily in Andor, and she becomes the New Republic's first Chancellor during this period.

Chapter 19 also hints at where the government is heading. Pershing's encyclopedia tablet defines Coruscant as an ecumenopolis, one of many planets covered in urban cityscapes. That's a reference to Hosnian Prime, which becomes the seat of government of the New Republic by the time of The Force Awakens.

Pershing, Elia Kane and the amnesty program show a vulnerable New Republic

In Chapter 19 we see the New Republic's amnesty program, where former Imperials like Dr. Pershing and Elia Kane are recruited into a parole system, along the lines of Operation Paperclip. They have to archive, decommission and delete Imperial hardware, and that includes still intact Imperial Star Destroyers.

Pershing's supervisor says they're also in the process of decommissioning the Alliance fleet, meaning Admiral Ackbar's navy from Return of the Jedi is being put out to pasture. The fact that all of this is so poorly run, and that the people of Coruscant are so willing to forgive the sins of the past, tells us how vulnerable the New Republic is. It also explains why Din Djarin is so skeptical of them in Chapter 17, when he's told Moff Gideon was sent off to a New Republic war tribunal.

Leia Organa, Luke's school and a young Ben Solo

Leia Organa spent the years after the Battle of Endor training with Luke in the ways of the Force, including lightsaber combat, which we saw in a flashback in The Rise of Skywalker. She gives birth to Ben Solo in 5 ABY, so at this point in the timeline he's a kid.

He'll soon be brought to the school we saw Luke building in Chapter 6 of The Book of Boba Fett, after Grogu left. That new class is going to include a young Ben Solo. This is what's great about Star Wars: however you feel about the sequel trilogy, Ben Solo will have a place in these shows. My feeling was that a young actor would be cast as Ben, and that we'd have to go through the heartbreak of knowing he's eventually going to turn and become Kylo Ren, just like we did with the prequels.

Leia's First Senator campaign collapses over Darth Vader

Leia returns to public life in the decade before The Force Awakens, when the New Republic comes under political factionalism. On one side are the Centrists, who want to trust central government and a strong military. On the other are the Populists, who prefer local governments.

Leia campaigns with the Populists for a position now called First Senator, but her campaign is doomed when it's revealed she was Darth Vader's daughter. That had been a secret all the way until then. She probably leaves at this point to form the Resistance.

Palpatine's strandcasts, Snoke and Grogu's blood

Long before this, Palpatine had been conspiring with cloners to generate strandcasts with midi-chlorian rich blood, bodies he could transfer his consciousness into so he could clone himself after his death. That work would be carried out by the Sith Eternal cult on the planet Exegol, creating strandcasts like Snoke. We saw Snoke bodies in those tanks on Exegol, as well as Palpatine's son, Rey's father.

At first, we wondered whether Grogu could be a clone of Yoda, but Chapter 7 of The Mandalorian shut that down. Pershing wanted Grogu for his blood with its high midi-chlorian count. He reported on this in Chapter 12, in a log found in the Imperial base on Nevarro, where they also found another Snoke lookalike figure in a tank.

That report says the subsequent trials also ended in catastrophic failure. There were promising effects for an entire fortnight, but then the body rejected the blood. Pershing recommends suspending all experimentation, says the initial supply of blood is exhausted, and explains he could only harvest a limited amount from the child without killing him. To continue, they'd need access to the donor again. Pershing hints at the same thing in Chapter 19: "The first casts rejected the formula almost immediately."

The Bad Batch shows the Empire's cloning program taking shape

Tommy Bechtold has been following The Bad Batch, where a subplot seems to show the origin of this genetic research from the Imperial era, when Palpatine was at the height of his power. Season one ended with Tarkin and Vice Admiral Rampart bombarding Tipoca City. The Kaminoan research facilities were washed away into the sea, along with the majority of the Kaminoans.

Nala Se was transported to an Imperial facility on Mount Tantiss on the planet Wayland, which Tommy noted is an Easter egg named for the Alien movies. She refused to work for the Empire, saying that after the destruction of her civilization she would not serve the Emperor's interests. In Season 2, Episode 11, "Metamorphosis," which Tommy called a great episode and a horror movie homage, the scientist Dr. Hemlock has former Prime Minister Lama Su transferred from Coruscant to Wayland to force her to resume her work.

In exchange for his freedom, Lama Su declares there's only one way to convince the Kaminoan scientist to collaborate: locate a specific clone, Omega. Hemlock seems obsessed with the next step in cloning technology. He also transfers Crosshair to his facility after Crosshair is arrested for killing an Imperial officer, getting him out of what would almost certainly have been execution or decommissioning.

How Kamino, Grogu and Pershing lead to Snoke

Connecting all these dots: when the Empire took over, it bombed Kamino to destroy the other cloning operations but took Nala Se and Lama Su to derive whatever knowledge it could. Grogu was a secret youngling in the Jedi Temple during Order 66. He escaped, was lost, and was recovered by Mando.

He was then brought to Moff Gideon's forces so his blood could be harvested for Pershing's strandcast experiments, a process that will eventually lead to Snoke, a puppet of Palpatine.

Could Elia Kane be a grown up Omega?

I asked Tommy whether Elia Kane could be a grown up Omega, since Katy O'Brian looks like she could be. Tommy said she definitely could. Beyond her sinister side, he felt there's something in that performance that makes you feel she's significant, and that the choices she's making mean the payoff has to be that she matters in some way.

He said having her be another clone would be incredible, and that a live action clone connected to The Bad Batch would be amazing. He also acknowledged it would be a sad fate for the Omega we know from The Bad Batch if she ended up working for the Imperials again, though falls from grace have happened in Star Wars before.

Did Palpatine intercept Grogu's call to Luke from Tython?

My final question for Tommy started with Pershing's tablet, which cuts off before saying which planet is closest to the Deep Core at the center of the galaxy. We know from Star Wars maps that Palpatine's hidden throne world is there, not far from Tython, where Grogu called out to Luke Skywalker in Chapter 14.

So could Palpatine, nearby, have intercepted that call and used it to locate Luke's school, the place where, through the voice of Snoke, he would draw in Ben Solo by striking at the school and pulling Ben to the dark side? Tommy said that makes perfect sense, because Palpatine was always one step ahead of the competition, even as a ghost, and he called himself bullish on the idea.