Star Wars has dropped the trailer for Star Wars: Tales of the Empire, a new animated miniseries following up the fan-favorite Tales of the Jedi, and Grand Admiral Thrawn is back in a big way. Appearing for the first time in the Star Wars: The Clone Wars animation style, this marks the first onscreen appearance of Thrawn pre-Star Wars Rebels, and looks to tell at least part of his story. This unexpected return has big implications for the future of Star Wars, particularly concerning the upcoming The Mandalorian era culmination movie event.
As Tales of the Jedi followed two characters, Ahsoka Tano and Count Dooku, Tales of the Empire seems to also be following that pattern – with Ahsoka‘s Morgan Elsbeth and the iconic Barriss Offee from The Clone Wars. In one of Elsbeth’s clips, she is conversing with a younger Thrawn – not achieving his famous Grand Admiral look yet. This all seems to be pointing towards the development of the alliance Thrawn and Morgan had that led to Thrawn’s return in Ahsoka, something that will no doubt help to set up the future movie.
Based on the conversation seen in the trailer, Morgan will be first establishing her alliance with Thrawn long before the events of The Mandalorian, something first seen in that show and later on becoming a major plot point in Ahsoka. The village on Corvus that we see Morgan in charge of during her first appearance in The Mandalorian, Calodan, can also be spotted in the trailer. This is significant because it had foundries that helped build things for Thrawn’s efforts with the Imperial Remnant – most pointedly the Eye of Sion that rescued him from Peridea.
As Tales of the Empire follows Morgan and Thrawn’s efforts together, it seems incredibly likely that we will receive at least some sort of setup for the events of Ahsoka and maybe even the upcoming The Mandalorian era movie with Thrawn as the main villain. At the end of Ahsoka, Thrawn arrives on Dathomir, and both Thrawn and Dathomir are in this trailer – leading to a possible establishment of why he immediately went there. Nonetheless, this is setting up big things for Thrawn’s backstory that will no doubt be important for future Star Wars stories.
Star Wars: Tales of the Empire will release on Disney+ on May 4.
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