The Mandalorian brings Dr. Pershing and Elia Kane back for Star Wars’ strangest hour

polygon.com:

The Mandalorian season 3, episode 3 resurrects two recognizable faces from seasons past: Dr. Pershing, the Empire-affiliated clone scientist played by Omid Abtahi, and Elia Kane, a Moff Gideon crony. Their reappearances come fully loaded; “Chapter 19: The Convert” is The Mandalorian’s most political hour, and one of its messiest. Star Wars has never been more “I’m just asking questions!” than in Pershing’s peculiar redemption arc and Elia’s return, which seems poised to connect the Disney Plus show to the Star Wars sequel trilogy.

[Ed. note: This post contains spoilers for all of The Mandalorian through “The Convert.”]

Last year’s Andor took Star Wars to its darkest corners, interrogating the morality of so-called heroes during a time of war and revealing the Empire’s most violent, authoritarian tactics. Between rebel terrorism and state-sponsored labor prisons, the galaxy far, far away looked grimmer than ever — and echoed the worst of our real world. “The Convert” finds The Mandalorian playing in a similar key, albeit one with a bit more tinfoil-hat energy than Andor creator Tony Gilroy’s trenchant commentary. It’s easy to imagine why Jon Favreau’s Star Wars series is trending this direction, knowing what we know about the sequel trilogy, but sandwiched between Din Djarin and Bo-Katan’s return to the Children of the Watch, we get the reframing of a wartime eugenicist as a heroic underdog and the New Republic as an overextended government prone to the same fascist impulses as the Empire. Interesting…

Star Wars is no longer as simple as “good versus evil.” It was, even if George Lucas spent years saying it was a deeper metaphor for the Vietnam War, but not anymore. Not after Lucas’ prequel trilogy, the Lucasfilm sequel