At long last, The Mandalorian has returned with its first new episode in more than two years.
The live-action Star Wars series wrapped up its second season in the winter of 2020. Now, The Mandalorian season 3 has made its long-awaited premiere on Disney+. While the series’ season 3 premiere is a surprisingly directionless and lackluster installment of television, that doesn’t mean the episode, titled The Apostate, doesn’t raise some compelling questions about the future of The Mandalorian.
Here’s everything we’re dying to know after The Mandalorian season 3 episode 1.
Will the Purrgil appear again?
During a hyperspace trip early on in the Mandalorian season 3 premiere, Grogu looks out of his mini-cockpit and sees the silhouettes of multiple creatures flying just outside the limits of Din Djarin’s (Pedro Pascal) hyperspace trail. Fans of Star Wars Rebels should immediately recognize the creatures as Purrgil. Introduced in Star Wars Rebels, the Purrgil are a race of massive, tentacled space whales who have the ability to naturally travel through hyperspace.
The Purrgil are, perhaps, best-known for their role in the Star Wars Rebels series finale. The creatures are used by Ezra Bridger in that animated series’ final episode to hyperspace jump both himself and Grand Admiral Thrawn to an unknown region of the galaxy. While it remains to be seen whether or not the Purrgil will have any role to play in The Mandalorian season 3, the creatures will almost certainly appear in Ahsoka.
The upcoming live-action Disney+ series is expected to be a quasi-sequel to Star Wars Rebels — one that may very well reveal what happened to Ezra and Thrawn after the Purrgil took them somewhere far, far away.
Who will become the new marshal of Nevarro?
During his visit to Nevarro, Din Djarin (aka The Mandalorian) is surprised to discover that the planet has not only become a successful and booming new trade stop, but that it is also in desperate need of a new marshal.
Din is asked to take the position by the planet’s High Magistrate, Greef Karga (Carl Weathers), but he turns the request down. That means someone else will have to eventually step up and become Nevarro’s new marshal, but it seems safe to say that viewers will have to wait to find out who Karga chooses to fill the position instead of Din.
Who is Gorian Shard?
Over the course of The Apostate, Din Djarin makes a new enemy of a fierce pirate captain named Gorian Shard (Nonso Anozie). However, despite the danger he seems to pose to both Din and Greef Karga, very little information is actually revealed about Shard in The Mandalorian’s season 3 premiere. Unfortunately, there’s nowhere else fans can look for info about Shard, as the character’s appearance in The Apostate marks his Star Wars debut.
Based on Shard’s reaction to just how soundly Din and Greef manage to shut down his attacks in The Apostate, though, it seems safe to say that the pirate king will show up again at some point in The Mandalorian season 3.
Will Bo-Katan attempt to take the Darksaber?
At the end of The Mandalorian’s season 3 premiere, Din pays a visit to none other than Bo-Katan Kryze (Katee Sackhoff). Din attempts to join Bo-Katan’s crusade to bring their people back to Mandalore, but he is informed by Sackhoff’s mandalorian leader that her forces all slowly left her after she failed to retake the Darksaber from Moff Gideon (Giancarlo Esposito) in the Mandalorian season 2 finale.
Bo-Katan asks Din if he still has the Darksaber just before telling him to use it to win the support of her former followers. However, while Bo-Katan doesn’t make a move against Din during their brief interaction in The Apostate, it’s clear that she’s become immensely bitter over the impact his defeat of Moff Gideon has had on her claim to the throne of Mandalore. Taking that into account, it seems fair to ask: Will Bo-Katan ever grow tired of sitting in her castle and decide to try and take the Darksaber from Din herself?
The Mandalorian’s season 3 premiere certainly lays the groundwork for that very turn of events to happen, but fans will have to wait to find out whether or not Bo-Katan’s potential feud with Din ever comes to fruition.
What will Din find on the surface of Mandalore?
If The Apostate makes one thing explicitly clear, it’s that Din is going to visit the supposedly destroyed planet of Mandalore at some point in The Mandalorian season 3. Over the course of the season’s first episode, Din repeatedly states his desire to bathe in the planet’s living waters and redeem himself for the past instances in which he has taken off his helmet.
Din has, in response, been told by multiple people that the surface of Mandalore was turned into a poisonous wasteland by the Empire, but he seems determined to find out for himself whether that’s true. Unfortunately, as is the case with many of the leftover mysteries from The Mandalorian’s season 3 premiere, we’ll just have to wait to see exactly what Din finds whenever he actually makes it back to his people’s home planet.
New episodes of The Mandalorian premiere Wednesdays on Disney+.
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