What Are The Empire’s Plans For The Zillo Beast? A Theory

Star Wars

Mar 10

***Spoilers Below For The Bad Batch***

Star Wars shows and movies are full of easter eggs. There was the Starkiller Armor in Andor. There’s the classic Doctor Who costume that Bossk wore in The Empire Strikes Back. Directors love to throw them in there, like a little signature in addition to their particular directing style. It makes for good fun to watch and try and find them. Sometimes they’re even used to allude to upcoming shows or connections between shows and movies. In last week’s episode of The Bad Batch, there seems to be such a connection. If you haven’t seen last week’s The Bad Batch yet, you might want to skip this.

When the group discovers that they are indeed hunting a younger, smaller Zillo Beast (the massive, kaiju-esque monster that was seen in an episode of The Clone Wars), Tech mentions that they were studying it for genetic material concerning its armor. Blasters don’t affect it. The only way to take it down is through some sort of disruptor ray. It was being studied by cloning scientists and at Mount Tantiss, the legends and now canon location of Imperial cloning science.

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But why clone it and study it for its blaster-resistant armor? A couple of clues could come from a bit of a deeper dive into the collective lore.

First, let’s go back to the Clone Wars.

In the book Thrawn: Alliances, there are flashbacks to when Thrawn came across Anakin Skywalker as a General while he was searching for Padme. They come to discover that the Confederacy of Independent Systems, better known as the Separatists, had a factory on Batuu, and they were manufacturing a type of armor for battle droids that resists blasters and even lightsabers. It would be a game changer for the war and disastrous to the Republic. Anakin and Thrawn destroy the facility and that’s the last we heard about blaster-resistant armor.

Then in the Clone Wars animated show, we’re introduced to the Zillo Beast. It’s discovered on Malastare and wreaks havoc as a monstrous, 300-foot-tall kaiju. The Republic eventually weakens it and brings it back to Coruscant for study, where it breaks free and causes destruction until it’s killed via gas. Chancellor Palpatine takes particular interest in it and orders it to be preserved for study, primarily because it has armor that resists blasters and lightsabers.

Enter The Mandalorian. Something is going on with cloning that still isn’t clear for the show. In season one, Doctor Pershing is involved in the hunt for Grogu. They want his blood for something, and that something must involve cloning, as Doctor Pershing is a cloning specialist. When Gideon finally captures Grogu, it’s assumed he wants him for cloning, but that’s not made clear yet. Instead, the focus switches to his Dark Troopers. When Din and his friends assault the Imperial cruiser of Moff Gideon to find and rescue Grogu, Gideon activates his Dark Trooper platoon. They aren’t your typical battle droids. Nothing the group throws at the Dark Troopers seems to have any sort of effect on them. Only Din’s beskar spear manages to take some down, as does Luke’s lightsaber.

Din manages to take down a Dark Trooper.
Image Source: The Ringer

So what does all this mean? It seems that there’s an underlying quest to create armor that can withstand blasters, the standard form of weaponry in the galaxy. In the Clone Wars, the Republic, which was controlled by Darth Sidious in secret, as were the Separatists, both pursued an interest in blaster-resistant materials. Mining is expensive, time-consuming, and labor-intensive. If you can get it right, once you can clone something, it’s a pretty automated process. The Empire clearly has designs involving cloning, as they destroyed Tipoca City on Kamino to take control of cloning and moved operations to Mount Tantiss. Tech uncovered that they are studying the Zillo Beast at the cloning facility for it’s unique armor properties. Moff Gideon and the Imperial Remnant clearly have an interest in cloning as well.

I think perhaps the armor the Dark Troopers use is the result of the Empire’s research into the Zillo Beast’s biological armor. Their armor’s resistance isn’t explained, and Gideon’s interest in Grogu isn’t either. While there’s a possibility that they’re still going to explain it, the connections are all there to explain why the Dark Troopers were so resilient to the weaponry of Din’s group.

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