How Mount Tantiss Could Connect To Thrawn And The Mandoverse

Star Wars

Mar 19

When Bantam Spectra released Timothy Zahn's Thrawn Trilogy between 1991 and 1993, many fans thought that this would be the Sequel Trilogy at a time when Lucasfilm had no plans to make further Star Wars movies.

While Heir to the Empire, Dark Force Rising, and The Last Command never officially were classified as Episodes VII, VII, and IX and even got removed from canon in 2014 together with all other EU material, several characters and concepts from Zahn's novels were brought back into current Star Wars lore in later years.

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There is, of course, the Chiss Grand Admiral himself, who first appeared in Star Wars Rebels and later in Ahsoka, his Noghri bodyguard/assassin Rukh, Captain Gilad Pellaeon, or Thrawn's Star Destroyer the Chimaera (all introduced in Rebels).

The Bad Batch re-canonized another concept from the Thrawn Trilogy, but this time a location: Mount Tantiss.

Like in Zahn's novel, Mount Tanitss was located on the planet Wayland, in the Mid-Rim in the current canon, while it was somewhere in the Outer-Rim in the former Expanded Universe.

Zahn created Mount Tantiss as a top-secret vault of Emperor Palpatine, where he kept his evil artifacts. To avoid unwanted attraction, he didn't even place Imperial forces there at first, just a Dark Jedi as a guard, to the mountain.

Years after the Battle of Endor, Thrawn discovered that the hollowed-out mountain held Palpatine's treasures as well as 20,000 so-called Spaarti cloning cylinders that the Chiss intended to use to create an army of soldiers to battle the New Republic.

The final episode of season one of The Bad Batch brought Mount Tantiss back into the current Star Wars canon. Together with its neighboring mountain, it was the home of Tantiss Base and the center of the Imperial cloning program after the destruction of Tipoca City on Kamino. While the exact scope and purpose of Tantiss Base are still unknown, the Bad Batch showed that one of the things that Dr. Royce Hemlock and his teams were working on was Project Necromancer. Part of the Emperor's Contingency Plan, this endeavor was presumably aimed at creating substitutional bodies that were capable of holding the Sith spirit of Darth Sidious, should he die or be killed.

While the fate of Mount Tantiss and its cloning program after the fall of the Empire is unknown, it would make sense to bring it into Dave Filoni's and Jon Faveraus's so-called Mandoverse for several reasons.

Zombies and Clones

The final scenes of the first season of Ahsoka showed the Chimaera arriving in the orbit of Dathomir. The ship carried countless large boxes, which many assume were coffins, either for deceased Nightsisters, stormtroopers, or both. Thrawn's intention was probably to reanimate the corpses using Nightsister magik and to use them as soldiers or assassins. But despite the number of these zombies, Thawn would still need a rather large army to stand a chance against the forces of the New Republic, which at this point was still far away from the rather de-militarized and defenseless institution it would later become, giving the First Order and easy opportunity to easily take control over the galaxy without hardly any resistance (no pun intended).

Thrawn using the infrastructure and technology of Tantiss base to create a new clone army, this time fighting against the Republic, could not only supply the soldiers Thrawn and the remnants of the Empire so desperately needed, but it would also be a niche reference to Zahn's Thawn Trilogy.

Leader of the Shadow Council

Season 3 of The Mandalorian showed the various factions of the splintered Empire loosely cooperating as the Shadow Council. While their ultimate goal was rebuilding the old regime, they decided to keep a low profile for the time being, to avoid attracting the attention of the New Republic while they were too weak to face it. Although the various factions didn't trust each other and each leader hoped to become the heir to the Emperor, they were held at bay by the supposed return of Grand Admiral Thrawn (except for Moff Gideon, who had his own agenda). But still, would they accept the Chiss as their new leader if he returned just with a patched-together Star Destroyer and a bunch of witches and reanimated corpses they didn't know how to control?

Aside from art, Thrawn had always been fond of technology, creating the TIE-Defener, which ultimately was stopped in favor of Orson Krennic's Death Star. If we assume that Thawn was able to find the location of Mount Tantiss and that the base had not been completely destroyed by the Empire itself or the Rebel Alliance, the set-up of a successful cloning operation, able to constantly put out new troops could give Trawn the edge over the other factions, feeling that the time has finally come to move out of the shadows.

After all, with Gideon's cloning ambitions coming to an end with this presumed death in season three of The Mandalorian and Project Necromancer having moved to Exegol under the leadership of Bredol Hux, there didn't seem to be any other cloning projects within the boundaries of the former Empire.

Worthy opponents to the Mandalorians

With the Mandalorians reunited under the leadership of Bo Katan, chances are that they could become a serious threat to Trawn's plan for a new Empire, no matter how many soldiers he could amass under his leadership.

Both The Mandalorian and The Bad Batch showed that the main purpose of the cloning ambitions of the (former) Empire was not just to assemble a new clone army but to find a way to create clones who could use the Force.

If Thrawn could harvest the data and the infrastructure of the Tantiss base to create not only new troops but Soldiers who were able to use the Force, they would be a veritable opponent even for the Mandalorians. After all, although they were his enemies during the Clone Wars, Thrawn had some fascination and also respect for the abilities of the Jedi. And with Grogu, Ezra Bridger, and presumable also Ahsoka and Sabine Wren, he would have quite a selection of specimens he could harvest for Midiclorians.

Monsters of the Empire

In all his endeavors, Thrawn never seemed worried if a plan of his fell through, as he always had at least one backup strategy. Right now, it seems as if the reanimation of the bodies inside the coffins on the Chimaera (if that is what they are) is his plan A, creating (Force-sensitive) clone troopers on Mount Tantiss could become his plan B. Still, the laboratories there also had another purpose the Grand Admirly could put to use: Sidious intended to clone Zillo beasts there (and maybe also some other monsters).

If Thrawn were able to resume this operation, he could use these creatures to unleash them as a first wave of attack on worlds of the new Republic, causing chaos and havoc and tying up the scarce resources of the New Republic while striking devastating blows to his enemies with his army of zombies and clones.

It seems that season two of Ashoa and maybe even Jon Faverau's Mandalorian and Grogu movie, are setting up a big confrontation between the New Probulic, the Mandalorians, and a reunited Empire under Thrawn's leadership, culminating in Dave Filoni's all-star movie. Although the events of the Sequel Trilogy show that Thrawn's plans and ambitions to become the heir to the Empire had ultimately failed, Mount Tantiss and its cloning facilities could play an important role in making this confrontation as epic as possible.

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