Tag: eggs
Student who threw eggs at King found guilty of threatening behaviour
The Mandalorian Season 3, Episode 7 Easter Eggs – 9 Things You Missed In ‘Chapter 23: The Spies’
This week on The Mandalorian, we got our biggest update ever on what the Empire’s had cooking since they lost the war to the Rebel Alliance, the Mandalorians returned to Mandalore, and Moff Gideon finally made his move. The excellent “Chapter 23: The Spies,” directed by series staple Rick Famuyiwa, is quite dense with lore–by and large, these Easter eggs are substantial updates on characters and situations we’ve wondered about for years.
Even better, some of these Easter eggs are introducing direct plot throughlines from Return of the Jedi to The Force Awakens the likes of which we’ve never had before. This is a big episode.
Warning: This article contains major spoilers for Chapter 23 of The Mandalorian, titled “The Spies.”
Most of this week’s episode concerns the return of the Manadalorians to their homeworld in force, but before that we had our first scene with Giancarlo Esposito’s Moff Gideon this season–he’s receiving an update from the spy Elia Kane within the New Republic about the threat that a united Mandalorian force might pose to the Empire’s short-term plans.
As soon as that phone call ends, Gideon steps into a Zoom meeting with other Imperial leaders to talk about how to handle that Mandalorian threat–and also to talk about Thrawn, the blue Imperial Grand Admiral who’s been missing since the series finale of Rebels.
From there, we move to the titular Mandalorian Din Djarin and the massive new army of fighters from Bo-Katan’s old crew and Din’s Mando cult. And this combined force immediately makes its big move toward Mandalore. There they meet even more Mandalorians–survivors of the Purge of Mandalore who have just been living down there the whole time–and then they all walk right into Moff Gideon’s trap.
This episode is easily the best of the entire series, and it’s got plenty of Easter eggs–but these are largely meaty and substantial references to the greater franchise that hold serious big-picture story implications. Let’s dive in.
1. Imperial Shadow Council
In the second scene of the episode, Moff Gideon meets with a group he refers to as the “Shadow Council.” This is a secretive Imperial leadership group that was established by Imperial Admiral Gallius Rax immediately after the Emperor’s death in the Aftermath trilogy of novels. The group was formed to serve as an oligarchy that secretly ran the Empire behind a figurehead, but it looks like they currently secretly run the Empire while pretending they have no manner of combined leadership at all.
Only one member of the original Shadow Council is still around in the new one. We’ll talk about him in a moment.
2. Grand Admiral Thrawn
Thrawn on Rebels
Originally created by author Timothy Zahn for the Expanded Universe novel Heir to the Empire in 1991, Thrawn was conceived as an unrivaled tactical genius who nearly managed to keep the Empire together after the Emperor’s death. Thrawn was brought into Disney’s Star Wars continuity as a major antagonist on Rebels, and he’s been missing since the Rebels series finale–but apparently he now runs the remnants of the Empire through his representative on the Shadow Council, Captain Pellaeon. While we didn’t actually see him in this episode, this is the first time he’s been mentioned in live-action Star Wars. And we already know he’ll be here soon enough.
3. Captain Pellaeon
Pellaeon himself is also an interesting pull, because he also originated in Heir to the Empire as the captain of Thrawn’s flagship, the star destroyer Chimaera. But aside from one very brief cameo in the Rebels finale and a new backstory in one of the Thrawn novels, he hasn’t really been much of a part of the Disney timeline. Until now, anyway. Pellaeon is played by TV veteran Xander Berkeley, who isn’t really the sort of actor you hire for a cameo–it would be very unsurprising if we saw him again, either in the Mandalorian season finale next week or on the Ahsoka series later this year.
4. Commandant Hux
You remember General Armitage Hux, that First Order guy in the sequel trilogy who screamed that speech about order before blowing up the New Republic capital planet? Well, this is his dad, the previously mentioned only surviving member of the original Shadow Council from the Aftermath novels. Commandant Brendol Hux goes on to help found the First Order, and then eventually he’s killed by Captain Phasma on behalf of his son–he wasn’t a great dad.
General Hux was played by Domhnall Gleeson in the sequel trilogy, and here his father, Commandant Hux, is played by Gleeson’s brother Brian.
5. Project Necromancer
Cloning tanks on Exegol, in The Rise of Skywalker
We learn that Commandant Hux is in charge of something called Project Necromancer, which involves cloning and is intended to provide a new leader for the remnants of the Empire. This has to be the project to resurrect Emperor Palpatine’s spirit in a clone body that is strong enough to support it. If it isn’t that, then this would have to be something new we haven’t heard about before.
6. Praetorian Guard
During this scene, Gideon manages to convince Pellaeon and Hux to provide him with reinforcements for his losses against the Mandalorians, as well as the use of three members of the Praetorian Guard. And we didn’t have to wait too long to see these badass Praetorians in action, because they duke it out with Paz Viszla at the end of the episode. If these guys look familiar, it’s because we previously saw the Praetorian Guard protecting Supreme Leader Snoke in The Last Jedi–until Kylo Ren and Rey killed them and Snoke, anyway.
7. Fake Chess
Star Wars has a lot of different versions of chess, like the one with holographic monsters they played on the Millennium Falcon in A New Hope. And this one that we see Paz Viszla and Axe Woves playing in this episode is a new chess-like game that was invented for The Mandalorian. Though in Star Wars these are not actually variations on chess–in this universe, all of these chess-like games and chess itself are derived from a board game called Shah-tezh. This is not an important fact, but it is a fun one.
8. Ankylosaurus
We were all waiting for our merry band of Mandos to fight the mythosaur that we saw at the beginning of the season, but instead they had to face a different gigantic lizard monster with a massive spiked tail. While we never got a full-body shot of this guy, everything we did see looked like this was a kaiju-sized ankylosaurus–a real dinosaur that existed on Earth during the late Cretecaous Period. On Earth, though, these things were only a couple dozen feet long, rather than the size of a large building.
9. Beskar stormtroopers look more like First Order stormtroopers
Moff Gideon didn’t just bomb Mandalore to smithereens and then move on with his life–no, he set up a base there to mine beskar ore, and he’s been outfitting stormtroopers with beskar armor and jetpacks. But this new stormtrooper armor isn’t just better at protecting the wearer. It also looks different. In fact, the helmet looks a lot like they crossed Mandalorian stylings with the helmets of the First Order stormtroopers from the sequel trilogy.
And, as Poe Dameron once said: They fly now.
Free-range eggs could return to supermarkets next week as Government lifts ‘bird flu lockdown’
Rust update adds ping system, double saddles, and Easter eggs
Communication is key in the new Rust update, which packs in plenty of multiplayer functionality that will be very welcome for those of you who enjoy playing with friends (or even interacting with random players) in the survival game. With updates to the map markers system, the long-awaited introduction of pings, and a way to ride about the open world together with a buddy, co-op fans will be delighted. There’s also Easter festivities, so get your egg baskets ready and read on for the full details.
MORE FROM PCGAMESN: Best survival games, Rust commands, Rust vehicles
The Mandalorian Season 3, Episode 6 Easter Eggs: 7 Things You Missed In Chapter 22: Guns For Hire
This week on The Mandalorian, Din Djarin and Bo-Katan visit a new planet we’ve never seen nor heard of before: Plazir-15, a beautiful and verdant planet with a sick-looking domed city at its heart. And the place is run by celebrities.
Warning: This article contains major spoilers for Chapter 22 of The Mandalorian, Guns For Hire.
Our heroes have come to Plazir-15 because it’s the new home of Bo-Katan’s old Mandalorian army. These guys now follow Axe Woves, a character who appeared back in Season 2 when we first met Bo-Katan.
But before they have their little parlay with the Axe Man, they have to deal with the local leaders, a former Imperial middle manager who’s married to the local royalty. Plazir’s power couple has a problem: Their droids are going crazy and wrecking stuff and even harming organic beings. But since they have a former Imperial in charge, they aren’t able to do much about it–they cannot have their own weapons in their city.
This is an issue because with the droid help, Plazir is an automated society where the organic beings live lives of luxury and don’t have to go to work. It’s a planet that’s just nobility–if you don’t count those droids, anyway. But we’ll come back to that.
There are plenty of Easter eggs this week, both big and small. Which is good, because we can’t have them slacking on the Easter eggs when actual Easter is coming up this weekend. Read on for some fun facts!
1. Quarren and Mon Calamari forbidden romance
This episode opens with a little bit of a Romeo and Juliet scene–the Mandalorians who used to work for Bo-Katan are now mercenaries hired to retrieve a Mon Calamari nobleman from a starship full of Quarrens. But it turns out the Mon Cal is in love with the Quarren captain.
In Star Wars lore, the Mon Calamari and the Quarrens are from the same planet, and the two species have an ancient and permanent rivalry with one another. So, yes, they really are pretty much the space fish Montegues and Capulets. Fortunately, nobody ended up dead in this version of the story, though.
2. Tom Holland’s brother is the Mon Calamari
The voice of the Mon Calamari noble isn’t a random voice actor or anything like that. No, it’s Harry Holland, the brother of Spider-Man himself, Tom Holland. Harry doesn’t act much–mostly he’s appeared as an extra in some of his brother’s movies.
3. Battle droids and super battle droids
Since The Mandalorian is mostly connected to the rest of Star Wars through the Clone Wars and Rebels shows rather than the movies, these battle droids and super battle droids (B1s and B2s, if you wanna be a nerd about it) are more of a Clone Wars reference than a prequel trilogy reference. But what’s particularly interesting about this scene is the way it lets one of these droids talk without making it a complete idiot–in contrast to the prequel films, where they were always just stupid. The Clone Wars show had some decent scenes where they talked, but this is the first time they managed to not be completely a joke in a live-action thing.
Bonus fun fact: the battle droids have been voiced by sound designer/editor Matthew Wood since the start of the Clone Wars series, and before that he was General Grievous in Attack of the Clones and worked as a sound editor on all three prequel movies. And this week on The Mandalorian, Wood provided the voice for the battle droid that Din Djarin and Bo-Katan meet during their investigation.
4. Jack Black and Lizzo
Someday, Star Wars might cool it with the cameos, but that day is not today. Because today we got Jack Black and Lizzo playing the leaders of the decadent planet Plazir-15. They aren’t extremely serious characters–they’re rich and out-of-touch goobers who are here to be mildly amusing and to keep the tone light. And, well, it’s Jack Black and Lizzo, so they accomplish that.
5. Christopher Lloyd
The head of security on Plazir-15 and the perpetrator behind the droid attacks is a man named Commissioner Helgait (yes, like “hellgate”), who is played by Christopher Lloyd. It’s a shame he only had a couple minutes of screentime, because this character still holding loyalty to the Separatists from the Clone Wars is a nice little piece of world-building. These glimpses at people just being people in this universe–which happens so rarely–are always welcome.
6. Nano bots from the Techno Union
Our two Mando detectives eventually manage to track down the cause of the rogue droids: nano bots from the Techno Union that were hidden in a droid beverage. A large conglomerate of tech companies, the Techno Union had a seat on the Separatist Council–its representative, Wat Tambor, has frequently been referenced in memes over the past two decades since his original brief appearance in Attack of the Clones.
7. Droids as people
All the droids in the Star Wars franchise are pretty much intelligent beings. And while this isn’t a franchise that likes to ponder meaningful questions of morality, this week’s visit to a droid-only cantina is the latest in a long thread of franchise moments that at least pay lip service to the idea that all these droids are actually people with the same free will as organic beings. But in the past, this topic hasn’t often been dealt with with any kind of meaningful seriousness. See, for example, L3-37 in Solo: A Star Wars Story, who is treated as the butt of the joke.
This episode of The Mandalorian does it better. The bartender there tells Din Djarin and Bo-Katan they want the malfunctions to stop because they’re worried it will turn the people of Plazir-15 racist against droids, and so these ones decide to help the investigation. For once, the droids are just other characters. That said, the droid bartender also has a line that attempts to justify their enslavement and forced servitude–like I said, Star Wars really can’t ponder this too hard.
The Mandalorian Season 3, Episode 5 Easter Eggs: 6 Things You Missed In Chapter 21: The Pirate
The plot is really starting to ramp up on Season 3 of The Mandalorian. Bo-Katan (Katee Sackhoff) has managed to ingratiate herself pretty well with Din Djarin’s Children of the Watch. Nevarro and Greef Karga (Carl Weathers) are once again under attack, this time by pirates, and a New Republic pilot wants to help–but the Republic itself doesn’t. And Djarin himself (Pedro Pascal) and his cult-ish Mando pals seem very much like they’re ready for more action after the battle with the lizard bird last week.
Warning: This article contains major spoilers for the March 29 episode of The Mandalorian, Chapter 21: The Pirate.
Remember in the Season 3 premiere when a few pirate thugs threatened Greef Karga and Mando, and then Mando had to kill all but one of them before sending the last one away with a warning for the pirate king Gorian Shard? Well, that creepy seaweed man has brought his big ship to Nevarro and has the planet under siege.
Karga manages to get off a message to the New Republic pilot Carson Teva, who has popped up several previous times on The Mandalorian. Teva wants the Republic to intervene, but they won’t–and so he tells Djarin and the other Mandalorians about the situation in hopes that they’ll deal with it. Inspired by an impassioned speech from Paz Vizsla and Karga’s promise of land on Nevarro, the Children of the Watch embrace the chance to flex their muscle against the pirate king.
While Season 3 of The Mandalorian has certainly not thrown around references to other Star Wars things as often as past seasons did, we’ve still got a healthy collection of nods to not just the greater Star Wars universe but also to our own. You can check out this week’s selection of Easter eggs below.
1. Greef Karga loads up an astromech droid with a distress message like Princess Leia did
It’s an iconic shot from the original Star Wars film: Princess Leia leaning over R2-D2 after recording her message asking for help from Obi-Wan. Near the beginning of this episode, we get an odd visual reference to that moment with Greef Karga leaning over another astromech droid in identical fashion to start recording his message of distress for Carson Teva.
2. Zeb from Rebels
When Teva receives the message at whatever remote New Republic base he’s living on, we see him chatting with a large CGI alien guy–this is Zeb (Steve Blum), one of the main characters from the Star Wars animated series Rebels. He doesn’t get to actually do anything here, but the fact that they did the work to animate him should give Rebels fans hope that he’ll appear elsewhere in this show or the upcoming Ahsoka series in the future.
3. Cameos by Deborah Chow, Dave Filoni and Rick Famuyiwa
In that very same scene, we have blink-and-you’ll-miss-them cameos by three major real-world power players behind Star Wars television: Dave Filoni, showrunner for The Clone Wars, Rebels, and The Bad Batch animated series; Deborah Chow, showrunner and director of the Obi-Wan series; and Rick Famuyiwa, producer and director on The Mandalorian. The three of them are hanging out on the opposite end of the bar from Teva and are very easy to miss–the shot above with them out of focus in the foreground is our clearest shot of them during this scene.
4. Tim Meadows
When Teva travels to Coruscant in person to convince the Republic to help Nevarro (there’s no way this was actually faster than calling), the person he hits up is a colonel played by the ever delightful comedian and SNL alum Tim Meadows.
5. Carson Teva knew R5-D4 from the Rebellion
When Teva flies to the Mandalorian covert to ask them to help Nevarro, Din Djarin wonders how he found them. “Someone I served with in the Rebellion is amongst your ranks,” Teva says, before R5-D4 announces himself as the spy. While we have no idea about the specifics that Teva is referring to in this timeline, this is a clear nod to R5’s obscure history in the old defunct Expanded Universe. After the incident with R2 and the Jawas in the old continuity, R5-D4 worked as a spy for a Republic intelligence officer on Tatooine for years.
That officer wasn’t a character in a story, though, but rather the in-universe author of a bunch of Star Wars Role Playing Game sourcebooks. Believe it or not, those sourcebooks actually were canon and helped establish a lot of baseline aspects of the Star Wars universe.
6. Echoes of the Super Star Destroyer crashing in Return of the Jedi
At the end of this episode’s big battle between Gorian Shard’s pirates and the Mandalorians, Din Djarin and Bo-Katan take out the engines on Shard’s large flagship, sending it toward the ground in flames just like the Super Star Destroyer plummeted into the Death Star during the battle at the end of Return of the Jedi. But this isn’t just a visual reference. This episode of The Mandalorian also borrows the sound of the Super Star Destroyer falling–a tone that gradually increases in pitch as the ship approaches the surface.
Eggs: What’s Good, What’s Bad, and What’s Delicious
The Mandalorian Season 3, Episode 4 Easter Eggs: 8 Things You Missed In Chapter 20: The Foundling
Last week’s episode of The Mandalorian was the longest in the series at just under an hour, and this week’s is barely half that. Despite its short length, this episode covers plenty of ground, telling the story of how Bo-Katan and the titular Mandalorian Din Djarin are able to deeply ingratiate themselves with the Mandalorian cult Djarin grew up in, and the powers-that-be have also deigned to give us a rare glimpse at Grogu’s past.
Warning: There are copious spoilers ahead for The Mandalorian Chapter 20: The Foundling.
This episode of The Mandalorian picks up pretty much where last week’s left off, with Din Djarin being accepted back into the Tribe and Bo-Katan being accepted for the first time after their adventure to Mandalore. The episode begins with the pair observing the various Mandalorians spar against each other, and Djarin thinks the time has come to get Grogu’s Foundling training started with a duel against one of the other kids.
The practice duel goes well for Grogu, but moments later his foe is dramatically abducted by a gigantic lizard bird–one of the Mandalorians refers to it as a “raptor,” but it’s a new creature we’ve never seen elsewhere. And thus begins another Mando adventure as Djarin and Bo-Katan head off to rescue the kid, while Grogu stays home and has a flashback to a particularly stressful moment in his life: the night of Order 66.
Despite the short length, we’ve got a pretty solid selection of Easter eggs here, including one of the biggest and most surprising cameos we’ve seen so far on The Mandalorian.
1. Mandalorian Battle Circles
This opening segment of the episode, with the many Mandalorians sparring with each other and Grogu dueling with Ragnar, is reminiscent of the Mandalorian camp on the moon of D’Xun in the video game Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords. In that camp, you see various Mandalorians sparring just like this, and to be accepted by these folks, the non-Mandalorian player character has to participate in a non-lethal duel with rules set by a Mandalorian–just like Grogu does.
2. Wrist dart launcher
The weapon for that training duel is a wrist dart launcher, a device we first saw on the arm of Boba Fett in the original trilogy that can fire a variety of different kinds of darts, from explovies to poison, though he never actually used it on screen. His dad, Jango Fett, on the other hand, uses it in the Clone Wars series, and we’ve seen it used a couple times previously on The Mandalorian. The wrist launcher is also a key weapon in the arsenal of the Bounty Hunter class in the online video game Star Wars: The Old Republic–that class uses Mandalorians as the archetype for its weapons and gameplay style.
3. Peaks of Kyrimorut
In the middle of the episode, Bo-Katan casually compares a very tall and narrow mesa to “the peaks of Kyrimorut.” Kyrimorut is, or was, a remote mountain fortress on Mandalore. What’s particularly wild about this shoutout is that Kyrimorut is a location created by author Karen Traviss in her novel Republic Command: True Colors. Traviss would use or refer to this place in three other novels, all of which are part of the old Expanded Universe and not currently canon. This episode of The Mandalorian is the first mention of Kyrimorut anywhere in Star Wars since Imperial Commando: 501st in 2009, and the first time ever that someone other than Traviss–who has not written for Star Wars since that novel–was doing the mentioning.
4. Baby Yoda’s backstory
Since we first saw the Great Jedi Purge in Revenge of the Sith, we’ve seen Palpatine’s Order 66 play out from a number of different angles over the years–including the pilot episode of The Bad Batch, which takes place on that day, and in the video game Jedi: Fallen Order. And now we get a new perspective, that of Grogu as he barely makes it out of the Jedi Temple and off Coruscant.
5. Ahmed Best helps out
But little Grogu didn’t save himself. He had help, in the form of the Jedi Master Kelleran Beq, played by former Jar Jar actor Ahmed Best. Weirdly, this character actually originated as the host of the Jedi Temple Challenge game show on YouTube–and now he’s canon.
6. Grogu escapes on a Naboo starship, and with the aid of Naboo soldiers
At the end of Grogu and Kelleran’s exciting airspeeder chase, they arrive at a landing pad with a space ship and a bunch of soldiers. They die fighting against clone troopers while Kelleran and Grogu fly away. But what’s particularly curious about this bit is that the ship and the soldiers are from Naboo. That detail is probably important to the plot somehow–remember that both Padme and Palpatine are from that planet–but we have no clue what it means yet.
7. Ragnar Vizsla
The name of this character, the son of the hulking Paz Vizsla, is a reference to the legendary Viking Ragnar Lothbrok. It’s a fitting name because the Mandalorian warrior culture has always been at least partially modeled after the Vikings. Though this is the first time that comparison has been made explicit in-universe.
8. There’s always a bigger fish
After Bo-Katan and Din Djarin manage to save both Paz and Ragnar from the clutches of that large flying dinosaur, the Mandalorians manage to knock it into a large lake–where, as we watch from above, a massive fish emerges from the depths and eats the beast like it’s nothing. An unnecessarily expensive flourish, you might think, but this bit evokes Obi-Wan, Qui-Gon, and Jar Jar’s journey through Naboo’s watery core in that bongo in The Phantom Menace.
Twice during that journey they’re attacked by a large aquatic monster, and both times they’re saved by an even larger aquatic monster eating the one pursuing them–prompting Qui-Gon’s memorable “There’s always a bigger fish” line. It was impossible for me to not think about that sequence when the flying dino got what was coming to it at the end of this episode of The Mandalorian.
The Mandalorian Season 3, Episode 3 Easter Eggs: 7 Things You Missed in ‘Chapter 19: The Convert’
Chapter 19 of The Mandalorian, “The Convert,” pitched us a major curveball this week when it took the focus off of the titular Mando Din Djarin and put it instead on Dr. Pershing, the scientist who worked for the Empire and wanted to study Grogu in Season 1. So while this episode may have been light on the plot we thought we were going to get this week–the redeemed Mando returns home–this thoroughly surprising tangent has so much other stuff for us to chew on.
Warning: The following contains spoilers for The Mandalorian Season 3, Episode 3, “The Convert.” If you want to avoid spoilers before you watch it, you should head over to Disney+ to do that now.
As is usually the case with these things, Chapter 19 contained a bevy of references to the past of Star Wars–fortunately, though, not really in intrusive or overly obnoxious ways. We’ve got some visits to locations from past movies and shows that fit well, we’ve got offhand references to existing Star Wars items, like a cocktail drink, and we’ve got a major plot thread that takes a nugget from elsewhere in the canon and runs with it in a really cool and interesting way.
In other words, The Mandalorian seems to currently be in the process of finding its sweet spot on these franchise Easter eggs, opting for a mix of low-key nods and meaningful substance this time out. And it’s working out really well, because the show is much improved in Season 3, at least so far. But enough rambling. Let’s get to those Easter eggs.
1. The New Republic Amnesty program
While the Amnesty program is technically a new thing, the entire concept is derived from the 2019 novel Alphabet Squadron, which is canon. That novel opens a month or two after the destruction of the second Death Star and focuses on an Imperial character defecting to the Rebel Alliance-turned-New Republic. This character, Yrica Quell, begins the story on a small colony nicknamed Traitor’s Remorse that the Republic is using specifically for bringing in former Imperials and rehabilitating them, complete with a droid therapist/parole officer.
The Amnesty program we see on this week’s The Mandalorian, which takes place years after Alphabet Squadron, is the more formal, institutional version of that program.
2. Photon Fizzle
The Photon Fizzle mentioned by Elia Kane in this week’s episode is a cocktail that we first heard about in the animated Droids series from the 1980s, and that we first saw in Dex’s Diner in Attack of the Clones, and that we learned how to make in the Black Spire Outpost Cookbook, which was released around the time of the openings for Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge at Disney’s theme parks. And, as you can probably tell by the image, Obi-Wan has to make one in the Attack of the Clones portion of the LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga video game.
3. Taungsday
This is maybe the most obscure pull I’ve ever seen from a Star Wars thing. Taungsday–mentioned in a jokey “Mondays, am I right?” kind of way in this episode–is the third day of a Coruscant week, and this was established in a now-deleted blog for Hyperspace subscribers in 2009. And no Star Wars character had ever mentioned it in-universe before this episode of The Mandalorian. There’s a lot more meaning to this name, though, than just its weird origin.
The Taung, who are an alien species native to Coruscant, have no presence to speak of in the current Disney canon outside of this one bit, but they were important to the galaxy’s history in the old Expanded Universe canon. Back then, the Taung lived on Coruscant before it was a planet-wide city, but they were largely supplanted by humans in ancient times before the Galactic Republic was formed with the planet as its capital.
When those ancient humans drove most of the Taung off Coruscant, they fled to the outer rim, where they stayed for centuries until a warlord united the entire species for a war of conquest against a new planet that would become their new birthright as a species. That planet was Mandalore, and these Taung were the original Mandalorians.
None of that is part of the current Star Wars continuity, but we’re talking about hundreds of thousands of years before the time of any Star Wars story. This doesn’t have much bearing on the present so you could include this in your headcanon without it affecting anything else, really.
4. Some familiar Coruscant spots
Several locations from Attack of the Clones, Revenge of the Sith and the Clone Wars animated series appear in early scenes with Dr. Pershing on Coruscant, such as the Senate plaza where he gives his speech and where he has his little meet-and-greet afterward. He also rides in an airspeeder taxi that is very similar, if not identical, to those seen in Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith.
5. Monument Plaza
While this location also appeared in Clone Wars, its history is more interesting than just that. This place began life as several pieces of Ralph McQuarrie concept art that were first seen in the Illustrated Star Wars Universe book and then incorporated into the Special Edition of Return of the Jedi in 1997. The end of that version of the film added several looks around the galaxy at folks celebrating the death of the Emperor, including Monument Plaza on Coruscant, where we see a statue of the Emperor being pulled down. All the big details about this, including the mountain peak that is the only place where the surface of Coruscant is visible, come from those old concept drawings.
6. It was a trap!
As Dr. Pershing is being put into the 602 Mitigator, aka the Mind Flayer, he pleads that going to the old mothballed Star Destroyer was Kane’s idea, not his. That it was a trap! This is an Easter egg because of who Pershing was pleading to: a doctor who is of the same species as Admiral Ackbar. Ha ha ha.
7. That beefcake Mandalorian
We’ve seen this guy pop up on The Mandalorian here and there, and this time he’s there to challenge Din Djarin and Bo-Katan when they arrive at the home of the Tribe at the end of this episode. He doesn’t get his way this time, but he does have one of the oldest Mandalorian names: Vizsla. In the current continuity, Clan Vizsla was founded by Mandalore Tarre Vizsla, the first Mandalorian Jedi and the creator of the Darksaber, and during the Clone Wars series Pre Vizsla was Mandalore for a time. This character’s name has never been important on The Mandalorian, but the more involved Bo-Katan is in things, the more likely it’s going to matter that a Vizsla is hanging around.