Star Wars: The Mandalorian Season 2 Episode 7 Easter Eggs Explained

This Star Wars: The Mandalorian article contains spoilers.

Din Djarin and his new crew infiltrate an Imperial processing facility in “The Believer.” The mission is simple: get the coordinates to Moff Gideon’s ship so that the team can break in and rescue Grogu from the Empire.

Boba Fett, Fennec Shand, Cara Dune, and ex-Imperial turned mercenary Mayfeld (Bill Burr) help The Mandalorian execute the plan, which, as one might expect, goes rather wrong before the end. The result is lots of blasting and a few explosions inside an Imperial holdout on a new planet.

Stream your Star Wars favorites right here!

“The Believer,” written and directed by Rick Famuyiwa, doesn’t have quite as many references as many of the other episodes this season, but we still managed to find a few. Rogue One fans will be pleased.

Here are all the Star Wars easter eggs and references we spotted in this episode:

The Empire

– The deployment of fearsome forces against our heroes starts early with a mention of the Imperial Security Bureau, known as being ruthless intelligence agents. This division of Imperial law enforcement deals with matters of internal security, such as rooting out traitors to the Empire.

Most famously, Kallus from Rebels and Krennic from Rogue One were agents of the ISB, but the first introduced on screen was Colonel Wullf Yularen, one of the officers sitting in the briefing room on the Death Star when Grand Moff Tarkin informed the group that the Emperor had abolished the Senate.

– The Juggernaut cargo vehicle is a variant of a prisoner transport tank that has been in use since the Clone Wars, the HCVw A9 turbo tank. It’s also reminiscent of transports in Rogue One.

– The explosive substance rhydonium is a starship fuel that has been mentioned several times in canon. Most notably, it was stored in Fort Anaxes in Rebels.

– Operation: Cinder was a contingency plan put in place by Emperor Palpatine in the event of his death. Used several times as a plot point in novels set after the end of the Galactic Civil War, the operation ravaged several planets, including “Imperial utopia” Vardos in Battlefront II and Naboo in the Shattered Empire comic book miniseries.

You can read way more about Operation: Cinder here.

– Imperial officer Valin Hess is played by Richard Brake, also known as the Night King in Game of Thrones and Joe Chill in Batman Begins. He shares his first name with a Legends character from that continuity’s third generation, Valin Horn.

– Several different variants of stormtroopers can be spotted in and around the processing facility, including tank pilots, shore or coastal defender troopers from Rogue One, and the Death Star laser beam troopers with their distinctive closed-visor helmets. Officially, the latter are called Imperial gunners and were integrated into the wider army after the fall of the battle stations.

Planets

– In order to cover for him, Mayfeld claims Din is an Imperial officer who served at Taanab. It first appeared in Disney canon in the junior novel Smuggler’s Run: A Han Solo & Chewbacca Adventure, which was written by Greg Rucka.

In Legends continuity, this planet was host to a battle against pirates that earned Lando Calrissian enough military credit to be promoted to general in the Rebellion. The planet first appeared in the flesh in the video game Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy, where its name was mistakenly spelled “Tanaab.”

– Burnin Konn, mentioned as part of Operation: Cinder, is also a planet from Legends. It was returned to canon in the mobile game Star Wars: Uprising.

– Morak, the forest planet where the Imperial facility, makes its first appearance in this episode. The Karthon Chop Fields is also a new location.

Aliens

– One of the characters in the background of the prison camp has a simian face and blue-tinged skin. While this might seem like a Lasat or a Bothan at first, the alien is actually a Hassk, a race that appeared in Maz’s castle in The Force Awakens.

– The pirates appear to be from a new species with fleshy mandibles.

Boba Fett

– Boba’s ship Slave I releases sonic bombs (also referred to as seismic charges) to take out the TIE fighters at the end of the episode. This weapon was first used during the chase sequence between Jango Fett’s Slave I and Obi-Wan Kenobi’s starfighter in Attack of the Clones. Nice to see Boba learned a few tricks from his pops.