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Thrawn’s office in Star Wars Rebels is full of Easter Eggs

By Elaine Tveit

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In Star Wars Rebels “Through Imperial Eyes,” we saw Grand Admiral Thrawn’s office, which the Lucasfilm crew populated with all kinds of fun Easter eggs.

Since Grand Admiral Thrawn is himself a huge nod to past Star Wars stories, it makes sense to surround him with similarly homaging Easter eggs. And the Easter eggs abound in the newest Star Wars Rebels episode, “Through Imperial Eyes.”

Some eggs are as subtle as his cool logic. Others slap those knowledgeable of his Legends history in the face. But don’t worry if you didn’t catch them all (or any of them); we have them all listed for you below.

First, the physical Easter eggs in Thrawn’s office aboard his Star Destroyer:

  • The Holy Grail from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
  • Clone Commander Gree’s helmet from Revenge of the Sith. (Commander Gree is one of the clones under Yoda’s command on Kashyyyk. The Jedi Master is forced to kill him when Gree receives Order 66.)

    • A bust of an Abednedo, an alien species created for

    The Force Awakens

    . The most prominent example of an Abednedo in that film is Ello Asty, a Resistance pilot whose ship is destroyed in the trenches of Starkiller Base.

    Ello Asty from Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Image Credit: Lucasfilm

  • A digital version of a piece of the infamous Ralph McQuarrie’s Star Wars concept art, which Lucasfilm integrated into Star Wars Rebels as a painting of Lothal.
  • An artist’s rendering of ysalimiri: creatures created by author Timothy Zahn for the Legends Heir to the Empire trilogy (also the trilogy in which Thrawn makes his debut). These lizard-like animals were immune to the effects of the Force; they emitted a sort of anti-Force bubble, which rendered creatures or people nearest to them immune to the Force, as well. Thrawn used the ysalimiri’s unique properties to protect himself from a Force user named Joruus C’boath.

    • It’s not just Thrawn’s office that brims with references to other Star Wars stories (and one story which isn’t Star Wars-related at all). The folks at Lucasfilm peppered the entire episode of “Through Imperial Eyes” with Easter eggs. These include verbal references to Legends and the return of a character who was first seen in A New Hope.

    See if you recognized the following Easter eggs on your first viewing of the new episode:

    Thrawn’s assassin droids have a shutdown codeword, “Rukh.” “Rukh” is the name of the male Noghri warrior who first protected, then assassinated Thrawn in the final book of the

    Heir to the Empire

    trilogy.

    Image Credit: Bantam Spectra (via Tor.com)

  • In another throwback to Legends, Thrawn’s Star Destroyer possesses the same name it did in the Heir to the Empire trilogy: the Chimaera.
  • Former Admiral Yularen (now Colonel) returned to the small screen. Star Wars audiences first glimpsed him in the circle of Imperial officers aboard the Death Star in A New Hope. Much later, the 2008-2013 The Clone Wars animated series brought Yularen back as an admiral in the Republic fleet. By the time the events of Star Wars Rebels take place, he is a colonel in the Imperial Security Bureau, the Empire’s intelligence service.

    • “Through Imperial Eyes” was so much fun for me because Thrawn is my favorite Legends character. Seeing and hearing all the references to his original character – his love of art, his calculating genius, names of creatures and objects close to him – made my week when I saw the episode.

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    How many Easter eggs did you spot when you watched “Through Imperial Eyes”? Did you like the references made to Legends stories in the episode? Or do you wish Lucasfilm would leave that alternate Star Wars universe alone? Tell us your thoughts in the comments below.

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