So far “The Mandalorian” series has kept Giancarlo Esposito’s villain Moff Gideon at something of a remove. He was the bad guy for the first season finale and has so far been mostly in the background in the second.
With last week’s fourth episode showing his building of an army and what appears to be hints of experiments that might tie back to the ‘Force Awakens’ trilogy, it looks as though things are falling into line setting up Gideon as a new ‘big bad’ for this universe – perhaps a key player in the formation of the First Order.
Speaking with EW, Esposito himself says don’t expect to know Gideon’s plans this year as the already renewed series likely won’t be showing his true colors until a third and fourth season:
“I have a feeling you’ll see more of me next season. More than likely you’re going to see a lot of Moff Gideon. I can’t be sure of that, but it seems as though this iconic journey that they want you to feel it. I think you’re going to start to see other storylines start to creep in.
When we start to realize there’s such a deep connection [between the show’s storylines and] the rest of the galaxy and what’s really happening. Maybe you’ll get an inkling of what he wants. I think we’re all trying to figure out what does he really wants.
Somewhere in my brain, I hold out something and he has some kind of ethical consideration here. When people flow out of control and there are all these different Moffs who’ve been assigned different areas to be wardens of, isn’t there one person or someone that may have guidance over all of them? They’re questions that are answered. It could be super soldiers. It could be that he wants to save the galaxy.”
Moff Gideon is also hunting The Child for reasons known only to him, but Esposito wouldn’t talk much about that, only saying the creature represents: “the possibility of a new humanity of a new consciousness.”
The fifth episode of the second season just went live a few hours ago and a third season was greenlit back in April with showrunner Jon Favreau stating that things were “on track” to start filming before the end of the year.