For all the victories that the Rebel Alliance have scored over the course of George Lucas’ storied space opera, Star Wars fans are no strangers to the Empire flexing their military might at every turn. The standoff between the Millennium Falcon and the Imperial Star Destroyer, akin to a skateboard versus a tank, is one of many such highlights.
As if the Empire wasn’t stacked enough, they go the extra distance by bothering to hire bounty hunters for some of their dirtier tasks, despite already being chock-full of elite Stormtroopers and, of course, the Inquisitors. Struggling to determine the Empire’s reasoning for this, barring “because we can,” one user took to r/StarWars to question why a resource-rich collective would ever bother to outsource.
One responder pointed out that the bounty hunters could be akin to a black ops force; since the Empire’s military is also law enforcement, getting their hands dirty in the wrong place could cause some members of the Senate to raise their eyebrows.
Another user echoed this, noting how bounty hunters aren’t motivated by anything other than money, making them an especially safe bet for the wealthy Empire.
Another responder offered up the especially crucial point that the Inquisitors, as far as we know, are either all dead or mostly dead, with the remaining few’s fates unknown.
Two other users backed up this point with a list of Inquisitors and their current statuses.
And one other responder pointed out that, if negotiations are made with a bounty hunter, they’re also being made with the Empire by proxy, which means that some people who wouldn’t engage with the Empire otherwise would then do so since the bounty hunter isn’t explicitly part of the Empire.
Indeed, especially given the fate of the Inquisitor unit, perhaps outsourcing quickly became a necessity for the Empire and, Sarlacc pits aside, it seems to have worked out about as well as it could have so far.