When Giancarlo Esposito debuted as Moff Gideon in the first season of The Mandalorian, it was widely expected that he would assume big bad duties for the second run of episodes to provide a much pricklier thorn in the side of our intrepid hero and his tiny green adopted son. While that was technically the case, Gideon wasn’t quite the overarching antagonist that many people thought he would become, and it appears perfectly clear that he’s set to stick around the small screen Star Wars universe for a long time yet.
During “The Rescue,” the villain knew much more than he was letting on, and was a step ahead of Mando’s boarding party the entire time. It may have looked as though he’d been soundly defeated after Luke Skywalker burst onto the scene and decimated an entire battalion with the greatest of ease, but someone as cerebral as the Imperial loyalist will have plenty more cards up their sleeve.
There’ve already theories making the rounds that Gideon let Mando defeat him on purpose to ensure that Bo-Katan didn’t end up with the Darksaber, while we still don’t have any idea as to why the Empire was so keen to harvest Baby Yoda’s blood. There’s definitely much more to come from Esposito, then, and in a recent interview, he admitted when asked that he’d love to show up in some of the multiple upcoming spinoffs.
“People keep asking me, ‘Why aren’t you in Season Two more?’. I said, ‘Because we’re teasing you. I’m the heavy, and it’ll take a little time to get to what Moff really wants’. The answer is, yes, I would be interested in that if there was enough material and storyline to indulge that. But first I want to be true to this project.”
The Book of Boba Fett, Rangers of the New Republic and Ahsoka take place in the same timeline as The Mandalorian, and with all four shows expected to cross over at various points, there’s no reason why Moff Gideon couldn’t realistically be established as the end of level boss for the entire Disney Plus lineup.