There were plenty of significant revelations in the most recent episode of Ahsoka, and one of the biggest among them is that Grand Admiral Thrawn has formed an alliance with a trio of Nightsisters known as the Great Mothers.
The Nightsisters were a group of witches who could wield the Force through their use of dark magick, and they originally came from Peridia. They traveled to the galaxy we’re familiar with and settled on Dathomir, where their influence was considerable. They were major players during the events of the Clone Wars and were viewed as a threat by Darth Sidious and Count Dooku. So General Grievous led the Separatist droid army to wipe out the Nightsisters, and before long there were few survivors left.
But these Great Mothers on Peridia are still around, and that makes their motivations especially interesting. Thrawn has formed an alliance with them, where they serve him and he in turn promises to give them what they seek. More specifically, what they seek is for the contents of the catacombs to be loaded into Thrawn’s Star Destroyer to be taken to the other galaxy, and we see Thrawn’s troops loading what looks to be casket-like objects.
So what are the Great Mothers really after?
The obvious answer is that we don’t really know for sure, but I do have a guess (that I’m far from the only one to posit). The Nightsisters could use their magick for many things, but the most dramatic of all was how they could revive dead Nightsisters and re-animate their corpses, creating zombies. This was utilized to form an army to try to fight off Grievous’s attacks, for example, but was also utilized by the Nightsister survivor Merrin during the reign of the Empire to fight off invaders on Dathomir. Even in this show, when Marrok was killed he burst into green smoke, which seemed to hint that he might have been kept alive by Nightsister magick too. A further bit of evidence is that Thrawn’s troopers are, according to the subtitles, listed as “Night Troopers”.
Whether all of this connects to the Nightsisters or not isn’t clear, but the fact that they’re loading objects that look like caskets, from the catacombs, by orders of witches with the ability to create zombies and sort of raise the dead, is very interesting. And I’m not sure that’s a coincidence.
Think about the themes of this series, and this idea actually begins to fit. This show is a lot about new beginnings. Even in the trailers we heard Huyang saying, “perhaps it is time to begin again.” It’s a show dealing with new beginnings of the Jedi, an Order that had fallen long ago. It’s a show dealing with new beginnings of the Empire, a fallen regime that Thrawn will threaten to bring back. It’s set in the same timeline as The Mandalorian season three, which is a show dealing with new beginnings of the Mandalorian people. So it would seem quite natural to have the Nightsisters introduced here seeking new beginnings of their once proud people.
For them, the potential to bring their people back to life in the other galaxy is surely enticing. But for Thrawn, having allies who can wield this powerful magick is especially alluring – enough so for him to form a partnership with them. Just how long that partnership lasts is anyone’s guess, but I do think that the Nightsisters’ purposes are very interesting and could play out in some creepy, and significant, ways.
Star Wars Thoughts 