How The Empire Was Falling Apart Before The Battle Of Endor

Star Wars

Jan 2

Here at CultureSlate, we’ve explored the fall of the Empire through a number of different avenues though primarily through the lore and events presented by The Mandalorian on Disney+.

However, the recently released Rise and Fall of the Galactic Empire and most surprisingly, the first Story Pack for Star Wars Outlaws, has helped reveal a compelling argument demonstrating that the Empire was already falling apart before the decisive Battle of Endor. Today, we’ll explore these points and make a few of our own in the process!

Warning: This article contains spoilers for Star Wars Outlaws and the Wild Card Story Pack.

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Hoth and its Aftermath

The Battle of Hoth has often been seen by fans of the franchise as a victory for the Empire, and little wonder. The Empire Strikes Back saw the Empire scattering the Rebel forces before them in the opening half an hour of the film. Other material has made it clear that this was also a Rebel loss in that they had only gotten Echo Base fully operational a handful of months earlier. Compared to Yavin 4, Echo Base was an investment of time and resources that barely paid off.

However, there is a very convincing argument to be made for Hoth being a defeat for the Empire. While it was a tactical victory, in that the location was (mostly) cleared of Rebels and they lost some resources, once again the key Rebel leadership and its heroes escaped relatively unscathed. While Han Solo was soon put into carbonite, Luke, Leia, and Chewbacca all lived to fight another day alongside many others. Elsewhere, even with the Empire having broken Rebel communication encryption, the effort to hunt down the scattered sections of the Rebel Fleet came up short. Commander Zahra was bested and left for dead by Leia, while Imperial units suffered stunning losses at the hands of only minimal Rebel forces.

To top it off, the Rebels soon acquired new encryption codes derived from a nearly-dead language, defeating the Imperial’s advantage in an incredibly short period. Hoth did not see the Rebel Alliance crushed as had been the goal. Top Imperials even acknowledge this point, with Director Barsha of the Imperial Security Bureau insulting Vader’s handling of Hoth and the escape of most of the Rebel forces when he is brought to task for not capturing any Rebels himself.

Rise and Fall of the Galactic Empire picks up on this thread, and from an in-universe standpoint, explores the waning morale of the Empire at this time. They had been fighting the Rebel Alliance for around half a decade by this point. At Atollon, the Empire almost won only for strange events to devastate their ground forces and allow a scattered unit of Rebels to escape. At Yavin 4, the Empire’s greatest weapon was destroyed, with the Rebel Alliance quickly departing their base, leaving behind remains the Empire spent months picking over, desperate for any leads. At Mako-Ta, most of the newly forged Alliance Fleet was destroyed, only for many of the smaller ships and all of the leadership to AGAIN escape.

This pattern dragged on Imperial morale, as if the Empire was so invincible, inevitable, inescapable…how come the Rebels kept doing significant damage, fighting on, and escaping? But there was another big reason why morale was dragging at this time, and it was thanks to the manipulations of a criminal element: Crimson Dawn.

The Crimson Scare and The Schism Imperial

The return of Crimson Dawn caused a great deal of instability to the underworld, and due to the Empire's deeply forged connections in this space, they were affected as well. Initially, Crimson Dawn’s return heralded an opening of hostilities between many of the most notable syndicates as the Dawn fed them the lie that Palpatine was looking for a new chief partner in the underworld after becoming disillusioned with the Hutts.

This lie led to several months of conflict before Sidious sat the leaders down, and learned the truth of who had spread these rumors. With Lady Qi’ra aware that the Empire and major criminals knew she was to blame, she began the next stage of her plan.

Agents at all levels of the Empire, the Rebel Alliance, and criminal factions were activated and ordered to do as much damage to the Empire as possible. Even before this though, Darth Vader had been working to root out Crimson Dawn’s influence within the Empire, though the task proved phyric as some of the names on the list of Dawn agents Vader had acquired were fake. This period of crusade resulted in the deaths of multiple loyal Imperial officials and officers at random.

When the Dawn went to full-blown war with the Empire, the growing culture of paranoia and fear about survival from sudden, vicious retribution no doubt increased. Accusations of treason were thrown against random Imperials and mysterious disappearances could be blamed on all sorts of different factors, leading even common stormtroopers to fear for their lives.

Nothing shows this chaos more than the rise of the Schism Imperial, though it was possibly controlled by Darth Sidious from the start. A faction within the Empire made up of those sick of the chaos and instability brought about in recent months and years, they attempted to recruit Vader as a replacement for his master, though instead Vader co-opted their resources to lead a personal crusade against the forces stationed on Exegol.

The Schism was soon broken, but when its leading members were brought before Sidious, Sly Moore broke from the other leaders and revealed her role in helping instigate the secret uprising. It is little wonder that in such personal, paranoid, petty, and feuding times, the Rebel Alliance was able to flourish, and figures like the focus of our final section, also continued to operate without oversight.

Thorden

When playing Star Wars Outlaws, Governor Thorden is mentioned frequently while on Toshara, the game’s starting zone. He is the region’s Imperial governor, and he is also allied with Toshara’s main criminal element, the Pykes. He made a deal to let them operate with minimum interference so long as he gets a cut of their profits, and many officers and troopers have grown corrupt alongside him. However, when Kay arrives, Thorden and his forces are becoming restless.

He is demanding a larger cut of the profits, and his troops are looking to shake down merchants and operators within the capital of Mirogana, regardless of their protection by the Pykes or not. The Pykes are not budging, and the arrival of Crimson Dawn has not helped matters. Neither does the arrival of Kay Vess, who performs various jobs for the different factions. But, the big job against Thorden specifically ends with the rescue of the man’s bookkeeper, Bosnok, who has been kept aboard the Imperial station orbiting the planet. He willingly goes with Kay, despite being a surprising wrinkle in her original plans to change key financial records, because he despises Thorden for keeping him locked up.

In the recent Wildcard Story Pack, the Governor finally appears in the flesh. He threatens Kay, and sets a plan into motion to use her to acquire the location of a lost moon said to contain a vast amount of a rare material. However, Thorden betrays Kay, and Bosnok reveals soon after that Thorden is looking to manufacture a lethal, illegal, gas using his own resources and those found on the moon.

Thorden’s resources are also substantial, with a vast private bunker staffed by droids, a large index of information, a separate power source, and a huge quantity of different materials to ensure that if the trade lanes go down, Thorden’s rule over Toshara will endure. The game implies that all of this was down to Bosnok. The bookkeeper and number-runner reveals that Thorden asked him to calculate if the Rebel Alliance would defeat the Empire, and the Gallusian replied that defeat was inevitable.

Paired with Thorden’s frustrated efforts at advancement within the Empire and being trapped in a fairly out-of-the-way posting, we can see this man was already preparing to become an Imperial Remnant before Endor was going to happen.

We can also guess that Thorden’s recent encroachment on Pyke territory and his desire to change their deal are meant to suggest he believes the end is drawing near. While the exact date of Outlaws is unclear, it is likely more than halfway through the time between Hoth and Endor. He is growing nervous, and intends to squeeze every bit of leverage he can from the criminals before everything goes to pieces.

Conclusion

As explored in this article, waning morale and criminal-based chaos significantly weakened the Galactic Empire in the lead-up to the Battle of Endor.

Figures like Governor Thorden, a self-serving man with greater ambitions and a quiet position away from prying eyes, are emblematic of the sort of people who probably rose to positions of power after the fall of the Empire.

Even before Endor, people like Thorden were already acting in their own interests, focusing power on themselves and helping to pave the way for the divided response following the destruction of the second Death Star.

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