DEBUNKED: No, 'Star Wars' is NOT Adapting 'Heir To The Empire' Into A Movie
In a season full of spectacular reveals and debuts of characters, a simple name drop may have been the most impactful of all. With her white saber blade held to the Magistrates throat, Ahsoka Tano demanded to know the location of her master. "Where is Grand Admiral Thrawn?" While many suspected Ahsoka's mission would be the tracking of Thrawn, hearing his name so meaningfully dropped in an episode of The Mandalorian was extremely unexpected and caused a cheer from Rebels and Expanded Universe fans alike. In the animated show Star Wars Rebels, Thrawn proved to be a cunning and ruthless villain, while also being extremely competent for an Imperial. This all made for an incredibly intimidating antagonist for the Ghost crew.
Fans of the Expanded Universe novels were not surprised by this portrayal of the character. Heir to the Empire, penned by Timothy Zahn and released in 1991, was the introduction of Thrawn. As the Chiss mastermind gathered the remains of the Imperial Navy to himself in the wake of the Battle of Endor. While these books are now classified as Legends, they still hold a special place in the hearts of many. Alongside Spinter of the Mind's Eye and the Rogue Squadron series, Heir to the Empire is another piece of excellent Star Wars storytelling. While this may seem like a great choice for the first Disney+ original movie, especially given the success that the streaming site has had with post-Return of the Jedi storytelling, Star Wars won't be debuting an Heir to the Empire movie anytime soon due to the simple absence of one key character, whose existence has been made all but impossible by current canon.
Another example of Force-sensitive clones arrives in Heir to the Empire with the Joruus C'baoth, the brainwashed clone of Jedi Master Jorus C'boath, joining forces with Thrawn. Star Wars has always been highly ambiguous on the subject of cloning midi-chlorians, with multiple writers seemingly unable to agree on a coherent canonical stance on the matter. For example, in Dark Horse's Dark Empire comics, Palpatine's spirit drifts across the universe after the Battle of Endor. He is able to possess a clone of himself he kept in reserve on the planet Byss. However, this clone begins to deteriorate rapidly under the intense possession by Palpatines evil spirit, and so an army of Palp clones is made and kept at the ready for constant possession, destruction, and repossession. Other writers' takes on Palpatine's survival show him being directed by other Sith spirits to plant his psyche in the infant son of Han and Leia, Anakin Solo.
Timothy Zahn's vision of Force-sensitive clones is of a secret Imperial program creating clones of Jedi as ultimate weapons. In C'Boath's case, his use to the Empire was to guard a secret Imperial installation on the planet Wayland. This base, apart from being an Imperial weapons cache, also contains much of the cloning technology used to create the clone of C'Boath, something the Imperial Remnant in The Mandalorian appears unable to do yet. Obviously, the reincarnation of Palpatine shows that it will be done eventually, but judging by the deformed humanoid figures seen in Chapter 12 of The Mandalorian, the Empire is still working out how. There are 26 years from when Dr. Pershing is captured by Din Djarin to when Kylo Ren arrives on Exegol for the Empire to develop this technology and learn "secrets only the Sith knew." It seems highly unlikely that within that time frame Thrawn will develop the technology, grow a clone to maturity, and deploy it against the New Republic, only to have this series of events and the existence of midi-chlorian cloning technology forgotten by the Resistance in the time of the sequel trilogy.
Joruus C'Boath is a critical character in Heir to the Empire by being a critical character to Thrawn's military strategy. Without the technology to clone Jedi, the eventual climactic crossroads of The Book of Boba Fett, Rangers of the New Republic, Ahsoka, and The Mandalorian will have to occur without the clone Master Joruus C'Boath. While that cinematic event and showdown with Thrawn may carry over many elements of Timothy Zahn's work, without this central character, it would be woefully inaccurate to call it an adaptation of Heir to the Empire.