Why exactly did Luke and Mara consider it so desperately important to keep the Hand of Thrawn from revealing itself to the Empire?
They agreed that Admiral Parck and General Fel weren't going to be using the Hand's resources to attack the New Republic, but seemed to just take it as a given that if the Empire was told of their existence and location that they'd seize control. Um...how? Luke and Mara are well aware that the Hand controls thirty times as much territory as the Empire, and likely a fleet to match. And the Hand of Thrawn facility itself is a nigh indestructible fortress that literally absorbs turbolaser fire. If the Empire tried to use the Hand of Thrawn's resources for purposes they didn't approve of, that's not something that would be likely to end well for the Empire.- Although that's all very true, it's still a good idea to keep two of your enemies from meeting up with each other. Why allow the potential for a villainous Enemy Mine situation, no matter how unlikely?
- Also the Remnant might have tried an Assimilation Plot, pretending to cooperate with The Hand until they could get enough people infiltrated into key positions to take the whole thing over from the inside. That's the kind of thing Thrawn would have planned for.
How did the Cavrilhu Pirates know who Luke was the moment he activated his lightsaber?
Control mentioned that they'd been expecting to have a Jedi come after them sooner or later, but being surprised that it would be Luke Skywalker himself. But it doesn't seem likely that Luke is the only human male Jedi with a green lightsaber in the entire galaxy, and given his fairly extensive disguise one would think the different hair color and skin tone would throw them off.- Luke is the most famous human male Jedi with a green lightsaber in the entire galaxy, so it's likely the pirates were simply guessing.
How did Disra and Tierce fool Captain Nalgol by switching out Thrawn's medical records with Flim's?
That would make the blood sample he took from Flim appear to be from Thrawn...except that anybody running the DNA test should've noticed even before comparing it to Thrawn's file that it was human DNA. Thrawn, of course, was not human.- Only if you know what human DNA looks like. Nalgol is not a doctor, and he was only looking for a match.
How could Pellaeon possibly not know if Thrawn died?
Pellaeon admits on a couple of occasions he can't be certain if Thrawn actually died at Bilbringi and cites his alien physiology as a reason he might have survived. But Thrawn wasn't a case of Never Found the Body, he was murdered on the bridge of the Star Destroyer Pellaeon commanded. He had Thrawn's corpse in his possession, surely he would have confirmed the man was dead and performed some sort of funeral with the remains.- Bit of a leap here, but Pellaeon, being as Genre Savvy as he is, could have figured out that Thrawn has a backup clone stashed somewhere, and so while that body was killed, the guy himself is still alive. After all, it's exactly the same gambit that Palpatine pulled a decade before.
