Thrawn preparing for an extra-galactic threat is perfectly fine. Just don't shill the Emperor. I've read Outbound Flight, so I see the seeds of what you're talking about. If you have to weave an OC into a pre-existing work, I think he did well with a lot of his early Thrawn work. The original trilogy and Outbound Flight definitely set up the idea that he and the emperor would be using each other, and we see a bit of the issues outside the Republic/Empire in Flight.
I would highly question there being a single smartest person in the galaxy ever. A group of them, sure, but not a single one above the pack. I wouldn't question someone being smarter than the emperor. He's always been more about getting others to do his work for him anyway.
Yup. To be fair, he's not C'Baoth. He doesn't have the power to literally mindwipe other people and jack their bodies. You're only as good as your tools, and when one of those tools is an idiot like Niles Ferrier . . . well, you can forgive Thrawn for being outwitted by people like Karrde and his smuggler friends.
ETA: I always picture Karrde as Jonathan Frakes. Riker from Star Trek TNG. And since I've watched Lucifer between this time and the last time I read the trilogy, I'm picturing Thrawn as Tom Ellis. Though a case could be made for Benedict Cumberbatch, given he's played Dr. Strange and Sherlock.
Edited by Journeyman on Aug 5th 2019 at 9:45:52 AM
I would pick Cumberbatch for Thrawn.
I enjoy Thrawn in the Thrawn Trilogy because it’s more enjoyable to see the heroes win as a result of their virtues than to see the heroes win due to the villains being idiots. Thrawn’s very clever, and he treats his people better than Vader or than other imperial commanders in the EU, but he ultimately loses because he treats people who aren’t Imperial soldiers - Mara, Karrde and the smugglers, the Noghri - like tools. Whereas Luke, Han and Lei choose to trust them despite having very little reason to do so and as a result all three choose to join the heroes. Thrawn loses Wayland due to Mara, Bilbringi due to the smugglers, and his life due to the Noghri.
The failures that destoy Thrawn’s plans aren’t primarily strategic or tactical, they’re moral, and that’s what makes the trilogy great, to me.
Edited by Galadriel on Aug 5th 2019 at 10:02:40 AM
I’m very selective about which parts of the NJO-and-onward EU I include in my personal headcanon. A lot of NJO is too Warhammer 40K for my liking, and the series with Jacen going evil involves everyone holding a massive Idiot Ball (as well as the three authors engaging in a continuity war and character-derailing and -rerailing based on personal preferences, which never makes for good writing).
Everything involving Corellia post-Endor is quite dumb. Electing Thracken Sal-Solo is justifiable because they didn't realize how much of a prick he was. Then comes Legacy of the Force where Corellia is the catalyst for a giant war because for some reason, despite intending to sell the entire system out to another alien race and also COOPERATING WITH THE VONG, they ELECT SAL-SOLO LEADER AGAIN.
The entire Legacy of the Force series is quite dumb, to be honest. It should never have been made, or if it had been made, it should have been far better written. Writers that actually had an agreed-upon plotline, Karen Traviss not being allowed inside, stuff like that.
Eh, Corellia's not unrealistically dumb to be honest. Horrifying people have been elected to office before. In his early days in office and on the campaign trail, Trump was tight with an actual doomsday cultist who had a fair bit of influence until he went against Trump's family. We knew about that before we ever elected him and we simply hoped he wouldn't listen too closely to the guy. We got lucky. It could have been Corellia levels of bad.
Also, I'd cast René Auberjonois as Pellaeon. He's the one who played Odo in Deep Space Nine, as well as Mr. House in New Vegas.
Edited by Journeyman on Aug 7th 2019 at 2:13:51 PM
I don't really mean modern Auberjonois, I mean probably circa DS 9 or even Benson era. I agree he's too old nowadays. I don't really expect to be a casting agent or see the books I read turned into movies, so I always feel free to delve into all the works of fiction I've absorbed, no matter how long ago they were.
Perfect casting imo would have been Jeremy Irons, twenty years ago as the Thrawn Trilogy Pellaeon, nowadays as latter day NJO era Pellaeon.
Edited by CrimsonZephyr on Aug 10th 2019 at 11:24:50 AM
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."It's definitely a fine line. He's gotta be able to stay level headed enough to run a country effectively but not so forceful that he'd feel wrong being on Thrawn's leash. Of course, if we'd been casting the movies close together we wouldn't necessarily need the same guy playing both ages.
Of course, who'd be a good Mara Jade? Several people have modeled for the comics and whatnot, I think, but who could act the part?
Just finished The Last Command and moving straight into Thrawn. I'd already bought it before we'd talked about Zahn falling in quality, plus I've run into plenty of times where everyone else says something sucks and I still like it. So yeah, gonna roll with it. Gotta ask, is there anything earlier than this in canon or does Outbound Flight get treated as broad strokes canon? Thrawn starts with the exile. I haven't read beyond the imperials visiting that world and finding the crashed ship with the scarecrow in it, so I don't know how much gets explained of his exile.
ETA: Sounds like I was right. His story to Eli about his exile tracks with his part in Outbound Flight. No mention of the rest, but I'm sure there's a comic or something that details his meeting with Anakin. I'm almost a hundred pages into Thrawn and so far the couple times he's done any reading of art, it's actually been the practical detective work we could buy as realistic. An expensive painting tipping off that someone's been getting gifts from someone else with serious money. Stuff like that. None of the near-magical "I can read an entire species' psyche through their artwork" stuff. And he's not even perfect in this. He was getting his ass kicked when he was fighting three guys off alone. It takes Eli's help to give him a chance to beat one down.
Other than that it really feels like Zahn maintained as much of the original character as he could. The exile matches Outbound, and his capture matches up with the short story I read years ago about the same event in the Legends canon. Maybe small differences here and there to account for Eli, but nothing that changes Thrawn himself.
Edited by Journeyman on Aug 11th 2019 at 12:58:25 PM
Honestly? I kind of like the shilling. Or what people see as shilling. In the original story, there is no real hint of why he's doing any of this. He shares bits and pieces of his smaller plan but never a hint as to what the bigger reason for pulling the Empire back together is. He's kind of a dark mirror for Mara. A man holding onto the past to reshape it in his own image, the way she's hammered by the past and has to let it go. It's all very New Vegas-like, even. But it made it feel like he was doing this thing just to do it, and a character like him doesn't work if there's no greater context for his actions.
Of course, I kind of look back on the original trilogy as Early Installment Weirdness. I'm not sure modern Thrawn would look down on the Noghri the way the old one did. I mean, you could argue that decades of Imperial splendor changed his viewpoint and made him that arrogant, but from what I'm seeing in the first 125 pages of Thrawn, he's in the same place he put the Noghri. Being abused for what he is and used for what he can do.
I can understand why Zahn did that in the first books. He gave the character a near-magical ability to read people by off the wall things, and had to balance it out with a serious blind spot and a lack of morality that left him wide open to the right kind of attack, but from what I've seen so far his abilities are more logical and rooted in biology. He has stronger senses that give him information no one else has, and his mental work is more detective than lucky guesser. Of course, I'm only beginning his Disneyverse career. I'm sure there are or will be other books that cover his post-Return career where he is a Grand Admiral and replaces the Emperor. I might see him in a different light once I find those.
Aha, yeah, I could see that as shilling. In the Disneyverse he actually seems to get a downgrade for a time, and I think it makes him a better character. So you might give it a go and see for yourself. I'll continue talking about it over time as I read, for anyone who's interested.
Edited by Journeyman on Aug 12th 2019 at 7:35:25 AM
Thrawn's not in Allegiance. Not a single mention. Which is unusual for Zahn, unprecedented, even. He makes up for it with a whole chunk of the plot in Choices of One, though. (He's also not in Scoundrels, for what it's worth, though it'd be very, very weird if he was, given the Caper plot.) Edit: I missed the "and other Imperial characters" bit, there are plenty of heroic Imperials in Allegiance, of course.
It is hard to reconcile the Thrawn of The Thrawn Trilogy with the Thrawn of Outbound Flight. The latter cares so much about the evils of slavery that he breaks the central tenet of Chiss martial law, "never attack first," to rescue the weaker races of the region from the Vagaari. The former, as mentioned, continues the Empire's manipulative subjugation of the Noghri for his own purposes, and gets himself killed for it. The only explanation is that the Empire is just that corrupting to those in the heart of its power, even a genius like Thrawn.
Edited by HeraldAlberich on Aug 12th 2019 at 12:49:23 PM
Agreed. So I'd say somewhere along the way he stopped being the same person, and I for one love the new one and could do with tweaking the old one. That being said, the Disneyverse wrote itself into a corner of sorts. By having this new Thrawn know about extra-galactic threats and caring to stop them, it kind of puts the onus on the writers to eventually pay out on that front. There has to be something on the level of the Vong to make any of this worthwhile. Otherwise Thrawn comes across as an alarmist idiot like those doomsday sayers in real life who cry the end of the world every time something happens.
ETA: And then I run into the actual art thing and it's no longer regular detective work. His explanation about how artists are individuals who are steeped in philosophy makes surface sense, but every person takes on their own philosophy in their own way, regardless of the overall culture. You can't analyze an entire race through its art, even if you take most to all of its art into account. Honestly, if I see too much of this stuff in the stories, I might hunt up whatever chat/forum Zahn uses and challenge him on the point to do what Thrawn does. Doubt he'd take me up on it, but it might be an amusing chat like the one Jim Butcher had that challenged him to write the Codex Alera books.
Edited by Journeyman on Aug 12th 2019 at 1:36:43 PM

That he wasn't preparing for anything. That was purely a Thrawn thing. Zahn's Disney EU novel IIRC has Thrawn bringing up a potential threat and Vader and Palpatine basically shrugging it off.
Edited by doineedaname on Aug 2nd 2019 at 5:37:46 AM