Star Wars: Rebels

[Rogue 9]

Anyway, so they didn't cheap out on escaping, exactly; rather Thrawn decided to be sporting about it. Again. So far all of his direct military orders have involved deliberately letting the Phoenix cell escape. He'd better have one hell of a long game in mind if this is going to pay off.

[The Romulan Republic]

Its Thrawn. Of course he has a long game in mind.

[hunter5]

Anyway, so they didn't cheap out on escaping, exactly; rather Thrawn decided to be sporting about it. Again. So far all of his direct military orders have involved deliberately letting the Phoenix cell escape. He'd better have one hell of a long game in mind if this is going to pay off.

My guess he is getting a feel for his opponents with these minor victories so he can create a special plan specific for the Ghost team

[Lord Revan]

The thing about Thrawn in the legendaries was that while ruthless he wasn't petty or vindictive like most imperial commanders, also and most of all Thrawn was patient and willing to accept a minor defeats especially if it meant gaining intelligence that allowed him to defeat the opponent later. People tend to focus on the art thing forgetting it's just a minor part of what made Thrawn special both in and out universe.

As far as I can tell that trait is still present in the rebels depiction.

essentially what made Thrawn a dangerous opponent was that he was willing to assume that the enemy was intelligent and thus Thrawn himself couldn't be complesant or arrogant.

[Batman]

Thrawn would go with what got the job done as efficiently as possible. If that meant killing a million insurgents, he'd do that. If giving those million insurgents proper medical care, food, and housing turned out to be the most efficient way to deal with them, he'd do that. Thrawn had no qualms about killing innocents, but he didn't go out of his way to do it either. He accepted it as a sometime 'necessity' but if and when he had a way to avoid it, he did.

[Rogue 9]

Anyway, so they didn't cheap out on escaping, exactly; rather Thrawn decided to be sporting about it. Again. So far all of his direct military orders have involved deliberately letting the Phoenix cell escape. He'd better have one hell of a long game in mind if this is going to pay off.

My guess he is getting a feel for his opponents with these minor victories so he can create a special plan specific for the Ghost team

If he's just after the Ghost team, he had a heck of a plan right there: He was sitting there in a cruiser, so he could use turbolasers on them. He chose not to. I'm just saying he'd better have a hell of a good reason for repeatedly going out of his way not to kill the rebels he's supposed to be killing.

[Lord Revan]

The crew of the ghost is but a tiny fraction of the rebel forces. I suspect that one the reasons Thrawn let them go was that he's after the leaders of the rebellion not their field agents, so shooting down the Ghost was not necessery so there wasn't really a point in doing that.

[RogueIce]

Anyway, so they didn't cheap out on escaping, exactly; rather Thrawn decided to be sporting about it. Again. So far all of his direct military orders have involved deliberately letting the Phoenix cell escape. He'd better have one hell of a long game in mind if this is going to pay off.

My guess he is getting a feel for his opponents with these minor victories so he can create a special plan specific for the Ghost team

If he's just after the Ghost team, he had a heck of a plan right there: He was sitting there in a cruiser, so he could use turbolasers on them. He chose not to. I'm just saying he'd better have a hell of a good reason for repeatedly going out of his way not to kill the rebels he's supposed to be killing.

Just because the Ghost crew are the only Rebels we the audience (generally) care about, doesn't mean they're the only Rebels Thrawn is interested in wiping out.

For one thing, obviously, there's the rest of Phoenix Squadron. But beyond that, we know Dodonna's cell is out and active, and clearly there are links (the Y-wings ear-marked for them; Wedge and Hobbie get out there at some point) between the two. So if Thrawn is aware of/suspects more Rebel cells than Phoenix Squadron and that they're working together, he could well be waiting to see if these encounters will lead him to them.

Sure it'll (probably) be focused on the Ghost crew when the time comes because that's who the show is about, but maybe the creators will surprise us and have Thrawn be playing the long game and for higher stakes than a single light freighter with six Rebels and an astromech droid.

And Lord Revan totally beat me to the punch on this one.

[FaxModem1]

There's a few ways they are going about with Thrawn here.

1. He has a masterplan, and he is just biding his time.
2. He is all talk, and really isn't as brilliant as all the hype is making him out to be.
3. Thrawn is secretly sabotaging Imperial efforts while making it look like he has a brilliant plan for his own reasons.

I really hope it's 1 or 3, 2 would feel like a waste of the character.

[The Romulan Republic]

3. would be a rather major divergence from old EU Thrawn, who was definitely loyal to the Empire and Palpatine.

[Galvatron]

Thrawn may see little to gain in capturing a handful of rebel agents, but a lot to gain by letting them go so he can use what he's learned about them to anticipate a better opportunity to deal the entire rebellion a crippling blow.

[AMX]

Crazy thought - what if the minimalism the series has been suffering is deliberate? A symptom of how utterly insignificant this one cell is on the galactic scale?
They are troublesome to the local, barely-more-than-a-token security force, but they don't actually warrant Thrawn's attention... except as a link to the wider Rebellion.

[Rogue 9]

For one thing, obviously, there's the rest of Phoenix Squadron. But beyond that, we know Dodonna's cell is out and active, and clearly there are links (the Y-wings ear-marked for them; Wedge and Hobbie get out there at some point) between the two. So if Thrawn is aware of/suspects more Rebel cells than Phoenix Squadron and that they're working together, he could well be waiting to see if these encounters will lead him to them.

But those are things Thrawn doesn't know and has no way of knowing; the only way allowing the Phoenix fleet to escape in the first place made sense (as opposed to subjecting their carrier to a Star Destroyer's alpha strike and crippling their strike capability) is if Thrawn is either making an eerily accurate blind presumption or is assuming that they only sent a portion of their available force to rescue the Y-wings. Not even Commander Sato knew that they would be giving up the bombers until after he had them; when he dispatched the recon mission he stated they would be key to building a strike fleet for them to use to bomb Imperial manufacturing on Lothal.

[Lord Revan]

For one thing, obviously, there's the rest of Phoenix Squadron. But beyond that, we know Dodonna's cell is out and active, and clearly there are links (the Y-wings ear-marked for them; Wedge and Hobbie get out there at some point) between the two. So if Thrawn is aware of/suspects more Rebel cells than Phoenix Squadron and that they're working together, he could well be waiting to see if these encounters will lead him to them.

But those are things Thrawn doesn't know and has no way of knowing; the only way allowing the Phoenix fleet to escape in the first place made sense (as opposed to subjecting their carrier to a Star Destroyer's alpha strike and crippling their strike capability) is if Thrawn is either making an eerily accurate blind presumption or is assuming that they only sent a portion of their available force to rescue the Y-wings. Not even Commander Sato knew that they would be giving up the bombers until after he had them; when he dispatched the recon mission he stated they would be key to building a strike fleet for them to use to bomb Imperial manufacturing on Lothal.

As odd as it seems it makes perfect sense for Thrawn to be more aware of the overall of rebel strategy then the local cell leaders are. After all Thrawn has access to the imperial intelligence of all the rebel cells and can thus look for patterns that will reveal the overall strategy, while the local cells leaders are most likely kept in a "need to know" basis about the actions of other cells or the overall strategy (you can't reveal info you don't have after all).

So Sato would know only parts of the strategy that are relevant to the Phoenix Squad cell, while Thrawn can pick up peices of info that individually seem unimportant or local but when looked at together reveal a pattern.

That's how real life military intelligence works, you look at the peices of info as a whole and try to find a pattern that will reveal the enemy strategy, capture of detailed enemy plans is rare and more often then not when you do get compelete and detailed plans to quote Admiral Ackbar "it's a trap!"

[The Romulan Republic]

Crazy thought - what if the minimalism the series has been suffering is deliberate? A symptom of how utterly insignificant this one cell is on the galactic scale?
They are troublesome to the local, barely-more-than-a-token security force, but they don't actually warrant Thrawn's attention... except as a link to the wider Rebellion.

Yes and no.

The Ghost crew was only one of a number of cells, that has been made quite clear. I expect their are cells beyond Sato's force as well.

However, they do have ties to some fairly major players who have appeared on the show, such as Senator Organa.

[bilateralrope]

Anyway, so they didn't cheap out on escaping, exactly; rather Thrawn decided to be sporting about it. Again. So far all of his direct military orders have involved deliberately letting the Phoenix cell escape. He'd better have one hell of a long game in mind if this is going to pay off.

My guess he is getting a feel for his opponents with these minor victories so he can create a special plan specific for the Ghost team

If he's just after the Ghost team, he had a heck of a plan right there: He was sitting there in a cruiser, so he could use turbolasers on them. He chose not to. I'm just saying he'd better have a hell of a good reason for repeatedly going out of his way not to kill the rebels he's supposed to be killing.

Let them live and he can manipulate them.

Kill them and they would probably get replaced by someone he doesn't know.

[The Romulan Republic]

But that manipulation has to have some ultimate end game in mind.

That's the big question here, it seems: what is his ultimate purpose in not just finishing them off?

[Lord Revan]

Even in the new EU grand admiral seems to be a high rank within the imperial military heirarchy suggesting that Thrawn has Access to all the information the Empire has on the rebels. He might even known Bail Organa is one of the rebel (political) leaders. We got remember that Alderaan was a highly influencial member of the Republic and seems to be one for the Empire as well, so arresting him without a really good evidence would only fuel the rebellion.

Another thing to consider is that by letting the Ghost leave unchallenged Thrawn would created misstrust among the rebels. Effectively breaking the rebellion from the inside, leaving only small local cells that are easy to deal with even for the idiots in charge of the Lothal sector fleets.

[Galvatron]

But that manipulation has to have some ultimate end game in mind.

That's the big question here, it seems: what is his ultimate purpose in not just finishing them off?

Intel?

He let them escape to fight another day so he can defeat them when it really matters. It's probably easier for him to predict the strategies of an enemy he's acquainted with versus complete strangers.

[Adam Reynolds]

I really wonder how they are going to have Thrawn be defeated in this series?

What was clever about his defeat in the novels is that he was defeated by something that he could not possibly have realized he didn't know, that the assassins he sent after Leia would be able to determine that she was Vader's daughter, and that they could do this by her scent. I wonder what the equivalent could be?

[Rogue 9]

Even in the new EU grand admiral seems to be a high rank within the imperial military heirarchy suggesting that Thrawn has Access to all the information the Empire has on the rebels. He might even known Bail Organa is one of the rebel (political) leaders. We got remember that Alderaan was a highly influencial member of the Republic and seems to be one for the Empire as well, so arresting him without a really good evidence would only fuel the rebellion.

Another thing to consider is that by letting the Ghost leave unchallenged Thrawn would created misstrust among the rebels. Effectively breaking the rebellion from the inside, leaving only small local cells that are easy to deal with even for the idiots in charge of the Lothal sector fleets.

By not explaining that he's creating mistrust of himself among his subordinates. Justifying his actions with "Nah, they earned it" is not going to inspire confidence in his commitment to the mission.

[eMeM]

I really wonder how they are going to have Thrawn be defeated in this series?

What was clever about his defeat in the novels is that he was defeated by something that he could not possibly have realized he didn't know, that the assassins he sent after Leia would be able to determine that she was Vader's daughter, and that they could do this by her scent. I wonder what the equivalent could be?

That sounds like it could be prevented if someone did more research regarding Norghi, their customs and culture!
And they were conspiring against him for quite some time.

Also, if I remember correctly, Thrawn was already losing his final battle when he was stabbed, and the Force user he relied on got killed, so he wasn't invincible and wasn't able to forsee everything.

[LadyTevar]

I really wonder how they are going to have Thrawn be defeated in this series?

What was clever about his defeat in the novels is that he was defeated by something that he could not possibly have realized he didn't know, that the assassins he sent after Leia would be able to determine that she was Vader's daughter, and that they could do this by her scent. I wonder what the equivalent could be?

That sounds like it could be prevented if someone did more research regarding Norghi, their customs and culture!
And they were conspiring against him for quite some time.

Also, if I remember correctly, Thrawn was already losing his final battle when he was stabbed, and the Force user he relied on got killed, so he wasn't invincible and wasn't able to forsee everything.

But did he know that Leia was Vader's Daughter? I don't think that was something that was spread about, even among the New Republic. It certainly was not something known at the time of Endor.

[AMX]

Crazy thought - what if the minimalism the series has been suffering is deliberate? A symptom of how utterly insignificant this one cell is on the galactic scale?
They are troublesome to the local, barely-more-than-a-token security force, but they don't actually warrant Thrawn's attention... except as a link to the wider Rebellion.

Yes and no.

The Ghost crew was only one of a number of cells, that has been made quite clear. I expect their are cells beyond Sato's force as well.

However, they do have ties to some fairly major players who have appeared on the show, such as Senator Organa.

Where's the "No"?
I see a "Yes"" to "they are just one small cell that can't do much to affect the big picture" and a "yes" to "but they have connections that Thrawn would love to follow up on."

[The Romulan Republic]

I would say that they're not the centre or entirety of the Rebellion, but more than "just one small cell that can't do much to affect the big picture". Rather, they seem to be sort of on the periphery of the core of the Rebellion. Important and influential, but not absolutely crucial.