The Way to True Power
In "Heroes of Mandalore" (Rebels 4.1-2), the villainous Tiber Saxon betrays the Mandalorian way by allying himself with the Empire and attacking his fellow Mandalorians using a weapon called the Duchess, which targets their traditional Beskar armor. When one of his men objects to the use of the weapon – "How will we prevent the Empire from using it against all Mandalorians?" – Saxon retorts, "I am the Empire! Palpatine has shown me the way to true power." The fact that the Duchess shoots blue lightning, recalling Palpatine's Force lightning, visually reinforces Saxon's claim. He has indeed become like Palpatine, using fear to rule his enemies. "Fear will compel [the Mandalorians] to join the Empire," he tells Grand Admiral Thrawn, parroting the Empire's governing philosophy as expressed by Grand Moff Tarkin in A New Hope: "Fear will keep the local systems in line."
However, the "true power" Palpatine offers is self-defeating, likely to rebound onto the one who tries to wield it. In Revenge of the Sith, Palpatine is deformed when Mace Windu deflects his own lightning back at him, and in The Rise of Skywalker, he is destroyed when Rey deflects it. In much the same way, Sabine Wren defeats Tiber Saxon by reconfiguring the Duchess so that its blue lightning targets Imperial armor while leaving Mandalorian armor unharmed. Saxon claims he will use fear to compel the Mandalorians to fall in line, but he is ultimately the one left cowering in fear of the very power he tried to harness. Though Sabine is tempted to fall into the same pattern by using the Duchess against her enemies, Bo-Katan Kryze urges her to destroy it, telling her that the way of the Empire is one of "cowardice" and "fear." By renouncing the kind of power Palpatine purports to offer, Sabine chooses the Mandalorian way of "honor" and "hope" instead.
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Characters: Sabine Wren / Tiber Saxon
Shows: Rebels
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Concepts: fear / Mandalorians / power and weakness
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