WARNING: The following contains spoilers for The Mandalorian.
The Mandalorian's third episode finally explains the mystery behind Willrow Hood's ice cream maker from The Empire Strikes Back. Starring Pedro Pascal as the titular lone gunslinger named Dyn Jarren, Star Wars' first live-action series was created by Jon Favreau. This week's outing titled "The Sin" is directed by Deborah Chow and saw the Mandalorian deliver his bounty but go back to retrieve it at the last minute. It ended with him successfully getting away from the herd of bounty hunters trying to get back baby Yoda, aka the Asset.
Set five years after the events of Return of the Jedi, The Mandalorian evokes nostalgia for a lot of long-time fans of the famed space opera. While it's been primarily unconnected to franchise's legacy characters who were still main key players in the galaxy at that point, the show's latest episode resolves one obscure mystery from The Empire Strikes Back. During the evacuation of Cloud City following the the Galactic Empire's hostile takeover, fans will remember Hood trying to get away from the chaos while carrying an ice cream maker.
Not much is known about the Original Trilogy character, and given the context of the circumstances he was in, the visual of him running with the appliance-looking case became the butt of many jokes. However, decades after Hood's first and last big screen appearance, we finally know why the ice cream maker was so important to him - so much so that he couldn't simply leave it amidst the dangerous situation. As revealed in The Mandalorian's third episode, the equipment wasn't used for making the frozen dessert, but was actually an unassuming storage for prized items - in the case of the Disney+ series, Beskar. The safe is known as a "camtono", which was previously referred to by Werner Herzog's The Client in The Mandalorian's first episode (promising Jarren a "camtono of Beskar") before we actually knew what he meant.
After the Force sensitive baby Yoda was successfully delivered to The Client and Dr. Pershing (Omid Abtahi), Dyn gets his promised reward - several bricks of Beskar stored in a similar ice cream maker that Hood was carrying during Bespin's evacuation. The Client's variant of the paraphernalia, however, looked more updated compared to the one fans saw in The Empire Strikes Back as it was equipped with security mechanism. That being said, considering that we really only had a couple of seconds to see the one Hood was carrying, it's possible that it also had the same security features that its contemporary had. Prior to the appearance of the said case, Favreau actually teased its appearance in a social media post. While fans in the comments section didn't know how it fits into the story, most of them got the reference.
Now that the real purpose of Hood's ice cream maker is explained, the conversation regarding the equipment becomes what he was carrying in his odd-looking travel storage. At this point, it's anybody's guess what's inside it particularly, but as The Mandalorian established, chances are that it's something of high importance. In any case, the main takeaway from this surprising clarification from Star Wars' live-action show is that the creatives behind the project paid immense attention to detail - something that longtime fans of the franchise greatly appreciate.