"This is the Way" is the creed of the Mandalorians in The Mandalorian: the reply that seals any statement of their code, used above all by a strict sect called the Children of the Watch. Din Djarin is one of them, and his "clan of two" is the clan he forms with the foundling Grogu. Clone troopers and stormtroopers are the other half of the story. The clones were grown on Kamino from Jango Fett, a bounty hunter in Mandalorian armour, fought the Clone Wars for the Republic and turned on the Jedi. Stormtroopers are the Empire's soldiers who replaced them, recruited rather than grown in today's canon.
This covers the films, The Clone Wars, The Bad Batch, The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett, all part of today's canon, and says where Star Wars Legends, the older novels and comics now kept outside canon, differs. The helmets, the armour and the clones are all on the Star Wars shelf.
The Mandalorian creed and "This is the Way"
Mandalorians are a warrior culture from the planet Mandalore, known for armour of beskar, an iron that can turn a lightsaber blade. The culture split long ago. In The Clone Wars a pacifist government rules Mandalore while Death Watch, a band of warriors, fights to bring the old ways back.
The Children of the Watch are the strictest branch. They follow the Way of the Mandalore as a faith: never take off your helmet in front of another living being, take in and raise foundlings, and treat armour and weapons as part of who you are. "This is the Way" is how they answer one another. Bo-Katan Kryze, heir to Mandalore's old ruling house, calls them zealots who broke away to restore an ancient way.
The Empire broke Mandalore in the Great Purge, bombing it until its sand turned to glass, and the survivors scattered; Din's tribe hides underground on Nevarro. In The Book of Boba Fett, after Din admits he has taken his helmet off, more than once for Grogu's sake, the Armorer, the tribe's smith and leader, rules that he is a Mandalorian no more. He earns his way back by bathing in the Living Waters beneath Mandalore.
Legends had a different code, the Resol'nare: six actions, namely wear the armour, speak the language, defend yourself and your family, raise your children as Mandalorians, help your clan, and answer the call of the leader, the Mand'alor.
Clan of Two: Din Djarin and Grogu
Din is a foundling himself. As a child he was saved by Mandalorians when battle droids attacked his home during the Clone Wars, and he was raised in the creed. In the first season he takes a job to bring in a small green child for an Imperial remnant, hands him over, then goes back for him and breaks the deal.
In the first-season finale the Armorer gives Din a charge: until the child comes of age or is reunited with his own kind, Din is as his father. She names them a clan of two and gives them a signet of the mudhorn, the beast they brought down together. Clan of Two puts Din on the back.
The child's name, Grogu, comes in the second season from Ahsoka Tano: he is of Yoda's species, raised at the Jedi Temple and hidden when it fell. Luke Skywalker takes him away to train, but in The Book of Boba Fett Grogu chooses Din's beskar over a Jedi's path. In the third season Din adopts him as his son and apprentice, and he becomes Din Grogu. Banner Charge has the two of them together.
On the shelf
Boba Fett, Jango and the template
In Attack of the Clones, Jango Fett is the template for the whole clone army. His price includes one unaltered clone to raise as his son: Boba. After Jango dies on Geonosis, Boba grows up a bounty hunter and in time wears armour that, in today's canon, had been his father's.
In The Empire Strikes Back he takes Han Solo, frozen in carbonite, to Jabba the Hutt. In Return of the Jedi he falls into the Sarlacc pit. Today's canon has him climb out, take the armour back from Din in The Mandalorian, and say his father was a foundling who fought in Mandalore's civil wars. Legends got him out of the pit too, in stories of its own.
Bounty Hunter, Bounty and Close Quarters are his three covers.
On the shelf
Clone troopers, Order 66, Cody and Rex
The clones are grown on the ocean world Kamino, ageing at twice the normal rate, with obedience bred in. The army was ordered in secret by the Jedi Master Sifo-Dyas, without the Jedi Council's knowledge; the Sith took the project over. The clones fight the war under Jedi generals, in white armour marked with their units' colours.
Each clone also carries an inhibitor chip in his brain, a canon detail revealed in The Clone Wars. When Sidious gives Order 66, the chips make them turn on their generals. Legends has no chips: there, the clones simply follow the order they were trained to obey.
Commander Cody, CC-2224, leads the 212th Attack Battalion under Obi-Wan Kenobi. On Utapau in Revenge of the Sith he hands Obi-Wan his dropped lightsaber, receives the order moments later and has a walker fire on him; Obi-Wan falls into the water below and escapes. Captain Rex, CT-7567, leads the 501st under Anakin. When the order comes he fights his chip long enough to tell Ahsoka to find Fives, the clone who had uncovered the chips, and she uses what Fives found to take Rex's chip out.
The Bad Batch and Hunter
Clone Force 99, the Bad Batch, are experimental clones whose mutations make each one exceptional, named after 99, a clone born with defects. They are known as defective clones, and they call the standard ones regs. Hunter leads them, with senses so sharp he can pick up electromagnetic signals. Wrecker has the strength, Tech the brains and Crosshair the aim, and the rescued clone Echo joins them.
In The Bad Batch, Order 66 barely touches them, because their mutations blunt the chips. The exception is Crosshair, whose chip is strengthened on Imperial orders. Hunter leads the rest on the run with Omega, a young girl clone, while the Empire hunts them.
On the shelf
Clone troopers vs stormtroopers
The short answer: clone troopers are the Republic's grown soldiers, and stormtroopers are the Empire's. When the Republic becomes the Empire the army simply changes flag, the white armour carries on in a new pattern, and the clones are phased out.
In today's canon that change is the plot of The Bad Batch. The Empire replaces its ageing, costly clones with recruits and conscripts, and Kamino's cloning city is destroyed. By the original films, stormtroopers are ordinary humans in armour. Legends kept clones in the ranks far longer, mixed with recruits. The sequel trilogy's First Order goes further and takes children to raise as stormtroopers; Finn was one of them.
The officers are a different matter. Grand Admiral Thrawn, a blue-skinned Chiss and one of the Empire's sharpest minds, commands from the Star Destroyer Chimaera, first in Legends novels and then in canon from Rebels on. The Garrison is the white armour on its own.
On the shelf
On the back of a tee
Every helmet here is on the Star Wars shelf, drawn from canon reference art. Check the size guide before you pick a size.
Why it works on the back: a Mandalorian's T-shaped visor and a trooper's white helmet are shapes rather than faces, and a shape reads from the far end of a room, the way a good cover does from the back of a comic shop.
Read next: Anakin's fall, the Sith and the Rule of Two explained (the order the clones were bred to obey, and who gave it) and Godzilla's eras, Mothra and Mechagodzilla explained.
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