The Mandalorian: Everything we know as Season 3 reportedly begins preproduction

“Mandalorian, look outside, they’re waiting for you.” The wait is over — you can watch the all eight episodes of the first season of Jon Favreau’s live-action Star Wars series The Mandalorian on Disney Plus right now. The show introduced us to the gift that is Baby Yoda (subject of many a fan theory and an onslaught of merch), it’s getting an eight-part behind-the-scenes documentary starting May 4 and preproduction on season 3 has reportedly begun.

What we know about season 2?

It’ll start in October 2020, Disney boss Bob Iger (who’s since stepped down) said in a Feb. 4 earnings call. He also mentioned the possibility that some of the show’s characters could go “in their own directions in terms of series” — hinting that we might see some Mandalorian spinoffs down the line.

Gina Carano, who plays Cara Dune in the show, confirmed in a March 6 Instagram post that production on the season had wrapped. That timing was fortunate — it finished up prior to the coronavirus lockdown and is unlikely to be delayed, unlikely many other movies and shows.

On March 20, Slashfilm reported that season 2 will see Ahsoka Tano, former Padawan of the late Anakin Skywalker, make her live action debut. She’ll apparently be played by Rosario Dawson, whom you might remember playing Claire Temple in Netflix’s Marvel shows.

“That’s not confirmed yet but when that happens, I will be very happy. I’m very excited for that to be confirmed at some point,” Dawson told Variety in April.

Michael Biehn, who played Kyle Reese in The Terminator and and Corporal Hicks in Aliens, will join the cast as a bounty hunter, according to the Hollywood Reporter. Bill Burr will apparently also reprise his role as gunslinger Mayfield, according to i09.

The day the season 1 finale aired, Favreau mentioned season 2 in a tweet featuring a Gamorrean — the porcine species that served as Jabba the Hutt’s guards in Return of the Jedi. So presumably that race will show up in the next batch of episodes.

And season 3?

It’s apparently in pre-production. Favreau has been writing the show’s third season “for a while,” according to an April 21 Variety report, and Lucasfilm’s art department has been working on concept designs for a few weeks. Production design seemingly kicked off on April 20.

What happened in season 1?

You’re in luck! I wrote detailed recaps of each episode that you can use to catch up:

Chapter 1: The Mandalorian

Chapter 2: The Child

Chapter 3: The Sin

Chapter 4: Sanctuary

Chapter 5: The Gunslinger

Chapter 6: The Prisoner

Chapter 7: The Reckoning

Chapter 8: Redemption

What’s the deal with the documentary?

Disney Gallery: The Mandalorian will include interviews with cast and crew, new footage, and roundtable conversations hosted by Favreau. Like the show proper, episodes will drop each Friday following the premiere on Monday, May 4.

It’ll look at the filmmaking process, the legacy of George Lucas’ Star Wars, how the cast brought the characters to life, its groundbreaking technology, the artistry behind the show’s practical models (like the $5 million Baby Yoda puppet), effects and creatures, along with the creative influences, the iconic score, and connections to Star Wars characters and props.

Who’s in it?

Pedro Pascal (best known for playing Oberyn Martell in Game of Thrones) is the bounty hunter behind the helmet: He’s a lone Mandalorian gunfighter operating in the outer reaches of the galaxy.

He’s joined by a star-studded cast, but a couple of these characters didn’t survive season 1:

What’s the deal with Baby Yoda?

This little guy captured everyone’s hearts the moment he appeared in the season premiere, and we’ve got a whole separate guide for him. He’s officially known as The Child — we don’t know his real name, race or home planet, but he can use the Force pretty effectively and the Imperial Remnant wants him.

Oh, and the most detailed version of the puppet apparently cost around $5 million.

Why isn’t this about the usual Jedi and Sith conflict?

The Star Wars underworld is a very rich storytelling environment, according to executive producer Jon Favreau. He wanted to get back to the tone of the old Western and samurai films that inspired George Lucas, and said the show is Star Wars meets Mad Max. 

The Mandalorian is one of four shows set in a galaxy far, far away coming to the Disney Plus streaming service. 

The seventh season of The Clone Wars started in February, and the company announced a Rogue One prequel series focusing on rebel spy Cassian Andor in 2018. And Ewan McGregor will return as Obi-Wan Kenobi in a brand new show, set to start shooting in 2021.

Who else is involved?

Directors for the first season:

Favreau, Filoni, Colin Wilson and Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy are the executive producers, with Karen Gilchrist as co-executive producer.

The Mandalorian is among the first projects for ILM TV, a division of Lucasfilm’s Industrial Light & Magic visual effects company. The show’s soundtrack is composed by Ludwig Göransson, who scored Black Panther, Venom and Creed II. Göransson’s Black Panther score won him a Grammy and an Oscar in 2019.

Is there a bounty of Mandalorian merch for us to hunt?

Merchandise hunting is a complicated hobby, but you know you want it. Three characters from the show are represented in the six-inch Black Series — The Mandalorian himself (along with a shiny carbonized variant), Cara Dune, IG-11, the Heavy Infantry Mandalorian (named Paz Vizla) and the Offworld Jawa. Baby Yoda will join them in spring 2020.

What’s a Mandalorian?

Mandalorians are humans from the Outer Rim world of Mandalore, its moon Concordia and the planet Kalevala, whose story was largely told in The Clone Wars and Rebels.

Their world went through major political upheaval during the Clone Wars and early days of the Galactic Empire’s rule, but many of the clans united under the rule of Bo-Katan Kryze after she took control of the Darksaber. The black-bladed weapon was created more than 1,000 years earlier by Tarre Vizsla (the first Mandalorian to join the Jedi Order) and became a symbol of leadership — it also showed up in The Mandalorian’s season 1 finale.

You probably associate bounty hunters Boba Fett and Jango Fett with the term because they wear the cool armor, but they aren’t true Mandalorians. Jango once claimed to be from Concord Dawn, a Mandalorian world, but the government considered him (and by extension, his cloned son Boba) to be pretenders.

Could Boba Fett show up?

Fans have been clamoring for Boba’s return to the Star Wars galaxy despite his fall into the maw of a hungry sarlacc in Return of the Jedi, but there’s been no indication that will happen and he didn’t show up in season 1.

Fans of the Legends material (developed in novels, comics and games prior to 2014) will recall that Boba escaped the sarlacc in that continuity and went on to become the leader of Mandalore in a very different (and non-canon) post-Return of the Jedi galaxy. 

In canon, Chuck Wendig’s Aftermath trilogy of novels saw Mandalorian armor that’s heavily implied to be Boba’s being recovered from the pit and worn by former slave Cobb Vanth. Using the armor as a symbol of power, he becomes sheriff of Freetown (a settlement on Tatooine) and offers sanctuary to anyone willing to battle the world’s crime syndicates.

We also saw a mysterious person approach assassin Fennec Shand’s body on Tatooine in the final moments of season 1’s fifth episode, but the show hasn’t followed up on that tease yet.

What other stories could they draw from?

Star Wars 1313 was a video game that got shelved when Disney shut down all projects at LucasArts — Lucasfilm’s game development group — in 2013. We saw an impressive demo for Uncharted-style adventure before that, featuring actor Wilson Bethel (who recently hit the target in Daredevil season 3).

It would’ve seen players exploring the bowels of the city planet Coruscant — the title was a reference to its grimy underworld Level 1313 (which later appeared in The Clone Wars).

After it was canceled, we found out that Boba Fett was going to be the star and that Kennedy later agreed the concept art was “unbelievable.”

“So our attitude is, we don’t want to throw any of that stuff away. It’s gold,” she told Slashfilm in 2015. “And it’s something we’re spending a lot of time looking at, pouring through, discussing, and we may very well develop those things further. We definitely want to.”

In that same interview, Kennedy noted that Lucasfilm read through the material Lucas developed for the canceled TV show Star Wars: Underworld, which was announced in 2005 and canned in 2010 due to budget constraints. It was to be set between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope and would have tied into 1313.