It’s no secret that The Mandalorian is a huge success. The Star Wars series premiered in the early days of Disney+, and it has been a flagship original program for the streaming service – not only getting renewed for multiple seasons, but setting the ground work for big spinoffs like the upcoming Ahsoka and The Book Of Boba Fett. Given its popularity, it’s no surprise that Lucasfilm and Disney would want more of the show – but that really makes it no less exciting to hear directly from creator Jon Favreau that The Mandalorian Season 4 is in the works months before the release of Season 3.
Star Wars news has been flying around fast the last few days thanks to the on-going Star Wars Celebration convention in Anaheim, California – from the reveal of the first Andor trailer to announcements about the developing Star Wars: Skeleton Crew – and this story comes from the press line following yesterday’s big Mandalorian+ presentation. Speaking with Jon Favreau, I asked about the growing number of shows set in the New Republic era of the canon and if that could eventually lead to some kind of capstone event (a la The Avengers), and it was in the filmmaker’s answer that he revealed that The Mandalorian Season 4 is now being written:
With television, we're very lucky that we don't have to rush things through into an hour-and-a-half, two hours. We get to tell stories slowly. So now, as Dave [Filoni]'s doing Ahsoka, it's very much informing the writing that I'm doing for [The Mandalorian] Season 4. It becomes – how should I put it – more precise.
The Mandalorian Season 3 has completed principal photography, and while those new episodes are in post-production, Jon Favreau is evidently not wasting any time preparing what will come after those chapters are finished and available on Disney+.
As for the crossover opportunities that fans may get to see in the near future, Jon Favreau explained that determinations are wholly being made organically at this point, and that’s an interesting thing that has developed since The Mandalorian began. When Favreau first started writing the show, he had a relatively blank canvas to work with as far as the time period in the Star Wars canon was concerned, and now things are developing with more specificity. Said the filmmaker,
When I was writing the first season of Mandalorian, I could do anything, set it anywhere. Dave [Filoni] would read it, we'd go back and forth, I would adjust. And there it was. Now we have to figure out why there are certain Mandalorians who wear helmets, certain ones who don't wear helmets, what's happening on Mandalore, what's Bo-Katan doing at the time? How does she feel about that? Where is the Darksaber? So it really creates very fertile ground for imagination, for storytelling.
At its start, The Mandalorian is set approximately five years after the events depicted in Star Wars: Return Of The Jedi, and that time period has gotten vastly more complicated since the arrival of the Disney+ series. That’s clearly worked to the benefit of the show and Jon Favreau. In Season 1, The Mandalorian is a relatively contained story about a bounty hunter who has been tasked with taking care of a gifted child, and the consequences that have arisen from that relationship have naturally made the New Republic era more complex and interesting. Said Favreau,
I think that inevitably, no matter how simple you start, the story threads start to connect and weave and overlap. And with Dave Filoni's deep understanding of everything around the time period, opportunities will always arise when we have story meetings and conversations about, 'Well, you know what character would be here now...' I mean, that's really how the Luke thing happened.
By “the Luke thing,” of course, Jon Favreau is referring to the breath-taking surprise that was the appearance of Mark Hamill’s Luke Skywalker in The Mandalorian’s Season 2 finale. The filmmakers behind the show needed to bring in a character who would be a logical choice to train Grogu in the ways of The Force, and at the end of the day, Luke was the obvious answer:
It wasn't that we necessarily planned to include Luke Skywalker in Season 2. But as we were looking for [Grogu] to get training, we started to weigh out, 'Well, what Jedi are around? Who's left?' And it started to not make sense for it not to be Luke. As we start to tell stories, those stories take on lives of their own, and they have trajectories. And then as those trajectories begin to organically intersect, larger stories with more characters start to make more sense.
By that logic, things are only going to get more interesting as new pieces are put into play. The development of each Star Wars show set in the time period – be it The Book Of Boba Fett, Ahsoka, or Skeleton Crew – is going to open doors for others, and that should lead to some very exciting franchise storytelling.
Clearly there is a lot going in in the Star Wars universe right now, and you can keep track of everything that’s happening with the combination of both our Star Wars timeline and our Upcoming Star Wars Movies and TV guide.
As for The Mandalorian specifically, Season 3 is currently scheduled to arrive on Disney+ in February 2023, and stay tuned here on CinemaBlend for more updates about the developing Season 4.
