One of television's biggest successes in 2019 came quite late in the year, with Disney+ dropping a wealthy of new and classic shows on subscribers. It's safe to say The Mandalorian has created the biggest waves for the streaming service so far, and anticipation for Season 2 is on par with how excited the Star Wars fandom gets for new movies. Not many new details are known yet, but a recent report is claiming the sci-fi series has added a WWE superstar to Season 2.
To be sure, this is news meant to be taken with more than a few grains of Tatooine sand, but rumors are now floating around that WWE superstar Sasha Banks will be part of Season 2. The potentially big reveal (if proven true) was put out there by the Mat Men Pro Wrestling Podcast, and their detail-lite announcement can be seen below.
The Sasha Banks news was coupled with some other would-be factoids about the upcoming WrestleMania 36, and as noted in the post, it hasn't been fully confirmed just yet. (No big surprise there, since the Disney and Star Wars camps have not been very forthcoming about Mandalorian news in any capacity.) That said, another tweet also claims the source told them Sasha Banks has already finished filming her Season 2 scenes. So if it turns out that she actually is in the show, her role probably isn't going to overshadow Mando's or any other main characters.
One the one hand, reports of Sasha Banks' involvement with The Mandalorian come across as completely random and perhaps not worth putting a whole lot of stock into. On the other hand, though, one of Mandalorian's main protagonists, Cara Dune, is portrayed by athlete-actress Gina Carano. Her career started off in the world of mixed martial arts, though it basically coincided with her first on-screen appearance for the 2005 docu-feature Ring Girls.
Not that the Star Wars universe is one concretely associated with using actors with athletic pasts. However, as was made obvious by Gina Carano's work in Season 1, performers from sporting backgrounds are sometimes more physically and mentally ready to take on stunt work. That goes double for WWE superstars, since so much of their career involves performing choreographed movements and taking intentional bumps. I wouldn't be super-surprised to learn that every background actor in The Mandalorian's fight sequences have spent time on the pro wrestling circuit.
Let's take a second to assume that Sasha Banks (real name Mercedes Justine Kaestner-Varnado) is indeed in The Mandalorian Season 2. Who could she be playing? Will it be a highly familiar Star Wars hero or villain? Or will Jon Favreau & Co. use the wrestler for a role created specifically for the Disney+ series? Fans are definitely hoping for the live-action debut of Clone Wars and Rebels favorite Ahsoka Tano, so could THAT be what's happening here? Even if she'd just pop in for one episode to say something like, "Baby Yoda's real name is Geoffrey," that would be something.
The real-world timing wouldn't be all that difficult to figure out, either. In the past year or so, Sasha Banks has taken a few hiatuses from the WWE, with her post-WrestleMania break reportedly caused by frustrations with the company. Banks made a heel turn with her eventual comeback, but later took more time off after suffering a tailbone injury. Since then, she has appeared consistently enough on WWE Smackdown!, though not necessarily every week, so it would have seemingly been easy enough to plan for Mandalorian filming.
Once again, though, it's also likely enough that rumors of Sasha Banks' involvement with The Mandalorian Season 2 will turn out to be false. News that doesn't come officially from Disney, no matter how awesome, can rarely be accepted without hardcore visual proof, so we might be waiting a while to learn whether or not Sasha Banks will be getting into any fist-fights or blaster battles in the Star Wars universe later in 2020.
With the possibilities of spinoffs also floating around promisingly, The Mandalorian is set to return to Disney+ for Season 2 this October, with a more specific premiere date to be revealed closer to that point.
