Star Wars Celebration has officially begun, with news from all throughout the galaxy far, far away reaching Star Wars fans of all ages. The conference is packed with guests from all aspects of the Star Wars universe, including cinema, novels, and animation, including Jon Favreau.
The Mandalorian has become a big hit. The Star Wars series debuted in the early days of Disney+, and it has since become a cornerstone original programme for the streaming service, receiving numerous seasons of renewal and laying the groundwork for major spinoffs. Given the show’s popularity, it’s no surprise that Lucasfilm and Disney want more of it but it doesn’t make hearing straight from creator Jon Favreau that The Mandalorian Season 4 is in the works months before Season 3’s premiere any less exciting.
Favreau and co-producer Dave Filoni are the current faces of Star Wars on Disney+, having worked on The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett, and Ahsoka in various capacities as executive producers, writers, and directors. The focus of today’s discussion was mostly on the titular Mandalorian himself, with Pedro Pascal and his body doubles Lateef Crowder and Brendan Wayne making appearances.
The third season of the series will premiere on Disney+ in February 2023, though no exact date has been announced, and the footage revealed Katee Sackoff as Bo-Katan, who appears to have a grudge against Din Djarin (Pascal) for his possession of the Darksaber, which makes him the ruler of Mandalore, the Mandalorians’ homeworld, which Bo-Katan believes is her birthright.
Jon Favreau, creator of The Mandalorian, confirmed to Cinema Blend at Star Wars Celebration that he has begun writing Season 4 of the show. He said,“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 Season 4. It becomes how should I put it, more precise.”
Favreau further said, “When I was writing the first season of Mandalorian, I could do anything, set it anywhere. Dave 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.”
The Mandalorian director then talked about how the show has evolved over time, from a standalone story about a bounty hunter to a much bigger Star Wars universe plot. “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,” he added.
Luke Skywalker’s surprise presence in the Season 2 finale drew the filmmaker’s attention. He said, “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.”