The Ecosystem Of Star Wars Characters From The Mandalorian And Ahsoka Could 'Expand In A Bigger Way'
This article contains spoilers for "The Mandalorian."
The third season of "The Mandalorian" is here, and despite the season 2 finale's heartbreaking departure between Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) and Baby Grogu and the surprise appearance from Luke Skywalker, so far season 3 has been largely walking to its own beat of the drum. In fact, the first episode of season 3 almost feels like a complete reset of the show's status quo; our wandering space cowboy has been reunited with his child and they're ready to have more video game-esque sidequests.
If you're a casual "The Mandalorian" fan and were wondering what you missed along the way, the Jedi Academy plotline had actually already been resolved, but not in a special in-between episode. Instead, closure arrived in the form of a mid-season episode of "The Book of Boba Fett. While showrunner Jon Favreau has his own justifications for splitting this beat between the shows, this ultimately has served as a precedence and warning to the audience about the future course of the "Star Wars" Disney+ live-action series. These shows have irreversibly made a large crossover, and have become very dependent on each other.
With the upcoming live-action "Star Wars" shows slated for later this year, "Ahsoka" and Jon Watt's "Skeleton Crew," we're only left to wonder if there are even more crossovers in Mando's future.
In an interview with TheWrap, executive producer Dave Filoni essentially said that while Din and Grogu are meant to be walking on their own paths, that isn't exactly mutually exclusive to a big narrative crossover event between the upcoming series. "Well, from a certain point of view, it could," Filoni clarified. "It could build to a climactic thing and 'The Mandalorian' could still go on. It's not necessarily an either/or, is it?"
'An ecosystem of characters'
Serving as a writer and director on the "Ahsoka" series, Dave Filoni takes his contributions to the "Star Wars" extended universe with a great amount of care. As "Ahsoka" is heavily rumored to be continuing loose ends from "Star Wars: Rebels," we're watching Filoni slowly incorporate characters he previously developed in the animated series into live-action. Last season in "The Mandalorian," Ahsoka made her debut live-action appearance played by Rosario Dawson, and Katee Sackhoff's physical reprisal of Bo-Katan is sharing the spotlight as a consistent supporting role in season 3.
Outside of "Andor," all of the Disney+ series in near future are specifically filling in the gap between the original and sequel trilogies. As a keeper of the timeline, Filoni will be continuing to see where these stories could possibly intersect, referring to this cluster as an "ecosystem of characters and events." Favreau shared with TheWrap:
"It's an interesting way to think about it. I tend to think, as we've been working on 'The Mandalorian' and then writing 'Ahsoka,' and then Jon Watts came in with 'Skeleton Crew,' there is an entire time period that is post-'Return of the Jedi.' And I look at that time period, which before 'The Force Awakens,' is around 30 years of time. When you look at the original trilogy, it's a much less significant amount of time that those three movies take place in. And so, what I like is that we're really building very slowly an ecosystem of characters and politics and events in the post-'Return of the Jedi' time period. And that may or may not expand in a bigger way as we add more shows to it and add more characters to it."
The expanded universe connections have already begun
"The good thing is that we're all talking creatively together about where these stories are all going," Filoni said. "And I love whiteboards, and I whiteboard everything and have timelines. They always start back with 'The Phantom Menace' and they always go out to 'The Rise of Skywalker.' I have all these slots in between and where everybody's doing everything, so I can look at it all and commiserate with [Kathleen Kennedy] on what's going on here, what's going on there? It's very fun."
We've already been treated to a few hints of what the "Ahsoka" series may be about in a few key moments of "The Mandalorian." When she first appeared in "The Jedi," it was highly implied that Ahsoka had been in pursuit of finding Grand Admiral Thrawn, who disappeared in the final episode of "Star War: Rebels." In the first episode of season 3, Grogu sees Puurgils while traveling in hyperspace. Though it's a brief, adorable moment with trippy space whales, it's also our first hint that Ezra Bridger (reportedly in "Ahsoka," played by Eman Esfandi) is out there.
"I think that the reality of there being a big event in this time period is very real, is all I would say to that," Filoni shared. "But yes, if Jon [Favreau] wanted to keep making 'Mandalorian' stories, as long as he does not get bumped off in said titanic event, then they, I suppose, could continue. There doesn't seem to be any lack of interest in Grogu and Mando, that's for sure."
So yes, even more "MandoVerse" crossovers are to be expected, but we can rest assured that "The Mandalorian" will always have an explicit focus on the bond between Din and Grogu before anything else.