Right Before 'The Mandalorian' Season 3 Premiere, Jon Favreau Drops Surprising Details On Long Time Jumps Across The Show
OK so Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni are the creative forces behind The Mandalorian as many Star Wars diehards know. They're in charge of this entire Mandoverse that's meant to help bridge the 30-year gap between the original and sequel movie trilogies.
The vibe I've gotten from watching Mando and The Book of Boba Fett was that all these events we've seen across three interweaving seasons of television have all transpired in a relatively short window of time. Why punch the hyperdrive too early and zoom ahead too far down the Star Wars timeline?
Welp, so much for that. Because apparently "many years" passed from when Mando first rescued Grogu's life through the time when Luke Skywalker comes to take away the Yoda-looking FORMER JEDI PADAWAN. Sorry CAPS LOCK pops up when I get PUMPED about a spicy new addition to the Star Wars canon.
Here's what Favreau really said of note regarding Grogu's journey and the timeline of these Disney+ series, at around the 7:30 mark of this panel posted by the Skytalkers podcast:
"We know that he started off earlier in the Jedi Temple, we've seen flashbacks that speak to that. And then we know that he's been rescued and spent many years with the Mandalorian. Went back with Luke. Now, we've been two years apart from him there training. What's interesting is that as he chooses to return to his friend, the Mandalorian, because he's developed an attachment, it's interesting how that echoes, in a way, Luke's path...When he was drawn to the attachment to his friends, and how that helped shape the future."
Yo Jon Favreau, we did not know that Grogu has spent many years with Mando/Din Djarin! At least I didn't. I keep up with this stuff from a galaxy far, far away like a hawk. Or uh, a Millennium Falcon if you like. This is such a crazy bomb to drop on the eve of The Mandalorian's Season 3 premiere!
Now that we're suddenly an ambiguous amount of multiple years closer to the sequel trilogy, it feels like we're only going to get more answers about Emperor Palpatine's return in The Rise of Skywalker. Mando and all the spin-offs in this part of the Star Wars timeline are going to explore the origins of that galactic comeback. With this news, it'll probably happen sooner than expected, depending on how much run the next presumed central villain gets.
With a looming, Palpatine-worshipping antagonist likely to debut in live action in Ahsoka (Grand Admiral Thrawn), there's no question the shows are building toward revealing more about that major "somehow Palpatine returned" plot point. Whether Thrawn still sticks by Palpatine after what he's been through or not, that's where the overall story has to be going. The entire storyline of Moff Gideon trying to capture the little guy and the clone scientist trying to extract Grogu's essence are all hinting toward this Palpatine essence transfer/cloning thing, too.
But first, I'll be interested to see how long this third season is meant to take place over. What will become of the fractured Mandalorian clans? Can Din Djarin reunite them all with the darksaber? Or will the dynastic heiress Bo-Katan Kryze wrest the legendary weapon away from the beloved antihero and take the throne of Mandalore that she apparently lost once before?
I hope they find a way to organically explain the time passage in Mando Season 3 so the reunion of Din and Grogu feels truly earned, as if years have, in fact, passed. Either way, I guess I'm getting more excited about the prospect of more galactic stakes as the central conflict and less mission-of-the-week stuff from The Mandalorian in general, and these time jumps should only expedite the more consistent production of those types of episodes. What we do know is, Favreau and Filoni have a mapped-out plan well in advance of what's about to air on Disney+, so the galaxy should be in great hands.