In the past few years, it seems that everywhere you look for Star Wars merch and content, you’re faced with the adorable little face of ‘baby Yoda,’ aka Grogu. Grogu’s rise to fame began when he debuted in 2019 with the Disney+ original series, The Mandalorian created by Jon Favreau. The first season, which aired in November of that year, did incredibly well with positive reviews across the board. The show was thus renewed in 2020 and third time in 2023. All three seasons had huge numbers of viewers, with the second season becoming the most-watched streaming television series in the U.S. during its airing. With the show’s continued success, it was announced earlier this year that Grogu and Mando will soon make their big screen debut.
The film is currently in development but it has been confirmed that it will be directed by the show’s creator, Jon Favreau, and feature the same beloved characters as the original show. However, the announcement of this film, currently called The Mandalorian & Grogu, creates many questions. The third season left no major cliffhangers but didn’t close the story off altogether. What will be the main purpose of this movie? Are we going to see the beginning of a new series intertwining the main universe with Grogu’s? In this article, we will look at The Mandalorian’s success, the role it has played so far in the Star Wars universe, and make predictions for future installments.
Making a spin-off film focusing on one character or adventure is not unheard of in the Star Wars universe. Most recently, the franchise has created two Star Wars Stories; Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and Solo: A Star Wars Story, occurring before the original Star Wars: A New Hope but after the prequels. Solo acts as Han Solo’s origin story while Rogue One follows group of rebels who try to steal the plans to the Death Star before anyone has even heard the name Luke Skywalker. Both films performed pretty well, particularly Rogue One, becoming one of 2016’s highest-grossing films. All this to say, having spin-off stories following a particular character or storyline has historically done well with the general public. This being said, Lucasfilm has not endorsed a Star Wars film since Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker which… didn’t live up to many expectations. Enter The Mandalorian.
While there haven’t been any Star Wars films since The Rise of Skywalker, a few TV shows have been produced by Disney+. The Mandalorian was the Star Wars franchise’s first live-action show and it premiered around the same time that The Rise of Skywalker hit theaters. As mentioned earlier, all three seasons of the show were incredibly successful and following the trend of many major franchises right now, Disney has been turning out endless content; The Book of Boba Fett, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Andor, and Ahsoka have thus far followed The Mandalorian with The Acolyte and Skeleton Crew set to come out later this year. The Mandalorian story takes place as always in a galaxy far, far away five years after the events of Return of the Jedi. The premise features Mandalorian bounty hunter Din Djarin (Mando) when Imperial remnant forces hire him to retrieve a child named Grogu. In the process of completing the job, Mando becomes attached to the child and decides to save Grogu instead and reunite him with others of his kind. The three seasons of the show portray all the adventures that the two get up to together and the father-son bond that grows between them has been a major selling point for many fans.
While the end of the third season doesn’t give many hints as to what the new movie could be exploring, it has been confirmed that the adventures of Mando and Grogu will be combined with three other shows that take place in the same time frame; The Book of Boba Fett, Ahsoka, and Skeleton Crew. The plots of the four shows are all interconnected as the protagonists of each show make cameos in the others as they go about their various storylines. The Book of Boba Fett follows another of our favorite bounty hunters, Boba Fett, and his quest along with Fennec Shand to make names for themselves in the Galaxy. You’ll never guess who Ahsoka features… the show takes place after the fall of the Emperor as Ahsoka Tano works to prevent Grand Admiral Thrawn’s return. Finally, Skeleton Crew will introduce four new children who must work together to find their way home. In The Book of Boba Fett and Ahsoka, the protagonists all interact at different times and to varying extents, so the prospect of uniting all their stories into one great adventure is sure to be exciting. By setting up their preexisting relationships and priorities in each respective show, it seems we can expect them to all jump on some new mission knowing each others’ strengths and weaknesses, leaving more time for adventuring that might otherwise be used for buildup.
All in all, Lucasfilm has made some serious headway in its TV show productions over the past few years since the conclusion of Rey’s sequels. Some of the beauty of Star Wars is that the same characters, locations, and events affect many different stories across the galaxy and creators have impressively continued to connect the pieces and flesh out the stories we didn’t know we needed. With the impending debut of a potential new phase of the Star Wars universe revolving around our favorite green toddler, The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett, Ahsoka, and Skeleton Crew‘s joined forces are planning to bring us everything. Going off of this successful string of TV programs, it seems that we can expect more exciting films soon. However, with this transition from TV show to movie, the question remains if Disney is planning on continuing this trend that it has begun to use for many of its other franchises like the Marvel shows Loki and WandaVision, or whether the shows will be used to introduce the complex backstories of characters before their debut into movie land. Regardless, Grogu and Mando’s adventures have had the fandom in a death grip for the past five years so it will be interesting to see how the future of Star Wars is altered or shaped by their entrance to Rey’s main storyline.
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