Speculation: Will Sabine Wren Appear in ‘The Mandalorian’ Season 3?
First introduced in Star Wars: Rebels, the character of Sabine Wren is about to make the jump to live-action. As reported by Deadline in November 2021 and confirmed by Lucasfilm at Star Wars Celebration, Natasha Liu Bordizzo (Day Shift, Netflix’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) will play the part in the upcoming Ahsoka series. However, there are a few hints that could indicate the character will be introduced to audiences a few months earlier, when The Mandalorian season 3 comes out in February 2023.
Story-wise, it makes complete sense. Sabine was the one that gifted the Darksaber to Bo-Katan in Star Wars: Rebels, before she ultimately led her country to the Night of a Thousand Tears. In The Mandalorian season 2, she already showed a great deal of regret for deciding to accept the gift, so revisiting that moment in the third season would line up perfectly. From the way season 2 ended and the trailer that was shown at Celebration, we know that Bo-Katan’s ambition to win back the Darksaber in combat will play a major role in season 3. We also know that we are going to see a lot of Mandalorians during the season, and with Dave Filoni slowly bringing more of the animated characters he created into the show, it adds up. Ahsoka’s episode in season 2 will be looked back on as a backdoor pilot for Ahsoka, so it would make sense to have at least another setup for the spin-off show in the third season, which will end just a few weeks before Ahsoka starts airing.
There’s also a matter of scheduling that supports the theory. The Mandalorian season 3 reportedly started shooting on the week of September 20, 2021. Deadline learned about it in the middle of production, posting the news two months after cameras started rolling, on November 20, but there is evidence to support that the actress had been cast as Sabine for a few months by then.
Natasha Liu Bordizzo revealed in a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter that she got the call from her agents confirming that she got the part while shooting the movie Day Shift. Interestingly enough, the actress said that her agents asked her “Tell us, do you like The Mandalorian?”, before giving her the news. There are obvious connections between The Mandalorian and Ahsoka, so there is no case to be made based solely on this quote, but the pieces could potentially line up. According to Wikipedia, Day Shift was shot between April 19 and August 22, 2021, which means that by August 22, Sabine Wren had already been cast. Now, we know that the role is obviously really big and the actress would need a lot of physical training to get ready for it, so it’s understandable why they would be casting it so early in the process. But let’s also remember that this happened 9 months ahead of cameras starting to roll on Ahsoka.
A possible explanation here is that Deadline heard the news from the set of The Mandalorian season 3, as opposed to being tipped by Liu Bordizzo’s agents — if that were the case, it would have probably happened earlier. There is a counterpoint, though, that must be considered. Ten days after reporting on Sabine’s casting, Deadline said that Ivanna Sakhno had also been cast in the upcoming series, and a month earlier, The Hollywood Reporter revealed that Hayden Christensen would be coming back as Anakin/Darth Vader in the show as well. A couple of months later, news about Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Ray Stevenson would come out. Ahsoka was reportedly originally going to start shooting in March, so casting the series in late 2021 made perfect sense. For that reason, it’s possible that, instead of hearing the news from the set of The Mandalorian, word about Natasha Liu Bordizzo just got out of the general casting process, even if Bordizzo had joined the series months earlier.
I personally believe that she is going to be in The Mandalorian. I like presenting possible counterpoints because it makes the speculation more fun, but I still think that the fact that she was cast so in advance is very meaningful (let’s remember that even if the movie wrapped mid-August, the call could have happened in June). But at the end of the day, we’ve been theorizing about Sabine popping up in The Mandalorian for a long time, and with Filoni so involved with the show, why wouldn’t he push for the inclusion of one of his favorite Mandalorians, after he pushed for Ahsoka and possibly Bo-Katan?
What do you think? Will we get Sabine in The Mandalorian season 3, or are they saving her big introduction for Ahsoka? Let us know!
Miguel Fernández is a Spanish student that has movies as his second passion in life. His favorite movie of all time is The Lord of the Rings, but he is also a huge Star Wars fan. However, fantasy movies are not his only cup of tea, as movies from Scorsese, Fincher, Kubrick or Hitchcock have been an obsession for him since he started to understand the language of filmmaking. He is that guy who will watch a black and white movie, just because it is in black and white.
