Jon Favreau Tries To Clarify ‘The Mandalorian’ and ‘The Book of Boba Fett’ Timeline, Makes Things More Confusing
Star Wars has always been notoriously bad at handling time jumps which aren’t represented on the screen, often filling in the gaps between films with far too many convoluted storylines in comic book and video game form. And in some cases, even the films themselves alone — ignoring all the supplementary material released afterwards — make little sense: Why did Han ignore Jabba for so long between Hope and Empire? Why did Lando sit around on Tatooine one full year? The list goes on and on… Now, if Jon Favreau’s new comments on the timeline of The Mandalorian are accurate, we might be looking at another mess.
While discussing The Mandalorian season 3 and more — alongside Dave Filoni, Rick Famuyiwa, and Katee Sackhoff — with the Skytalkers podcast members (hat tip to Star Wars Holocron on Twitter), Favreau elaborated a bit on how much time Grogu has really spent with the Jedi and among Mandalorians, since he could be the first individual since the legendary Tarre Vizsla to have one foot in each camp. According to him (7:38), Grogu spent “many years” with the Mandalorian before leaving with Luke Skywalker at the end of season 2. Moreover, he said right after that two years passed between The Rescue and the events of The Book of Boba Fett chapters 6 and 7. Here’s exactly what he said:
“[Grogu] is definitely somebody who has spent time in both worlds. 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 shaped the future.”
Mind you, the wording on the latter half of this bit could be ambiguous, but let’s assume that everything he said is true and accurate…
First of all, there would be little trouble — besides the lack of any on-screen hints of that much time passing — with The Mandalorian season 1 and 2 happening over the course of several years, especially with an unspecified gap between the two during which Din Djarin could’ve perfectly been bumping around in the dark looking for Mandalorians and hunting low-level bounties to earn some money and keep himself and the Child fed. Trouble really begins with the supposed two-year gap between the season 2 finale and the Mando-related events in The Book of Boba Fett.
If almost two full years passed before The Book of Boba Fett began (present-day storyline, starting with The Mandalorian season 2’s stinger), that would spell trouble for at least three different major characters: a) Luke Skywalker would’ve been an even worse Jedi Master that we thought. b) Ahsoka sat on the Thrawn info she acquired in The Jedi for way too long. c) Boba Fett and Fennec Shand spent two years doing nothing of relevance and didn’t take Jabba’s Palace away from Bib Fortuna until well after recovering the Firespray. And if we try to think there are several months of “nothing” between Boba and Fennec deciding they need Din’s help and the Mandalorian returning to Tatooine, that would make the Pykes extremely slow in their attempted conquest of Tatooine. So no, most of the present-day narrative of The Book of Boba Fett is a matter of weeks at most.
Of course, there’s the small chance that Favreau either misspoke or used poor wording. But right now, all of this sounds like improvised backpedaling on the matter of Din and Grogu barely spending time away from each other before being reunited in a show that wasn’t theirs — many fans have been vocal about how weird this creative decision was. We can work with months, but two full years feel like too much of a stretch even by the classic Star Wars standards.
Hopefully, this won’t invoke another dozen comic series and crossover events full of character development which somehow happened in between cohesive on-screen chapters.
Francisco J. Ruiz is that guy who has watched Jurassic Park a thousand times and loves Star Wars. His hunger for movies is only matched by his love for video games. He graduated in English Studies from the University of Malaga, in Spain. As he keeps writing about what he enjoys (and doesn’t) for websites all over, he’s continuing his studies.
