Dave Filoni Confirms ‘The Mandalorian’ Climactic Event Is Still Happening
In December 2020, Kathleen Kennedy announced during a Disney investor’s event that the stories being told by Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni in The Mandalorian and its spin-off series would culminate in a “climactic story event”. However, no more details were provided, and we’ve heard nothing about that event since… Until now.
In a new interview with TheWrap, Filoni confirmed that said event is still very real, and in fact, it’s not contradictory to Jon Favreau’s recent comments about The Mandalorian not having an end plan yet. Said Filoni:
“Well, from a certain point of view, it could. It could build to a climactic thing and The Mandalorian could still go on. It’s not necessarily an either/or, is it?
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.”
He added that a big part of the creative process that he and Jon Favreau have involves a lot of planning ahead and having a sense of the overall picture, even if there isn’t a clear end in sight for The Mandalorian yet:
“The good thing is that we’re all talking creatively together about where these stories are all going. 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 Kathy on what’s going on here, what’s going on there? It’s very fun.
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. But yes, if Jon 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.”
He was also asked about the process of bringing characters from animation into live-action, which The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett have done repeatedly. Filoni explained that to him, they are just characters that populate these Star Wars stories, and they always try to bring them in the most organic way possible:
“Very rarely [I think ‘How can I get my cartoon characters into live-action?’]. I know people think it’s the other way around, which is fascinating to me, but I think there’s two ways to look at that, which is that, yes, they were animated characters, but to me they’re just characters. And now I’m over here working in live-action. I’m comfortable with those characters, I know them, I like them and I like to see them around.”
A perfect example was Cad Bane, the lone ranger from The Clone Wars that was brought into live-action in the last couple of episodes of The Book of Boba Fett out of the necessity of having another antagonist for the titular character of the series. He then added that this process will continue, especially in Ahsoka:
“When we needed a gunslinger to go up against some of our characters in Book of Boba Fett, Cad Bane’s name came up. I think looking at that, the first thing I think is, ‘Well, how do we do that and make it believable?’ Like the character, he’s so lean and gaunt in The Clone Wars. And if we don’t do that, is it all CG? How are we going to portray that? If we don’t think we can do that effectively, then we shouldn’t do it.
At the end of the day, I’ve been very happy with the ones that have gone over. There may or may not be more in Ahsoka, if that’s your thing. If you’re excited about that, I’m just saying that one might have a few more, which makes sense, by the way. As you know, I wrote it. You can’t fault me there.”
A lot of exciting things are coming down the pipeline over the next few months. At Star Wars Celebration we’ll be getting some major Ahsoka announcements, including a trailer and likely a release date. But with the convention not happening again until 2025, maybe Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni think it’s time to give some clarification about where this is all going. We know that characters from Skeleton Crew are going to appear in The Mandalorian season 4, which is already in storyboard phase and could begin shooting within the next few months.
But what then? Could Filoni and Favreau announce what this “titanic event”, as Filoni describes it, will be about? The timing of this interview certainly lines up with Lucasfilm bringing the topic back into the conversation. With Grand Admiral Thrawn being brought into live-action in Ahsoka, there is heavy speculation that this could all coalesce into an adaptation of sorts of the Heir to the Empire story from the 1990s novels by Timothy Zahn. Those books followed Han, Luke, and Leia in a post-Return of the Jedi world where they faced off the last remaining Imperial forces, spearheaded by Grand Admiral Thrawn. The protagonists will likely differ from the book’s, but The Mandalorian has been teasing that there are still remnants of the Empire living in the Outer Rim, and they are more organized than what many want to believe. Filoni is a self-professed fan of the novels to the point that he brought its main antagonist into modern canon, making him the main villain of the last two seasons of Star Wars Rebels.
New episodes of The Mandalorian are coming out every Wednesday; Ahsoka will debut on Disney Plus later this year, either in late summer or early fall. Stay tuned for more Mandalorian news and check out Matt’s review of Chapter 19 here!
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.
