Dave Filoni Explains the Politics of the New Republic Era: the Roles of Rebels and Imperials Are Now Reversed
Besides setting up the father-son relationship between Din and Grogu, The Mandalorian has also acted as our main point of reference when thinking about the New Republic era (the time period in between the original and the sequel trilogy). The third season dived a bit deeper than before, showing us the capital and some law enforcement as well. This was the subject of discussion in a new interview that Dave Filoni had with Empire Magazine.
In it, the Mandalorian co-writer and executive producer talked about setting up the New Republic era of the franchise as the opposite of the Age of Rebellion, where the Empire and the Rebels have flipped their positions; the Empire is now the underdog causing havoc to a government that is struggling to thrive after thinking they could improve upon what was before. Said Dave Filoni:
“I always relate to my own Star Wars experience and think, ‘How can I give kids now [that] feeling?’ Something that I understood as a kid was the conflict established in A New Hope – the Rebels versus the Empire. I thought something in the Expanded Universe that was very easy to understand was, in the New Republic and the Remnant Empire, that the tables have turned a little bit.
It’s actually the Empire that’s acting more like the Rebels, because their resources are on the downside. But the New Republic is struggling because, while they’re all trying to work together, they have different ideas about how to be effective. That was an interesting story. And I think it creates a big piece of history where you can tell all kinds of stories.”
As he went on to explain, it was really in the third season that he and Favreau finally spent some time developing the politics of the New Republic era; before this, we had only seen a couple of X-Wings and some uniforms. In the third season, we finally went to Coruscant:
“If you took and placed Mando in the original trilogy time-period, you would understand what’s going on, because you understood the politics of the day. Now, we’ve had to establish – starting in Mandalorian, and the idea with Werner Herzog that there were Remnant Imperials still operating – that there’s a Remnant Empire, and a New Republic. We really only got around to [exploring] the New Republic with [the] X-Wings in the first two seasons, and we finally went to Coruscant in this latest season. So everything builds a little bit, as we’re fleshing out this part of the galaxy.”
This will not be abandoned moving forward either; not only is Ahsoka introducing one of the heads of the Imperial remnants in Grand Admiral Thrawn, but we also know from that trailer that Mon Mothma will be appearing in the series, hinting that we could see more development on the political side of this new era really soon.
Ahsoka is targeting an August release date on Disney Plus, with another series set in this era, Skeleton Crew, coming out later in the year. A fourth season of The Mandalorian will go in front of the cameras before the end of 2023, while a second season of Ahsoka depends on how the first one performs. Dave Filoni has also been announced as the director of a feature film that will culminate all storylines set up in these shows.
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.
