Dave Filoni and Jon Favreau Discuss Ahmed Best’s Role in ‘The Mandalorian’ and His Possible Return
Longtime Star Wars fans were treated to quite the surprise recently when Ahmed Best appeared in the middle of The Mandalorian‘s third season. In the season’s fourth episode, Grogu has another flashback to his experience during Order 66. Viewers initially learned during the season 2 episode The Jedi that Grogu was at the Jedi Temple during that tragic night, and Chapter 6 of The Book of Boba Fett showed a brief scene of several Jedi protecting him from the advancing 501st clones.
However, Chapter 20: The Foundling finally gave fans the most extensive and detailed look yet at what happened to Grogu during the events of Revenge of the Sith. In this scene, viewers learned that the Jedi Knights who initially appeared in the flashback in Boba Fett were trying to get Grogu to another Jedi named Kelleran Beq. As it turns out, Beq was played by Ahmed Best, who is most recognized for his portrayal of Jar Jar Binks in the prequel trilogy.
Entertainment Weekly recently interviewed Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni about Best’s return to the Star Wars franchise. Unsurprisingly, they were happy that Best agreed to appear on the show. However, it seems that they also consulted extensively with Best before finalizing their plans for his appearance:
Filoni: “We love Ahmed, and he did such a great job. It was a real thrill for us to get him involved.”
“We talked with him about it. We come up with these ideas and we think: Who might work with it? We make sure before we get too far to bring them into the process, so it’s not just like, ‘Here’s who you’re going to play.’ It’s like, ‘What do you think of this? We want you to be this person. What are your thoughts on it?’ [We try to] make it a real collaboration and think it’s really key to the success of it.”
Filoni also mentioned that Best was remarkably skilled at performing his character’s fight choreography thanks to his previous martial arts training:
Filoni: “I didn’t know how much he knew about martial arts. And then he picks up a lightsaber, and he’s suddenly swinging it all around and you’re like ‘Oh, ok.'”
Favreau: “He studies Arnis. He knows how to do double-wielding.”
While Best’s turn in The Mandalorian may mark Kelleran Beq’s first canonical appearance in the Star Wars universe, the actor has played the character before in the non-canon children’s game show Jedi Temple Challenge. Favreau and Filoni spoke about their process for deciding which characters to include in The Mandalorian, and it looks like they don’t consider anyone to be off-limits, no matter where they were first introduced:
Favreau: “He had done a lot of work on that character of Kelleran Beq for Jedi Temple Challenge. So he’s been involved with Star Wars all the way through and definitely had formulated this character. And we love to draw from all of Star Wars, and even things that aren’t canon. If they feel right, we’ll pull ’em in. And so it just made sense. Because you’re also looking at ‘Who could it be?'”
Filoni: “Do we even show a person? Everything’s on the table at that point. You want it to be what everyone imagines it or dreams it to be, and when we came up with the elevator and the door, it’s like ‘Who’s on the other side of that door?'”
Once the episode dropped, many viewers began to wonder if we’ll see Ahmed Best’s Jedi character again. After all, the flashback concludes with Beq and Grogu escaping into hyperspace, and we still don’t know how the young foundling-to-be ended up on Arvala-7 in the show’s pilot episode. Favreau didn’t outright confirm that Beq would show up again, but he seemed open to the idea:
Favreau: “It was great, and now that character exists squarely in Star Wars canon. I think people dig seeing that character. I want to learn more about that character.”
Additionally, Filoni spoke about how much he likes to have veteran Star Wars actors return to the saga:
Filoni: ” You know, when you’re a veteran of this thing, I think it hits you in probably a very different way. And he worked with George, which is very special. It’s such a close-knit group of people now. And I think it’s fun to have these people still included. Like in Obi-Wan, you know, Hayden and Ewan, how great was it just seeing them? It lives on, Star Wars keeps continuing in the best possible way.”
We don’t yet know if we’ll see Kelleran Beq in The Mandalorian again or not, but even if the character doesn’t return, he got to play a key role in helping Grogu survive the horrors of Order 66. By extension, that means Kelleran Beq helped make sure that The Mandalorian‘s story got to happen at all, and that’s worth celebrating indeed.
Eric has been a fan of Star Wars ever since the age of five (or so) when his parents sat him down in front of a TV with pizza and a Sprite and showed him the original trilogy. He keeps trying to convince more fans to read the amazing 1980s Star Wars newspaper comics by Archie Goodwin and Al Williamson. When he's not reading, watching or playing Star Wars media, he's often enjoying other great fantasy and science fiction sagas or playing roleplaying games with his friends.
