Giancarlo Esposito Knows Nothing About ‘The Mandalorian’ Season 4, but Would Return if Jon Favreau Asked Him
The third season of The Mandalorian had a tragic ending in store for the main antagonist of the show so far, as Giancarlo Esposito’s Moff Gideon lost his fight against the Mandalorians and was caught by a column of fire caused by Axe Woves crashing a giant ship into the Empire’s base. However, that happened just a few minutes after we learned that Moff Gideon had been secretly working on creating Force-sensitive clones of himself (tying up an open plot thread from the first season), which fueled some speculation that the Gideon we saw die was actually one of those clones.
In a recent interview with TheWrap, Esposito himself addressed his presence in the third season of the show and that piece of speculation about his possible return in future seasons. It’s not the first time the actor professes public admiration for the work that Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni are doing in the show, and in the interview, he tried to explain why he finds Gideon such an exciting character:
“I liked this character of Moff Gideon for a lot of reasons. One is he controls the chaos like no other; two is that he’s very smart and knows everything. That’s a given. And he has abilities. He’s not only good with this very foreign object, the darksaber that doesn’t belong to him but really does fit with him. He’s really good with his TIE fighter. And now in this third season, we see him masterminding something that he really wants not knowing, as an audience, what the true vision is. And that’s exciting. The antihero is really just a fallen hero. There’s a complication about him that I try to live and breathe with when I’m on the set.”
So when asked about the possibility of him coming back, either as one of the clones in the army or after revealing that the character that we saw at the end of the episode was actually a clone, Esposito revealed that he knows nothing about the next season:
“I know nothing about Season 4. (Jon) hasn’t tipped his hat to me. So many fans are like, ‘You were a clone, right?’ It could be. I trust Jon knows what he’s doing. I would love to keep dying and coming back. That’d be my favorite thing of all. There are a lot of ways to go and I’m open to whatever they have in play.”
This is certainly an interesting comment, considering that Esposito was the first to reveal that Favreau and Filoni were looking into making at least four seasons of The Mandalorian back in 2020. At the time, before season 2 even premiered, he told People Magazine:
“We’re living in a universe that is huge and there’s so much to explore, so I think this show is going to lay the ground work for the depth and breath that’s gonna come in season 3 and season 4, where you’re really gonna start to get answers.”
Of course, almost three years later, this doesn’t mean much. Plans could have changed for what Favreau and Filoni first outlined, Esposito could have been bluffing back then about how much he knew, or he could be lying now. However, as much as we’ve come to love him by now, the truth is that Gideon’s presence has been felt more off-screen than on-screen.
He’s had an episode and a half of screen time per season, so it’s not like The Mandalorian needs him as an antagonist. We’ve already learned a lot about him, and since the end of season 3 teased the end of an era for Din Djarin, perhaps we are moving on from him too. At the same time, we were teased quite a showdown with Grand Admiral Thrawn in Chapter 23 and the show has been at its finest whenever it utilizes Gideon, so there’s that to take into account as well.
Production on The Mandalorian season 4 has been postponed indefinitely, as Lucasfilm waits for the writers’ strike to be over (it was initially targeting an October start in LA). We will likely not be getting it before 2025.
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.
