without any major legacy characters...at
least, not in the first season.
“I’ve always been curious what the other
people in the cantina are up to,” Favreau
says. “We’re digging really deep in the toy
chest and pulling out the action figures that
people were always curious about and were
not quite in the center frame, but have a lot
of potential.”
At first glance, the lead character on The
Mandalorian is just Boba Fett by another
name. But look closer. Boba Fett, despite
that armor, wasn’t actually Mandalorian
(he was a clone who culturally appropri-
ated the look). “And unlike Boba, he’s
operating in a much more unforgiving land-
scape where survival is difficult enough, let
alone flourishing,” Favreau says. Plus, as
star Pedro Pascal (Game of Thrones) puts it,
the Mandalorian would prefer to do the
right thing, “but his duties could very much
be in conflict with that—and doing the right
thing has many faces.”
Speaking of faces, don’t expect to see
Pascal’s very often. The Mandalorian —or
“Mando,” as he’s called on set—is pretty
fond of keeping that helmet on. (Pascal, not
so much. The actor spent a bit of time
bumping into things around the set before
he got the hang of it.) Centering a TV series
on a character obscured by a mask is per-
haps the show’s boldest move, but if
anybody can make the premise work it’s
Favreau, who directed a little masked-man
movie called Iron Man. Assisted by Pascal’s laconic line delivery
and terse physicality, Favreau manages to infuse the character with
a surprising amount of personality. “It’s amazing how many Star
Wars characters are emotionally engaging that aren’t even anthro-
pomorphic,” Favreau points out. “R2-D2 is my favorite character
and he barely has an eye.”
Another faceless character is IG-11, an assassin droid voiced by
director Taika Waititi (Thor: Ragnarok). The Kiwi, who also helmed
the season 1 finale, labored on finding the perfect voice for the role
before landing on a tone that he says is somewhere between Siri
and HAL 9000. “[IG-11 is] very innocent and naive and direct and
doesn’t know about sarcasm and doesn’t know how to lie,” Waititi
says. “It’s like a child with a gun.”
Rounding out the world of The Mandalorian are Haywire’s Gina
Carano as Cara Dune, a Rebel Shock Trooper-turned-mercenary;
Rocky’s Carl Weathers as Greef Carga, the leader of a bounty hunters’
guild; and Breaking Bad’s Giancarlo Esposito as Moff Gideon, a for-
mer governor under the Galactic Empire whose world fell apart
when those pesky Rebels blew up the second Death Star. “He’s an
Imperial remnant of a very fine officer who then switches to become
sort of the guardian of the people,” says Esposito, who had his favor-
ite Star Wars geek-out moment when he got to climb into a TIE
fighter. “But what does [Moff Gideon] really want? This guy is going
to be a big player because he has an idea of how to keep order.”
Ah yes, order. Eventually this time period gives rise to the First
Order, whose origins are still mysterious. The Mandalorian team
expects to ultimately explore those formative roots. In fact, filling in
the mythology of Star Wars with new canon content on a TV series is
a specialty of producer Filoni, who has quietly become the most pro-
lific storyteller in the Star Wars universe, having crafted hundreds of
animated episodes across a trio of series such as The Clone Wars.
“I’ve seen a lot of Star Wars,” Filoni says. “And what’s most excit-
ing to me is that I am very confident we did some things—and fans
will see things—that have never been seen before.” �↑ Shock Trooper–
turned–fugitive
mercenary Cara Dune
(Gina Carano) teams
with “Mando”