We know when the next season of The Mandalorian will hit Disney Plus. In an announcement that came from the official Star Wars twitter account, Lucasfilm confirmed season 3, starring Pedro Pascal in the title role, will premiere on Mar. 1. There was no accompanying trailer, just a new still image, but Disney released a teaser for the new season at the D23 Expo in September.
The Mandalorian’s season 2 finale at the tail end of 2020 seemed to close the book on the show we knew. By the final scene, the Mandalorian and his pal Grogu found a semblance of closure in their race across the galaxy thanks to a familiar face. Of course, a few lingering plot threads made a season 3 completely possible — what would Din Djarin do with that pesky Darksaber?
Then The Book of Boba Fett, nominally a showcase for Temura Morrison’s famed Star Wars bounty hunter, surprised many watchers by devoting multiple episodes to Din Djarin — some without a single appearance from Boba Fett himself. And episodes with lasting developments in Djarin’s story. Any Mandalorian fan who sits down for the show’s third season without watching Boba Fett is signing up for a lot of confusion.
[Ed. note: The following paragraph contains spoilers for The Book of Boba Fett.]
By the end of Fett, our Mandalorian had been exiled from his adopted sect for allowing others to see him without his helmet, and after much deliberation about whether Grogu would be better off as a Jedi or a Mandalorian, father and son were reunited. Quite the reversal from the finale of season 2!
With Book of Boba Fett airing its final episode in February of 2022, it’s been a long wait without an update on the adventures of Mando and Grogu. Reports from April 2020 suggested that work on The Mandalorian season 3 was already underway before the season 2 premiere. Thanks to the show’s unique “stagecraft” technology, which allows the crew to shoot mostly indoors against a rear-projected LED screen, the assumption was that even through COVID-19 restrictions a new season could get up and running in time for a 2021 release.
But shortly after the season 2 finale premiere, Jon Favreau took to Good Morning America to clarify, slightly, the Star Wars show rollout plans, which by then included Andor, Obi-Wan, Rangers of the New Republic, Ahsoka, and everything else announced in the infamous 2019 Star Wars TV show info dump.
Favreau said at the time that The Book of Boba Fett would debut in December of 2021 — he was right! — and by then, the Star Wars crew would already be at work on The Mandalorian season 3 “back with the main character that we’ve known and loved.” Sources eventually confirmed that season 3 began shooting in October 2021.
With Lucasfilm juggling other big Disney Plus shows this fall — like Andor, Tales of the Jedi and Willow, all before The Bad Batch season 2 premieres in January — that left Mando pushed out to 2023. But while fans of The Mandalorian may be starving for something new, at least March is only three months away.
The post The Mandalorian season 3 comes out in March appeared first on Polygon.
