If you turn on The Mandalorian Season 3 having skipped The Book of Boba Fett, you will undoubtedly be confused. At the end of Season 2, Mando went one way and Grogu went another — off to train to be a Jedi with none other than Luke Skywalker. Training to be a Jedi is a major commitment, one that would supposedly keep the Mandalorian and his little Yoda buddy from seeing each other again. And yet when Season 3 begins, as evidenced by the series’ latest trailer, Mando and Grogu are back together.
That’s because the characters’ entire status quo was reset during the spinoff Star Wars series The Book of Boba Fett. That show’s fifth episode was basically an episode of The Mandalorian in everything but its title, and Din Djarin wound up sticking around thru Boba Fett’s finale, at which point Grogu basically had Jedi buyers’ remorse, and left Luke Skywalker to go back to a life exploring the galaxy with Pedro Pascal.
THE MANDALORIAN, Season 3Lucasfilm Ltd.
It’s been something of an open question why all of this happened on The Book of Boba Fett, instead of on Season 3 of The Mandalorian, at least until series creator Jon Favreau was asked to explain that choice this week by io9. Here was what he said:
It became clear to me as we were looking at what their lives would be like apart … I guess you could do Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid as like Butch Cassidy a few episodes and the Sundance Kid separately. But they’re both bumming. They’re both not their best selves without the other person, but yet you want to have time spent apart.
Favreau added that “the two years between when the last episode aired of season two and [now] allowed for time to pass. But it did force us to create stories around them, each individually. It just felt like that’s where the dramatic momentum was.”
Favreau may be right that Grogu and Mando work better together than separately. But as the creator and writer and producer of The Mandalorian, he was the one who split them up in the first place, and then he was the one who had them resolve that separation on a totally different show that he also created. I’m still not entirely sure why that storyline couldn‘t have been the premise of the first couple episodes of The Mandalorian Season 3 — or why it made more sense to pause the entire storyline of The Book of Boba Fett in order to insert that storyline there.
Maybe it’ll make more sense once we see where The Mandalorian Season 3 goes? It premieres tomorrow on Disney+.
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