It’s Official, The Mandalorian Is Returning to Star Wars Just 2 Months After His Movie

The Mandalorian is officially returning to Star Wars just two months after his movie reached theaters. Pedro Pascal’s Din Djarin carried the franchise back to the big screen in The Mandalorian and Grogu, which premiered on May 22 as the first theatrical Star Wars release in seven years. Since then, fans have waited for word on the armored bounty hunter’s next appearance. Now they have an answer.

Din Djarin features in Ashes of the Empire, the eighth set of the Star Wars: Unlimited trading card game, which launches on July 17. That puts the character back in an official Star Wars release eight weeks to the day after The Mandalorian and Grogu premiered. The new set also happens to cover the stretch of the timeline where his story unfolds, the years right after the fall of the Galactic Empire.

Fantasy Flight Games, the tabletop publisher behind Star Wars: Unlimited, centers its newest set on the Battle of Endor and everything that came after it. Star Wars: Unlimited pitches Ashes of the Empire as a set about "the period of uncertainty" the Empire left behind.

That era belongs to Din Djarin as much as anyone. The set pulls its lineup from Return of the Jedi, The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett, and Ahsoka, and the roster of confirmed characters includes Grogu, Bo-Katan Kryze, Sabine Wren, and Grand Admiral Thrawn. Luke Skywalker and Emperor Palpatine are the faces of the set’s two ready-to-play Spotlight Decks, while Leia Organa, Han Solo, Rey, and Darth Vader appear among the more than 260 new cards.

Interestingly, the card game and the movie already crossed paths once. Moviegoers who caught The Mandalorian and Grogu at participating AMC Theatres on May 21 and May 22 received promo packs containing two cards from this very set, an alternate-art Grogu leader and a Razor Crest unit. 

Jon Favreau directed The Mandalorian and Grogu and wrote it with Dave Filoni and Noah Kloor. The story sent Din Djarin and his young apprentice on a New Republic mission to rescue Rotta the Hutt, played by Jeremy Allen White. Sigourney Weaver also joined the cast as New Republic officer Colonel Ward.

Where Will the Mandalorian Appear Next?

The bigger question behind this card game return is what comes next on screen for Din Djarin, and right now the honest answer is nothing confirmed. The Mandalorian and Grogu passed $300 million worldwide, yet it trails every other live-action Star Wars movie at the box office, and Disney has announced no sequel. Jon Favreau wrote a fourth season of The Mandalorian before those plans gave way to the film, and that season remains shelved. The only MandoVerse project currently moving forward is Ahsoka Season 2, where a Din Djarin cameo is possible but far from promised.

The clearest route back remains Dave Filoni’s crossover movie, which Lucasfilm announced in 2023 as the event that would unite the MandoVerse shows and which the studio never cancelled. Any version of that story naturally needs Din Djarin's presence, since so much of the era’s conflict involves him directly, including Grogu’s future and the fight for Mandalore. Pascal left little doubt about his side of the equation during the film’s press tour, telling DiscussingFilm that "whatever my body can do, and however long people want to experience these stories with these characters, is how long I want it to last." His co-star Sigourney Weaver went further, admitting that “in an ideal world, I’d love to make another ‘Mandalorian and Grogu.’”

Until Lucasfilm commits to something bigger, the tabletop and publishing side is where Din Djarin will remain. A young readers one-shot comic titled Danger in the Dark brings Din Djarin and Grogu back again on July 22, and the franchise’s next theatrical release, Star Wars: Starfighter, jumps to a different era entirely when the Ryan Gosling movie arrives on May 28, 2027. The current Star Wars slate makes Din Djarin's on-screen return uncertain, which makes a release like Ashes of the Empire his main stage for the moment.