The Mandalorian & Grogu director, Jon Favreau, has revealed his reason for leaving out certain Star Wars characters from Lucasfilm's new blockbuster movie. The latest Star Wars film is a continuation of the journey that ran for three seasons on Disney+ in The Mandalorian, but when reformatting the intended fourth season for a movie, Favreau had to make some changes.
With The Mandalorian and Ahsoka working hand in hand to build out a live-action TV universe for Star Wars (dubbed the "MandoVerse"), there was some hope that the movie might do the same on the big screen. Yet The Mandalorian & Grogu has very little connective tissue to the wider Star Wars world, outside of characters like Zeb Orrelios, the Hutt twins, and Embo.
Many hoped that a character like Ahsoka Tano might make an appearance, given her role in Season 2 of the Disney+ show, or that Grand Admiral Thrawn could make his big-screen debut here, as he was intended to appear in The Mandalorian Season 4 before it was reworked. However, The Mandalorian & Grogu is now out for all to see, and neither character appears.
Favreau explained to Entertainment Weekly that this was a necessary choice as the feature film format "changed the way we approached how interconnected things should be." The director pointed out that the "nature of a serialized long-form TV story" assumed knowledge of previous seasons, and that wouldn't work for audiences coming fresh to The Mandalorian & Grogu in cinemas:
"When we were discussing doing a fourth season of [The Mandalorian], which was put on hold, and then the idea of doing a theatrical presentation… It changed the way we approached how interconnected things should be. A fourth season of a show would have assumed that you saw three seasons previously and, frankly, everything else on Disney+. That's the nature of a serialized long-form TV story."
The Mandalorian & Grogu was a notable experiment for Star Wars, marking the first time one of its Disney+ TV shows has made the jump to the big screen. After three seasons' worth of storytelling and a crossover with The Book of Boba Fett, the Mandalorian and his young apprentice were well established in the TV universe. However, for The Mandalorian & Grogu to be as accessible to as many people as possible, it needed to provide a story that served as an entry point for new viewers and maintained what was beloved for the ongoing fans.
Favreau added that the decision to include characters like Zeb rather than Ahsoka or Thrawn was an effort to find "the Venn diagram where those things overlap:"
“We did put some characters in that people know about and want to see more of, and I think Zeb is a really good example of that... I think somebody who's never seen Zeb before totally gets it and thinks he's cool, too. So that's where we're looking for the Venn diagram where those things overlap, and that's a good example."
Dave Filoni, co-writer on The Mandalorian and Grogu and Lucasfilm's new CEO, said that "it's not always about character crossovers" in Star Wars. The executive maintained that "when we find the right reason to have characters intersect, we definitely do it:"
"It’s not always about character crossovers, I’ll say that. It’s about the characters and what they’re experiencing...
We brought Ahsoka into The Mandalorian originally because she would be a great character to explain [to] Grogu a bit more about his history. So when we find the right reason to have characters intersect, we definitely do it."
The Mandalorian & Grogu stars Pedro Pascal, Sigourney Weaver, and Jeremy Allen White. It was released in theaters on May 22, 2026.
Did The Mandalorian & Grogu Need More Character Crossovers?
The Mandalorian & Grogu delivers on Favreau's promise to be an easily accessible story for fans both old and new, but that still comes with a share of detriments.
By removing cameos and plot threads from the wider MandoVerse story, The Mandalorian & Grogu loses some of what made the show engaging, as it feels like the Disney+ show was contributing to an overarching narrative, whereas the movie feels very self-contained. Even with the inclusion of Zeb, a prominent Star Wars Rebels character, The Mandalorian & Grogu didn't utilize him to weave in any broader story points, instead keeping him as the pair's wisecracking accomplice.
With The Mandalorian & Grogu avoiding the greater narrative, the responsibility now falls onto Ahsoka Season 2 to continue the story of the MandoVerse, as it is the only remaining live-action Star Wars series in this saga.
It is a shame, considering The Mandalorian kick-started a new era of Star Wars storytelling, that to succeed on the big screen, The Mandalorian & Grogu had to cut ties with the world it had helped to establish.
