Jon Favreau has confirmed what fans suspected about Disney's plans for The Mandalorian Season 4. The live-action Star Wars series spanned three seasons on Disney+ before it was announced that it would be making the jump to the big screen in 2026, with The Mandalorian & Grogu. This raised questions over whether a fourth season of The Mandalorian would happen, or if the duo's film adventure had replaced it.
Favreau confirmed in 2023, amid The Mandalorian Season 3's release, that he'd completed scripts for Season 4 of the show. However, these never transpired, and instead, The Mandalorian & Grogu was announced in 2024. In an interview with Empire, Favreau said they "were planning on doing a fourth season," confirming that he still had the scripts for it. However, when the opportunity came up to do The Mandalorian & Grogu as a feature film, these storylines were reworked as a movie instead:
Jon Favreau: "We were planning on doing a fourth season. I had actually written all of that. I still have Season 4 sitting on my desk here...
It's structured around a movie structure, as opposed to a serialised weekly television show. So there's a larger throw to the whole thing."
It was long suspected that The Mandalorian & Grogu was happening in place of Season 4 of the Disney+ show, which Favreau has now confirmed. However, the film will be a direct continuation of the series, rather than a complete restart or sidequel.
Favreau previously confirmed that The Mandalorian & Grogu will be in keeping with the spirit of the series, focusing on the core relationship between Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) and his young clan member Grogu. The director said the film will involve an evolution of the pair's relationship, with Mando's job now being "to train [Grogu]", although the two will still "go out on adventures [where] they have to work together:"
Jon Fravreau: "Now, as they go off, as it said at the end of the last season, it's his job to train him. And they have to go out on adventures and they have to work together. And so there's apprenticeship that's happening between the two of them."
This seems like the likely direction that The Mandalorian Season 4 would have taken, just now condensed into a feature film format rather than being stretched across eight episodes. Although it is unclear how many of Favreau's Season 4 script ideas were scrapped in the making of The Mandalorian & Grogu, and whether they might ever see the light of day.
The Mandalorian & Grogu will be released on May 22, 2026. The movie stars Pedro Pascal, Sigourney Weaver, and Jeremy Allen White, and is co-written by Favreau and Dave Filoni.
Will The Mandalorian Season 4 Ever Happen?
Following the Season 3 finale of The Mandalorian, which left many fans disappointed, a lot is riding on the success of The Mandalorian & Grogu. This is the first time a Star Wars TV show has made the jump to the big screen, and it's hoped that the film may address some of the issues fans had with the third season of the Disney+ show.
It seems likely that if The Mandalorian & Grogu is a proven success at the box office, it will become a strictly theatrical project, rather than returning to its serialised roots. There are even rumors that Lucasfilm wants to commission a trilogy of The Mandalorian & Grogu films if the first one performs well.
If this formula works for Lucasfilm, it could pave the way for even more Star Wars TV heroes to appear on the big screen. Dave Filoni, the co-creator of The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett, and Ahsoka, has long had an untitled Star Wars film project on his docket, which is said to be a crossover movie culminating the events of The Mandalorian and Star Wars Rebels TV universes.
If this strategy proves successful, it could give Lucasfilm its second major Star Wars story saga, alongside the Skywalker Saga that concluded with Episode IX in 2019.
