Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy hinted at a wide variety of Star Wars characters in Dave Filoni’s Mandalorian crossover film.
Anyone paying attention to Star Wars recently will surely know that three new feature films were announced for the beloved franchise at Star Wars Celebration 2023.
Indeed, Dave Filoni was confirmed to be helming a crossover event movie that combines storylines and characters from the post-Return of the Jedi reconstruction era, colloquially known as the MandoVerse.
Elements from The Mandalorian, Ahsoka, and other series set in that timeframe are fully expected to be included in the motion picture.
Kennedy Indicates Big Cast of Characters for MandoVerse Film
Speaking to Entertainment Weekly at Star Wars Celebration 2023, Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy discussed that the cast of Dave Filoni’s MandoVerse crossover film will include players from beyond the established Disney+ shows. When asked if the movie will be a meet-up of characters from The Mandalorian along with its spin-off shows (The Book of Boba Fett, Ahsoka, and Skeleton Crew) Kennedy teased that familiar faces from even more projects beyond those could appear:
"I hesitate to say it's a big meetup from just those [series] because Dave has been developing Star Wars storytelling inside Clone Wars and Rebels and so much of the work he has done for 20 years. So it will be little bits of all of that. There are a lot of sources he's drawing from to see where we're going."
Many expect this movie to be a large-scale Avengers-style crossover, and Kathleen Kennedy’s words lend a lot more credence to that particular theory.
Additionally, IGN interviewed Dave Filoni and his producing partner Jon Favreau. Filoni. The outlet inquired about Kennedy’s note that this movie is still six or seven years out, asking whether or not this was something that was always planned.
Filoni confirmed this to be the case: “I think in certain ways, yes. But it's definitely developed out of the stories we've been doing.”
Favreau had much more to say on the world he and Filoni have been crafting on Disney+ through series like The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett, noting that a culmination of these story threads was always going to occur.
“Yeah. We knew the story would culminate. You have little culminations that come with each season. You have characters and things that thread in and out, especially with multiple seasons… multiple series happening in the same timeframe. And you're dealing with characters, especially on Ahsoka and The Mandalorian… you're seeing it kind of from a ground-level perspective.“
Favreau continued, remarking on the lack of context that someone like Din Djarin’s perspective can provide.
“If you're catching glimpses of characters or things that are happening in the galaxy, you're kind of seeing it through the eyes of somebody who doesn't really have a lot of context.”
The producer went on to explain that the MandoVerse’s storylines “start to demand that you deal with larger forces” as it brings in important characters such as Bo-Katan Kryze.
“But in the case of Ahsoka, she’s a character who's been around long before her appearance on the Mandalorian, and also as we're dealing with Bo-Katan. These are characters with a lot of political implications to what's happening in the meta-narrative in Star Wars, and those characters and these storylines start to demand that you deal with larger forces and bigger trends within that time period.“
Even with everything going on narratively Favreau promised that the crossover film will kick things into a higher gear and quickly “come to a head.”
“So at a certain point, the rubber is going to hit the road in many ways. And the fact that now audiences will accept a permeability between media, which I think has been, as you see with the Star Wars films and with the Marvel films…Audiences are very sophisticated now, and if they're invested in the characters and the stories, you can tell types of stories in one medium that you can't with the other. There are certain limitations you have with cinema because we have a lot of narrative structure to deal with, with the amount of minutes that we do each season....But with a movie, you have to make sure that it all kind of comes to a head and resolves in that two-hour period.”
Who Could Appear in The Mandalorian’s Movie?
The MandoVerse is roughly four seasons in at this point, with The Mandalorian Season 3 only running for two more episodes. On top of that, Ahsoka and Skeleton Crew will premiere later this year and are fully expected to tie into this subsection of the Star Wars timeline.
What’s more, with the movie being so far away, there’s even more of an opportunity to bring in additional shows and characters. So, this movie could potentially end up rivaling Marvel’s Avengers: Endgame in its scope.
Kathleen Kennedy teased that Filoni would be pulling from the work he’s done in the past for this movie, meaning fans could expect aspects of The Clone Wars and Rebels to come into play even more so than they already have been.
Furthermore, if Grand Admiral Thrawn is truly massing a huge Imperial force, that might necessitate the presence of some of Star Wars’ most iconic heroes: Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, and Leia Organa.
It’s quite plausible that a MandoVerse movie could call in these legendary characters through the use of deepfake and de-aging technology. After all, these shows have already used Luke in a significant capacity.
In any case, The Mandalorian drops new episodes on Wednesdays, only on Disney+. Ahsoka will premiere in August.
