The Mandalorian Will Reveal the First Order’s Rise to Power
Now that we’ve gotten a glimpse at The Mandalorian‘s trailer and learned a bit more courtesy Disney’s D23 Expo, a clearer picture of the first-ever live-action Star Wars series is coming into focus. Jon Favreau’s series has been kept under wraps until recently, so it’s nice to see the Sarlacc pit of Secrecy finally start to cough up some juicy tidbits. In a conversation with Entertainment Weekly, Favreau and executive producer Dave Filoni explained how The Mandalorian will offer some insight into to the rise of First Order.
The First Order was first glimpsed in J.J. Abrams’ The Force Awakens, which introduced us to Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) and the rest of the Empire 2.0 that had come into power in the galaxy since the events in the original trilogy. By the time of the events in The Force Awakens, some 32-years had passed since the Empire had been destroyed. We were introduced to a new power structure, one very much in control, that seemed to be controlled by Supreme Leader Snoke (Andy Serkis) much in the way the Empire was controlled by Emperor Palpatine.
The Mandalorian is set about 25-years before the events in The Force Awakens, a mere five years after Return of the Jedi, which provides Favreau and his team a chance to take a hard look at what happened to turn the tide back into the favor of an authoritarian regime. As Filoni told EW, evil hardly just shrugs its shoulders and walks away just because the good guys won:
“This doesn’t turn into a good guy universe because you blew up two Death Stars. You get that the Rebels won and they’re trying to establish a Republic, but there’s no way that could have set in for everybody all at once. You have in a Western where you’re out on the frontier and there might be Washington and they might have some marshals, but sometimes good luck finding one.”
It seems fairly evident that The Mandalorian is a series set on that frontier. Pedro Pascal’s titular Mandalorian, in his full Boba Fett-like bounty hunting gear, is clearly an outlaw. Set on Luke Skywalker’s distant home planet of Tatooine, The Mandalorian will feature a cast of characters at the margins of galactic society. Favreau explained to EW that The Mandalorian will dive into the gap between the two dictatorships and help shed light on how the First Order rose up:
“What could happen in the 30 years between celebrating the defeat of the Empire and then the First Order? You come in on Episode VII, [the First Order are] not just starting out. They’re pretty far along…So somehow, things weren’t necessarily managed as well as they could have been if [the galaxy] ended up in hot water again like that.”
EW also revealed that The Mandalorian will be weaving in narrative elements from across the Star Wars canon, not just the Skywalker saga films, but also animated series from the Extended Universe. This means that The Mandalorian has any number of rich narrative veins to tap, and the rise of the First Order will likely be but one.
The Mandalorian debuts on Disney+ on November 12, 2019.
