The latest issue of Empire Magazine promised a new look at next summer’s The Mandalorian and Grogu, and it delivered. Alongside a new image featuring the titular characters, director Jon Favreau shared some insight into the characters’ relationship as they chart a new path with the New Republic.
When we first met Din Djarin in that iconic opening scene of The Mandalorian, he was clearly a lone wolf, moving through his life, capturing bounties, and seemingly focused on his own needs.
By the end of that first episode, he meets Grogu. At the end of that first season, the two are clearly a pair, working together and bonded by the classic teacher/apprentice relationship, a staple of Star Wars storytelling. In The Mandalorian and Grogu, director Jon Favreau tells Empire that we will see further change for Din Djarin:
“The Mandalorian has changed his priorities… One of the last things we say [in Season 3] is, like, ‘I don’t want to go out there and just be a hired gun. I want to work for the good guys.’”
One of the “good guys” he is referring to is the New Republic’s Colonel Ward, played by Sigourney Weaver, who gives Djarin his marching orders.
Favreau hints that he’ll be joining up with Zeb Orrelios of Rebels, who appeared briefly in Season 3 of The Mandalorian. He teases his larger role but likely will have a larger role in the upcoming film:
“Now we get to really have fun with him, he’s such a compelling character, even if you’ve never seen Rebels, between the voice, the swagger, and the physical ability.”
The focus, however, will remain on Din and Grogu and their special relationship, which served as the basis for the Disney Plus series.
“That central relationship, as they go off and face adventure together, that’s the underpinning of the film… Star Wars is always about progression and growth and characters evolving, sometimes for the good, sometimes for the bad. It’s about apprenticeship, it’s about one generation teaching the next. There’s more growth that happens over the course of the film.”
The Mandalorian and Grogu will be the first Star Wars film to hit theaters since 2019’s Rise of Skywalker and will be released on May 22, 2026. The latest issue of Empire Magazine is released on Thursday, November 20. Stay tuned here at Star Wars News Net in case more from the upcoming film is shared.
In 1977, Rob waited on line with his older sister for Star Wars and he has been experiencing and dreaming about the franchise ever since. A lifelong New Yorker, he is married with two grown daughters. And he anxiously awaits for that time once again, when the houselights dim and those magic words appear: “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…”