Just the other day, it was announced that the new Star Wars live action TV show that Jon Favreau is show running will be titled “The Mandalorian.” The description that accompanied this announcement was this:
“After the stories of Jango and Boba Fett, another warrior emerges in the Star Wars universe. The Mandalorian is set after the fall of the Empire and before the emergence of the First Order. We follow the travails of a lone gunfighter in the outer reaches of the galaxy far from the authority of the New Republic.”
Based on what we know so far, this looks like it could be a really, really good show. And it’s not about Boba Fett. Or, at least, not directly.
So what do we actually know so far? And what do we suspect? Let’s review…
1) Director Jon Favreau was the man who directed the Iron Man movies (and executive produced the last two Avengers movies), Cowboys & Aliens, and the cancelled-too-soon series Revolution, among many others. Dude knows how to tell a good story. And he’s just as comfortable with fast-paced action, fun Western-style sci-fi, and dramatic long form storytelling. So that’s promising.
2) People love Boba Fett, and generally think falling into a Sarlacc pit was a lame way for such a great character’s story to end. In the old Extended Universe books, comics, and role playing game (which are no longer canon), there were stories of how Boba Fett escaped the Sarlacc pit, hunted down an imposter, continued hunting Luke and Leia, and went on to have many more adventures. Which was great, but felt more like fan service than a real story arc. And at conventions it’s pretty astonishing how many varieties of custom Mandalorian armor cosplayers have come up with.
3) Because of their love of Boba Fett (and how little of his back story was known for so long), there’s a huge appetite for more stories about the history of Mandalore and other Mandalorian characters. The Clone Wars TV series had a whole plot line about what was happening on Mandalore during the Clone Wars. And the Rebels TV series featured a Mandalorian called Sabine Wren, and went into some detail on where the Mandalorians were in the years leading up to A New Hope.
4) In the Star Wars: Aftermath book series, by Chuck Wendig, there are a series of “interlude” chapters that don’t have much to do with the main story, but tell a background story line about things that are happening on Tatooine.
They mainly follow a man called Cobb Vanth, who buys some Mandalorian armor (heavily implied to be Fett’s) from Jawas, and goes on to become the sheriff of a small town. It’s intentionally left vague whether he’s a new character who happened across the armor, or if he’s Boba Fett reclaiming his armor and starting a new life.
If The Mandalorian is a Western-style show about Cobb Vanth that slowly unfurls his back story and leaves you guessing as to whether or not he’s Fett until mid-season 2, I would be perfectly happy with that. And given the way these “interlude” chapters were sprinkled into the books in the same manner as back story hints for the other recent Star Wars movies, I’d say there’s a pretty reasonable chance this could be the case.
5) We’re very likely to see more seeds of back story leading into this series next year. In August 2019, the final season of the Clone Wars TV series will air, over 5 years after what we had previously thought was the final season. It ties up one of the last story lines left hanging by the original series: The Siege of Mandalore.
And The Mandalorian will premiere on Disney’s new streaming service, which is expected to launch shortly after that in Fall 2019. Perfect timing for a tie-in. Whether or not The Mandalorian series pulls in the Cobb Vanth character, it’s almost guaranteed that the final season of Clone Wars will include characters or plot points that tie into the story of The Mandalorian.
Personally, I’m hoping for a Cobb Vanth story. Because I want to know how this all plays out…
“What you think I stole, I say I earned. You think I’m just some slave, and that’s one part of the story. But you don’t know the rest. What I’ve seen. Who I was before. And I know my time is short. I’ve poked the monster, and now it is awake. I’ll die in service to this town, and maybe this town will die with me. But we won’t be the last, not by a long shot.”
- Cobb Vanth (“Star Wars Aftermath: Empire’s End”)
