Star Wars: The Mandalorian could be facing an uncertain future

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The future of Star Wars: The Mandalorian may be looking slightly uncertain, with the last episode of Season 3 feeling more like a series finale.

Chapter 24 of Star Wars: The Mandalorian dropped on Disney+ last week, with ‘The Return’ featuring an epic battle for Mandalore, the apparent defeat of Moff Gideon and a new status quo established for Din Djarin and Grogu. While the Season 3 finale managed to wrap up the current storyline quite neatly, there are still plenty of questions surrounding the future of the series in an ever-expanding universe of Star Wars movies and TV shows.

The closing scene of ‘The Return’ may have left a lot of fans of The Mandalorian scratching their heads. Din Djarin and (now Din) Grogu took up Greef Karga’s offer of a cabin and a plot of land on Nevarro, awaiting new missions and adventures working for the New Republic. Interestingly, the final fade to black for the episode has only previously been used to close out trilogy saga films, suggesting to some that Star Wars: The Mandalorian itself has now come to an end.

Adding fuel to the fire was the lack of any panel for The Mandalorian series at the recent Star Wars Celebration Europe 2023, nor was there any appearance by Pedro Pascal at the event. So what could this mean for the future of the show that kickstarted the Disney+ live-action Star Wars line-up, one that’s set the gold standard for others to follow?

Well, the good news is that a fourth series of The Mandalorian is in active development, as confirmed by the show’s creator, Jon Favreau. Writing for Season 4 was reportedly completed by February 2023, with pre-production due to have taken place by April of this year and filming to commence in Q4. No release date has yet been revealed for the series, although sometime in late 2024 is certainly a possibility.

At Star Wars Celebration Europe 2023, Rick Famuyiwa (who directed the last two episodes of The Mandalorian Season 3) mentioned that the themes in the third season were all about, “Examining this idea around culture and what it means to be Mandalorian, and what the title means, and who are we talking about? A lot of interesting seeds have been planted that we’ll see some resolution on.”

In terms of resolution, the final episode of The Mandalorian Season 3 certainly wrapped up plenty of loose ends, with the emergence of a new Mandalore, Din Djarin putting his feet up (at least for now) and Grogu being adopted and receiving a new name, but the universe that Favreau and his colleagues have created does still look set to continue. It was announced at Star Wars Celebration Europe 2023 that Dave Filoni would be directing his first ever Star Wars feature film, one that will focus on the New Republic and close out the interconnected stories told in The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett and the upcoming Ahsoka.

That news suggests that the movie could most likely hit the big screen after Season 4 of The Mandalorian arrives on Disney+, although that’s yet to be confirmed. Favreau has also stated that, “As Dave (Filoni)’s doing Ahsoka, it’s very much informing the writing that I’m doing for Season 4,” further linking the two shows together. Filoni himself has gone on to drop a few additional hints regarding his film, stating that, “On a base level, I would just say the coming conflict, the growing idea that the Empire wasn’t as defeated as a lot of people want to believe and that the remnant is out there. We saw that from the very beginning with The Mandalorian and how Gideon was plotting. There are always people that are willing to undermine something the Republic is trying to build and put back on its feet.”

Whether Star Wars: The Mandalorian Season 4 will feature Pedro Pascal as the title character or if the show will instead focus on other Mandalorian characters is not yet known. However, it’s highly-unlikely we’ve seen the last of these fan favourite faces and that their journey together should continue for some time to come.

Images: Star Wars

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