The first live-action Star Wars series The Mandalorian takes place between the events of Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens, and follows a “lone gunfighter in the outer reaches of the galaxy far from the authority of the New Republic.” The most famous Mandalorians, Jango and Boba Fett, won’t appear in the show, but writer and producer Jon Favreau revealed that one familiar Star Wars bounty hunter is expected to show up. Don’t worry, it’s not Zam Wesell.
“Merry Christmas,” Favreau wrote on Instagram, revealing a fan-favorite assassin: IG-88! The droid first appears in The Empire Strikes Back during Darth Vader’s bounty hunter job interview, alongside Boba Fett, Bossk, 4-LOM, Zuckuss, and Dengar. Little is known about IG-88, canonically speaking (there’s plenty of non-movie information, like how the droid “possessed an unstoppable desire to hunt and kill his prey, earning him a reputation as one of the top five bounty hunters in the galaxy”), but Favreau will likely flesh out the cult character, which appears to be practical and not CGI, in The Mandalorian.
“IG-88 was never going to be more than a filler for the now infamous bounty hunter Lineup. I decided we needed a real dirty, evil, and vicious bot. Like the bounty hunters of old. Lots of weapons and protection. Dark and oily,” Star Wars prop master Bill Hargreaves said about IG-88’s design. “It just came together to us until was just right. No, some of the grown-ups were not taken with the idea. It was taking a different direction from the other bots, but I thought it should. And when someone said, ‘I don’t think you would find a robot like that on a spaceship,’ my reply was, ‘You would on mine.’ The rest is history.”
The Mandalorian, which stars Pedro Pascal, Gina Carano, Nick Nolte, Giancarlo Esposito, Carl Weathers, and Werner Herzog (!), premieres in 2019.