With Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker set to wrap up the nine-film series in a neat little bow that will supposedly look nothing like Game of Thrones‘ series finale, all eyes will be focused on the final adventures of Rey, Finn, Poe, Kylo and the gang this Christmas. A month before that, though Disney+ will premiere its live-action Star Wars show The Mandalorian, a gritty drama that’s set between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens. And according to the program’s creators, it will set out to explore precisely what happened between those two films.
Namely, as Entertainment Weekly notes, The Mandalorian will endeavor to explain how the fall of the second Death Star and the Empire led to the creation of the First Order — instead of peace across the galaxy:
“This doesn’t turn into a good guy universe because you blew up two Death Stars,” Mandalorian director Dave Filoni quipped. “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.”
“Also, what could happen in the 30 years between celebrating the defeat of the Empire and then the First Order?” teased showrunner Jon Favreau. “You come in on Episode VII, [the First Order are] not just starting out. They’re pretty far along.”
Of course, none of what The Mandalorian will be doing here is happening in a vacuum. EW adds that authors Chuck Wendig and Claudia Gray’s books, Star Wars: Aftermath and Star Wars: Bloodline, both tell elements of the First Order’s post-Return of the Jedi beginnings during “a cold war against the New Republic.” Aside from the new post-Disney purchase canon, though, The Mandalorian will also be making use of Filoni’s The Clone Wars and older elements from the original Expanded Universe, now dubbed “Star Wars Legends,” too.
(Via Entertainment Weekly)