Star Wars. Disney then set all of the new spinoff films in the 19-year gap in between the prequel and original trilogies, though spin-off installments could’ve been set anywhere in the millennia-long timeline. And on the publishing side, Disney reined in all of the various novels, comic books, short stories, and audiodramas, tying them specifically to the new releases on the big or small screen.
When the Mouse House did attempt some experimentation with Star Wars, allowing Rian Johnson to play with formulaic tropes in near-endless series of books in order to fully understand it.
The Mandalorian’s second season may now be in danger of entering that same territory, even if only partially. The Mandalorian season 1 featured a story that was rather stripped-down – a deliberate approach, and one that was steeped in the history and motifs of its main source genre, the Western. Now that season 2 is opening up the narrative horizons a bit more, its ranks appear to be populated with a near-endless parade of franchise returns or cameos, including Boba Fett and Bo-Katan. The trap, in other words, has now been set, and it's up to showrunner Jon Favreau to steer clear of it – and up to a cadre of executives at both Lucasfilm and Disney to allow him to do so.
Disney Has Been Playing Star Wars Too Safe
Despite the near-endless marketing opportunities and flow of spinoff products, George Lucas fundamentally saw the Star Wars films as a story that needed to continually push the envelope, narratively speaking, breaking new ground while continuing to develop the same thematic material. This is why the prequels featured an entirely different design aesthetic and made the political undertones of the original trilogy more explicit. This is also probably why, in part, fan response was initially so divisive towards the new releases, and yet, at the same time, the prequels felt distinctly Lucasian – Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade’s Marcus Brody.
Lucas’ original pitch for the sequel trilogy was even more of a departure from the original Star Wars playbook: having introduced the concept of Whills were the ones who actually controlled the universe, feeding off of the Force. It’s unknown how this would’ve played out and whether this new lifeform would’ve been the ultimate evil that Luke Skywalker and his new order of Jedi would’ve faced off against, but what is known is Lucas' predictions for how the fanbase would’ve responded to it: “Of course, a lot of the fans would have hated it, just like they did Phantom Menace and everything, but at least the whole story, from beginning to end, would be told.”
From all s, Disney didn’t entertain going down this storytelling avenue; it threw out Lucas’ outlines for the sequels, causing a bit of ill will between the two parties. Instead, filmmaker J.J. Abrams was brought aboard for both The Force Awakens and The Rise of Skywalker, and he fashioned a story that was largely a retread of the original films: a young protagonist learns the ways of the Force from a failed, hermitted Jedi Master and facing down Emperor Palpatine – and along the way, she discovers that she has a secret family lineage that would seem to preordain her to evil and darkness. Even the production style employed was a direct copy from the one pioneered in the 1970s and ‘80s, emphasizing practical aliens and sets instead of featuring the computer-generated overload Lucas employed in the ‘90s and 2000s.
All of the new cinematic and television tie-ins were set within the same time period: Yoda, one of the most popular characters from the franchise’s earliest days. All of which is to say that George Lucas - whether he would’ve been able to actually pull it off or not - was looking towards Star Wars’ future; Disney has been stubbornly mired in its past.
Boba Fett’s Return Risks Being Like Palpatine’s
On the one hand, literally resurrecting Emperor Sheev Palpatine for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker made storytelling sense, bracketing the entire Skywalker Saga under the auspices of this one Dark Lord of the Sith’s rise, reign, and ultimate death (again). On the other hand, however, it was relatively low-hanging fruit, an easy out for filmmakers looking to find some way to close out a 42-year-old storyline and also drum up fan while doing so. The move, additionally, is a page right out of the old Star Wars Legends book, repeating a gimmick that was already 28 years old and not embraced by other creators involved in the shared universe.
Boba Fett’s own resurrection for The Mandalorian season 2 could very easily become a replica of this, hitting the tried-and-true well to appeal to as many old-school fans as possible - particularly after Darth Sidious’ return was handled so unevenly and contributed to producing a film that had the lowest CinemaScore for a live-action Star Wars movie. Of course, Jon Favreau could help mitigate against this potential outcome by more fully integrating the character into the season’s plot, preventing the plot twist from feeling forcibly tacked on and providing an explanation for the famed bounty hunter’s escape from death.
Possibly complicating matters is the fact that Boba’s return is just the tip of the franchise iceberg. There is now seemingly a whole cavalcade of returning characters from elsewhere in the Star Wars mythos also making an appearance. While this could be argued to be merely a function of The Mandalorian's sequel status, the Disney+ series has also tried hard to hew its own path, keeping most of the mythology's other contents away at arm's length. Given the course that the sequel trilogy ended up plotting at the behest of Disney and Lucasfilm, one can see a scenario in which, should all of these cameos be embraced by the audience, a potential season 3 doubles down in spades on the approach.
How The Mandalorian Can Avoid the Disney Trap
Bringing back Palpatine as the ultimate evil was rather predictable, safe, and at least somewhat boring, especially given just how often the former emperor returned in the original incarnation of the books and comics. Worst of all, it prevented the creators involved from doing the soul-searching work of finding other, more expansive, and more subtle trails to tread, enriching everyone’s favorite galaxy instead of further eroding its narrative soil. Indeed, plucking Darth Sidious from death just to reveal that he’s secretly been behind pan-galactic events yet again – and then to have the movie's intrepid protagonist overthrow him once more – does very little in making the audience reexamine the main cast of heroes (or villains).
Likewise, trotting out Boba Fett just to have him be the ultimate bounty hunter once again won’t make questionable survival on Tattooine will be more than worth it. Though Darth Maul's return didn't accomplish this feat in The Clone Wars, his return served a real narrative purpose in Rebels, which serves as a model for how The Mandalorian should use Boba Fett. It is new revelations, both internal and external, that The Mandalorian should be after, even if it comes at the expense of recycled story beats.
It would seem that the inclusion of Ahsoka Tano and Captain Rex more easily fits a justifiable pattern, partly because their absence in the five-year span after brand-new alien threats that have been quietly amassing their forces since before the rise of the Galactic Empire (as detailed in Mitth'raw'nuruodo's own series of novels), there are many new avenues that could be explored for the very first time on either the big or small screen.
The Child just may be the key here, attempting to take a just-different-enough approach to some rather familiar materials to shake out some new connections or understandings. The prequels brought back Yoda to show how he, along with all the rest of the all-wise Jedi, could have lost their way and fallen; his second return in the sequels demonstrated that the character had progressed in his understanding of the Force, of himself, and of that hallowed institution he had pledged all those centuries of his life to. Let’s hope that Boba Fett and company can keep their growing list of appearances on The Mandalorian as fresh and engaging.