Star Wars comes to television
The Mandalorian was the first live-action Star Wars television series, and it launched Disney's streaming service, Disney+, in November 2019. Created by Jon Favreau, who had directed the first Iron Man film, it is set about five years after the original trilogy of films ends, and follows a lone BOUNTY HUNTER from the MANDALORE warrior culture, known as MANDO, who never removes his HELMET. Our Star Wars page covers the films that came before.
Favreau borrowed from westerns and from Japanese samurai stories, especially a famous manga and film series called Lone Wolf and Cub, about a masterless samurai travelling with a small child. Our samurai page covers the real warriors behind those stories.
The screen that replaced the scenery
Most of the show was not filmed on location or in front of a green screen. Instead, the actors stood inside a huge ring of giant video screens, nicknamed the Volume, which showed moving, three-dimensional backgrounds of deserts, forests and spaceships, created with a video game engine. When the camera moved, the background shifted to match, just as a real landscape would, and the actors could see the world they were supposed to be in. The light from the screens even reflected realistically on Mando's shiny BESKAR ARMOR. The technique changed how many films and series are made, and the show won a string of Emmy awards for its effects. Its music, by the Swedish composer Ludwig Göransson, is built around the low, breathy sound of a bass recorder, an instrument most people last saw in a school music lesson. Several episodes were directed by well-known film-makers, including Taika Waititi and Bryce Dallas Howard.
Keeping Grogu secret
The small green alien that fans instantly nicknamed Baby Yoda, and whose real name, GROGU, was revealed in the second series, was kept a complete secret before the first episode. The makers did not even allow toys of him to be made in advance, so that nobody would spoil the surprise, and when the character became a sensation there was nothing to buy for weeks. On set he was mostly a puppet, controlled by a team of puppeteers working his eyes, ears and mouth, rather than a computer creation.
Grogu belongs to the same species as Yoda and is strong in the FORCE, which draws the attention of the JEDI. Mando, who adopts him, was himself a FOUNDLING, a child taken in by the Mandalorians, whose CREED is summed up in the words this is the way.
A helmet, a darksaber and old friends
Pedro Pascal plays Mando and provides his voice, but because the character almost never takes his helmet off, stunt performers often wore the suit in the action scenes. BOBA FETT, the famous bounty hunter from the films, first appeared in a cartoon in a Star Wars television special in 1978, before he was ever seen in a cinema, and AHSOKA Tano came from an animated series. The grid also holds the ship, the RAZOR CREST, the BLASTER, the desert planet TATOOINE, the ancient DARKSABER, the giant MYTHOSAUR of Mandalorian legend, and the allies CARA DUNE and GREEF KARGA.