Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni didn’t seem to get the memo passed down from the Lucasfilm hierarchy that Star Wars Legends stories were no longer regarded as official canon, with the dream team behind The Mandalorian instead deciding to dive deep into both the animated and expanded universe back catalogue to mine inspiration for their Disney Plus exclusive.
Currently, there are close to a dozen Star Wars shows in active development, but not all of them are connected to The Mandalorian. As well as Din Djarin’s return for season 3, though, which has apparently been delayed until 2022, The Book of Boba Fett, Rangers of the New Republic and Ahsoka will all tie together and presumably feature some recurring supporting characters and overlapping story threads from the parent show.
Plot details and the like are still hard to come by, but when Rosario Dawson name-dropped Grand Admiral Thrawn in “The Jedi,” it became pretty obvious who the villain of Snips’ solo series would be. Not only that, but tipster Mikey Sutton is now claiming that the trio of spinoffs taking place adjacent to The Mandalorian, as well as the parent series itself, will all be influenced by Legends novel Heir to the Empire, which marked the debut of Mitth’raw’nuruodo on the printed page.
Sutton goes onto say that the book won’t be directly adapted for live-action, but certain elements of it will make it into the various shows and fan favorite EU figure Mara Jade is being primed for an appearance, with Karen Gillan rumored to be the frontrunner in terms of casting. Of course, none of this should be taken as gospel, but the idea of multiple Star Wars series crossing over to tell one massive story arc with huge implications is more than a little reminiscent of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and there are definitely worse places to draw inspiration from than the biggest and most popular franchise in the business.
