The Mandalorian Season 3 Likely Won’t Be Delayed By COVID-19

In what turned out to be an extraordinarily lucky bit of scheduling, The Mandalorian season 2 managed to avoid any hold-up caused by the pandemic as production finished just prior to the pandemic’s outbreak in the US. But with COVID-19 still affecting the industry, could season 3 not be as lucky and get caught up with a delay? Apparently not, as showrunner Jon Favreau has explained why it should be able to progress as planned.

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Favreau was asked if the Disney Plus series’ heavy use of virtual sets will ensure it can avoid any COVID-19-related problems. The EP confirmed this, going on to talk about how the way the show is put together in post-production to such an extent makes it easy to avoid large groups of people on set, which means it should be able to go ahead as normal.

“The fact that the set is much more contained is a benefit, because you can limit the number of people. A lot of the people controlling it are doing it remotely from what we call the Brain Bar, which is a bank of gaming computers, essentially. The amount of people near the camera could be much smaller than [usual]. We also shoot a lot outside, which is helpful, too. We build to a moment in filming more like an animated production, where we have a lot of storyboards, a lot of discussions and scouting in virtual reality. We use cinematic tools in VR much the same way we did for The Lion King and The Jungle Book. A lot of times the actors you are seeing on the screen aren’t actually there on set.”

Back in April, just a couple of months after season 2 wrapped, we learned that early pre-production had already started on the third season, so it certainly sounds like Disney and Lucasfilm are on top of it and fans shouldn’t expect to have to wait an extra long time for it. That presumably means season 3 will start shooting later this year and, given the release pattern set up by the first two runs, it’ll arrive on the streaming service in fall 2021.

In the meantime, we’ve got The Mandalorian season 2 coming up in just a couple of months – though we don’t have a specific release date, it’s definitely due sometime in October. It’s reported that a trailer is on its way, too, likely this month, so we may not only find out when it’s premiering but also get our first look at the new season very soon.