An unlikely sounding Star Wars rumor has been doing the rounds this week. Sparked off by a report that said Daisy Ridley is in negotiations with Disney to reprise the role of Rey Skywalker in a future project, it’s now being claimed that this will take place in the third season of The Mandalorian.
Rey’s story continuing after The Rise of Skywalker will likely happen at some point but, as you’re probably yelling right now, crowbarring her into the Disney Plus series just doesn’t make sense. The gigantic hurdle that Lucasfilm would need to get over is that the events of the show take place two decades before the Sequel Trilogy and if we were to suddenly focus on Rey, that means they’d have to jump forward about 22 years with the narrative, something that’d obviously have major consequences for the characters.
Perhaps the biggest is that the heavily teased showdown between Din Djarin and Bo-Katan over the Darksaber would take place off screen. Beyond that, it’d also mean that practically all of the supporting cast then need to be either aged with makeup/CGI or simply recast.
Admittedly, if they did decide to go down this bizarre route, the core of the show may still remain the same. After all, Mando spends most of his time helmeted so could be any age under there and Yoda’s species ages at such a slow rate that Grogu would still be a ‘baby,’ albeit one benefiting from Luke’s Jedi training and more experience.
Despite that, I seriously doubt they’d screw with The Mandalorian this much, as it’s currently Lucasfilm’s golden goose. The second season finale clearly indicated where a third run is going and I don’t anticipate Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni to deviate from it.
If Rey is to return, I’d expect it to either be in a show specifically about her or as a character in another movie. But for now, it doesn’t seem like Disney or Lucasfilm have much interest in exploring what happens post-The Rise of Skywalker.
