Star Wars’ Mandoverse Is in Trouble

When The Mandalorian debuted on Disney+ on November 12, 2019, it seemed just what the Star Wars franchises needed. While Disney’s Star Wars era started out strong with Rebels, The Force Awakens, and Rogue One, the culture war that sprang up following The Last Jedi and the box office failure of Solo put Star Wars in a difficult place. Even though The Rise of Skywalker was seen as a disappointment, The Mandalorian quelled concerns as it seemed to be just what die-hard and casual fans wanted from Star Wars. Season 2 arrived during the COVID-19 pandemic and was a treat for many who had found themselves stuck inside for months. It was a big-budget entertainment spectacle that could be enjoyed at home.

By the time The Mandalorian Season 2 concluded, Disney+ was in full swing on a slew of Star Wars series that would connect to The Mandalorian, including spin-offs The Book of Boba Fett, Ahsoka, and Rangers of the New Republic, the latter of which was replaced with the upcoming Skeleton Crew. The plan is for all these stories to culminate in a crossover film that would be released in theaters. Fans have dubbed this interconnected set of stories after Return of the Jedi “The Mandoverse.” In many ways, these series allowed Lucasfilm to fill in the gaps of the sequel trilogy and acted as a second attempt at an original trilogy crossover, telling fans the immediate aftermath of the Empire falling and what happened to the galaxy.

Yet, in the five years since the Mandoverse began, it already feels like it has worn out of its welcome. What was once fresh and new is now bogged down with more continuity and hours of story than the entire Skywalker Saga combined. While the upcoming spin-off film, The Mandalorian & Grogu, will likely draw out Star Wars fans to the theaters, maybe the prospect of this being the beginning of the end isn’t so bad.

What Really Happened to The Mandalorin Season 4?

In January 2024, it was announced that The Mandalorian & Grogu was in development as a feature film at Lucasfilm with The Mandalorian series creator Jon Favreau directing. It soon became apparent that The Mandalorian & Grogu would take the place of The Mandalorian Season 4. It had been nine months since The Mandalorian Season 3 had ended when the film was announced, and it got many people questioning if the poor reception to the third season made Lucasfilm cancel their plans.

While The Mandalorian was praised among fans and critics, Season 3 had a more polarized response. It not only required viewers to see The Book of Boba Fett to understand why Din Djarin and Grogu were reunited, but it also dealt more with the lore of Mandalorians and away from the fun adventure-of-the-week format of the previous seasons. Ratings slightly slipped, but the series performed better than The Book of Boba Fett or Ahsoka.

Did The Mandalorian Season 3 ratings and critical response cause Disney to cancel Season 4? No, because based on the evidence, it appears Disney itself is shifting from Disney+ streaming releases and back to theatrical films regardless of reviews or audience response, as they can profit from box office ticket sales instead of losing money on big-budget streaming releases. This aligns with Bob Iger’s plans to correct Disney following Bob Chapek’s emphasis on streaming releases and the massive loss that comes with that investment. This is not unique to Star Wars, as the Marvel Cinematic Universe Disney+ series are also being scaled back as part of this new strategy.

The Mandalorian isn’t the only Star Wars series impacted by this shift away from streaming. The Acolyte was recently canceled, and Andor has confirmed that Season 2 will be its last. The Bad Batch concluded earlier this year, and Disney has not announced a new Star Wars animated series. Ahsoka is the only Star Wars series currently confirmed for a Season 2, and that will likely be done to set up the Mandoverse crossover film. The Mandalorian Season 4 being retooled into The Mandalorian & Grogu has less to do with the audience’s reaction to the series and more economics. With how popular The Mandalorian is, particularly Grogu merchandise, a big-budget Star Wars film putting the two characters front and center seems like a box-office sure thing and one that can recoup the cost Disney has invested in the series over the years. That said, it might be time to bring this chapter of the story to a close.

Star Wars’ Mandoverse Has Become Far Too Complicated

One of the biggest issues facing the Mandoverse is the amount of content it has amassed. The Mandalorian started out as one series. While each season had a long, over-arching story, each episode was self-contained. The Mandalorian, real name Din Djarin, and Grogu would go to a planet, get into an adventure, meet some new characters, and then be on their way. Season 2 featured plenty of fan favorites from across books (Cobb Vanth from the Aftermath novels), animated series (Ahsoka and Bo-Katan from The Clone Wars and Rebels), and feature films (Boba Fett and Luke Skywalker), but it was easy for casual fans to jump into. Hardcore Star Wars fans got the deep cuts, but most audiences were casually tuning in for a fun travelogue through the Star Wars galaxy.

The Book of Boba Fett complicated things. While greenlighting a series based on one of Star Wars‘ most popular characters who never got the spotlight seemed like a good idea, the series fumbled the bag by sticking Boba Fett to one location and not feeling like his show. It felt so little like his show that two episodes of the seven-episode run focused on The Mandalorian. These episodes should have been saved for The Mandalorian Season 3. The Book of Boba Fett also featured the reunion of Din Djarin and Grogu. This means any audience who watched the emotional ending of The Mandalorian Season 2 with Grogu leaving with Luke Skywalker was likely confused as to why The Mandalorian and Grogu were back together.

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Then came Ahsoka, who, despite appearing in The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett, her solo series felt more like Star Wars: Rebels Season 5. While The Mandalorian balanced bringing in pre-existing characters and still being new viewer-friendly, Ahsoka was so tied to the events of Rebels that people who didn’t watch the 75-episode animated series certainly would be lost. Star Wars: Rebels might be available to watch on Disney+ alongside Ahsoka, but that is a big ask for the audience. Lore became the main focus of these series and only hurt them. The Mandalorian Season 3 delved deep into the Mandalorian culture in Star Wars: The Clone Wars while also retooling the series to fill out plot lines from the scrapped series Rangers of the New Republic. This made The Mandalorian Season 3 different from the previous two seasons and had years of backstory and mythology audiences needed to remember from other series.

Chief Creative Officer at Lucasfilm, Dave Filoni, is treating the Mandoverse like Star Wars: The Clone Wars, one giant story that jumps between different characters’ points of view. That worked for The Clone Wars because it was still one series, but now this is three separate live-action series with a fourth on the way. These limited episode seasons also shift focus from the title characters, with Mando taking over a good portion of The Book of Boba Fett. Had Ahsoka, The Book of Boba Fett, and the now defunct Rangers of the New Republic been packaged as one giant Star Wars series with a rotating cast of characters, this might have helped it not feel so spread out and disjointed so quickly. As it stands, it feels like a lot of homework.

Star Wars’ Release Schedule Is Not Working

The Mandalorian Seasons 1 and 2 had a year between television series, a standard gap between streaming series. The Book of Boba Fett arrived one year later, in the last week of December 2021. Yet The Mandalorian Season 3 didn’t air until 2023, three years from Season 2. While the character did appear in The Book of Boba Fett, it still took a long time for audiences to wait. Meanwhile, Ahsoka aired in August 2023, three years after her debut in The Mandalorian. While it did arrive just a few months after The Mandalorian Season 3, it also required viewers to remember her role in The Mandalorian and, additionally, Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Rebels, which had been off the air for years. Ahsoka Season 2 is not expected to air until 2026, a three-year gap between Season 1 and 2. These long gaps between seasons make it difficult to maintain audience engagement.

Below is a chart that tracks the Mandoverse series from its premiere on Disney+ to its conclusion and the number of episodes per season.

So far, the longest gap is between Ahsoka and Skeleton Crew, which will amount to 14 months between series. Many viewers might not even realize that Skeleton Crew is even connected to The Mandalorian, meaning audiences might feel like they won’t see the story continue until 2026. 39 episodes have aired as of this writing, with eight more on the way. This is somehow both a lot of episodes and not enough. It certainly is a lot for someone to catch up on, but over five years isn’t enough to keep someone hooked with the gaps between entries.

By the time The Mandalorian & Grogu hits theaters, it will have been over a year since Skeleton Crew ended, three years since The Mandalorian Season 3, and almost seven years since the series debuted. While Star Wars movies before Disney had a three-year gap between films, the rarity made audiences take note of when one was coming. Even following Disney’s purchase of Star Wars, they released a Star Wars movie every year with a two-year gap for films in the sequel trilogy that had a spin-off film between them. This long gap is expected between films, but television series risk losing audiences as the longer time passes, they will forget major storylines and plot points and move on to other series.

Star Wars Should Not Be Afraid of New

When The Mandalorian began, it was new and exciting. The decision to set it after Return of the Jedi and before The Force Awakens opened up a whole host of storytelling possibilities with years of material. With Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford being too old to reprise their roles and Carrie Fisher sadly having passed away, the creators would need to craft new exciting characters or give lesser-known characters the spotlight. At first, that is exactly what they did: they created new characters like Din Djarin, Grogu, and Fennec Shand while also expanding roles for characters like Bo-Katan, Boba Fett, and Ahsoka.

Yet the series seems stuck in a rut. Ironically, as the Mandoverse has grown, it has also shrunk. Every conflict is seemingly centered on the same core group of characters, and the main motivation to tell stories is to either explain elements from The Rise of Skywalker or set up an adaptation of Timothy Zahn’s Thrawn novels, but with the Mandoverse characters in the lead roles. While it has been fun to see characters like Cobb Vanth, Black Krrsantan, and Hu-Yang be brought to live-action, the franchise has primarily focused on bringing in previously established characters instead of creating new ones. However, Skeleton Crew, thankfully, will change that. They’ve even squandered the pre-existing characters as they could have put some together to center them as the leads of Rangers of the New Republic, but instead, they scrapped the series after Lucasfilm fired Gina Carano.

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They wouldn’t even let age stop them, as they have now digitally de-aged Mark Hamill twice to return as Luke Skywalker. It now feels like the Mandoverse is sticking with what fans know, sometimes giving them the tiniest morsel, like featuring Cad Bane for less than five minutes of screentime in The Book of Boba Fett. This stands in sharp contrast to series like Andor and The Acolyte, which have pushed Star Wars in new directions. Despite all the controversy surrounding The Acolyte, its decision to explore the High Republic era, which was only seen in novels and comics, made Star Wars feel fresh again with new characters and settings. Series like Andor have also shown that Star Wars television can be more than entertaining; it is deep, thoughtful television on par with anything on HBO, Netflix, or Prime Video.

Maybe this is why shifting from Disney+ series to feature films might be the best course of action for the Mandoverse. If they want to make loose adaptations of The Thrawn Trilogy, it is better to make it a movie rather than a television series. They can zero in and eliminate a lot of the padding that has filled up the streaming series like Ahsoka and The Book of Boba Fett and make Star Wars feel big again. It can be a trilogy set between the original and sequel, bridging the gap and making for an even more epic Star Wars viewing experience. The Mandoverse has been fun, but after its feature film, it might be time to say goodbye to this era of Star Wars for a few years and try something new.

Then, after it is all over, Star Wars can explore a new era of its series. Films like the upcoming Rey movie and James Mangold’s first Jedi Knight movie will take Star Wars to unexplored moments in the timeline with exciting possibilities. That doesn’t mean it is the end for the Mandoverse, either. Maybe it hasn’t overstayed its welcome, but it just needs some time away to make audiences nostalgic, and then these characters can be revisited. The Star Wars franchise is streaming on Disney+.