The Mandalorian aired its first episode today and expectations were sky-high. It’s being presented as the main attraction of the Disney Plus launch, boasts an impressive array of talent both in front of and behind the camera, looked great in trailers and those who saw it early were singing its praises. Thankfully, it looks to be a proof of concept for Disney, who intend to produce many more Star Wars TV shows now that the films are going on hiatus for a few years. And one of them will spin directly off from The Mandalorian.
WGTC has heard from our sources – the same ones who told us Ewan McGregor was returning as Obi-Wan – that a spinoff following Gina Carano’s mysterious character Cara Dune is in the works. We haven’t seen much of her in the trailers, and I haven’t had a chance to watch the premiere just yet, but she looks incredibly badass from the footage I’ve glimpsed already. Carano has apparently made a point of eschewing a stunt double for the role, too, explaining that:
“I did not want it to be anybody else in this Cara Dune costume. Oh, is she running? Okay, I’ll run. That’s fine, no, we don’t need her [the stunt double]. I really hated anybody that was in this costume. I didn’t want to share at all.”
Word is that the spinoff will focus on Dune and explore the lives of the other assassins and bounty hunters we come across in The Mandalorian. This is music to my ears, because one of my favorite Star Wars books growing up was the awesome Tales of the Bounty Hunters.
For those unfamiliar, it was a collection of stories that revealed the background of the characters seen aboard Darth Vader’s Star Destroyer in The Empire Strikes Back. While the most high profile was an exploration of Boba Fett’s past, I really enjoyed the story about killer droid IG-88 (who also appears in The Mandalorian). And honestly, the more IG-88 on screen there is the better.