One of the reasons why the first season of The Mandalorian was such a huge success is that you didn’t even have to be a Star Wars fan to enjoy it, and besides a few fleeting references to the overarching history of the franchise, you could go in completely cold and still become attached to the story and characters even if it was your first time visiting a galaxy far, far away.
The first batch of episodes told a relatively contained narrative that followed the title character’s quest to protect his new traveling companion from various outside threats, and now that the basic setup has been established, the upcoming second season is free to take the plot in new directions and expand the scope and scale of the mythology.
After keeping the focus pretty narrow throughout season 1, the sophomore run is leaning harder into Star Wars canon than ever before with animated favorites Ahsoka Tano and Bo-Katan making their live-action debuts, while the legendary Boba Fett is also poised to return. Of course, any self-respecting big budget adventure show like The Mandalorian is always going to raise the stakes once the world-building is out of the way, and in a recent interview, creator and showrunner Jon Favreau teased that he’s planning to cover a lot more ground the second time out.
“The new season is about introducing a larger story in the world. The stories become less isolated, yet each episode has its own flavor, and hopefully, we’re bringing a lot more scope to the show.”
The recent Star Wars movies have greatly suffered from an over-reliance on fan service and callbacks to previous events, and if The Mandalorian can avoid similar pitfalls and tell a standalone story that expands the world around the series instead of making it feel smaller by forcing everything to connect in some fashion, then season 2 should easily live up to expectations when it arrives at the end of next month.