Warning: This article contains spoilers for the season 3 first episode of The Mandalorian.
The Mandalorian is back and with it comes the old-fashioned space fantasy feel we’ve come to expect from the best of the franchise, including an array of creatures and aliens both new and familiar. The eccentric cast of galactic bounty hunters and space pirates is a marked departure from the feel of last year’s fan-favorite Star Wars vehicle Andor, and in some ways proves the decades-old franchise has reached a point where it can have the cake of a highly acclaimed dramatic take and eat the tried and true interplanetary swashbuckler formula as well.
Andor was a critical darling but it featured only a handful of non-human creatures, with Cassian Andor’s fellow scavengers, prisoners, and rebels all being humans for the most part. The Mandalorian shakes off the humans-only policy within its first few minutes as a ceremonial gathering of Mandalorians is attacked by a giant crocodile-like monster only to be finished off by Din Djarin and his starfighter.
Din then returns to Nevarro to meet his old ally Greef Karga where he immediately encounters a plethora of lifeforms and droids, including a tree full of Kowakian monkey lizards. Shortly after meeting Greef, the pair confront a multi-species group of space pirates made up of at least one Weequay and led by Vane, played by Marti Matulis, who is himself a lieutenant for the pirate Captain Gorian Shard. Vane is an as-yet unrevealed species that is noseless and has a series of small horns ringing its face.
After Karga wins a shootout with Vane (and Mando kills his crewmates), Din tells Greef he is seeking to revive his old assassin droid companion IG-11. Greef suggests he seeks help from the local droid smiths, a group of Anzellans.
Djarin departs to find components for IG-11 and is ambushed by six fighter ships crewed by Vane and his pirate companions. After nearly evading them he is confronted by the Pirate Captain himself, Gorian Shard. Shard is yet another unrevealed species, but he looks like Davy Jones from Pirates of the Caribbean had a child with DC comics’ Swamp Thing.
In just one 30-minute episode we’ve met almost as many alien species as we did in an entire season of Andor. While the hit series truly established a new critical benchmark for Star Wars, it didn’t exactly introduce us to many marvelous new aliens. And there’s a reason for this that goes beyond just the need for gravitas required for a series that is probably the closest Star Wars will ever get to “grimdark.”
Andor takes place mostly in Imperial-controlled settings; the Empire, being notoriously xenophobic towards non-humanoid species, would make little to no accommodations for other species. Ironically, the more spaces they colonize, the more aliens are pushed out of the picture.