With nothing but a "Merry Christmas" as explanation, Jon Favreau appears to have revealed a fun new glimpse at his Disney+ Star Wars series The Mandalorian. The director's Instagram page is currently led by an image of the lanky rogue "assassin droid" IG-88, familiar to fans as part of the bounty hunter line-up seen in The Empire Strikes Back.
Background colour or major character? Does this mean that Dengar, Bossk and Zuckuss are also going to show up? We can but hope... We barely see IG-88 in Empire, but the expanded Star Wars universe in various media has run with him on occasion. In particular, he hijacked the second Death Star's brain and had an ongoing beef with Boba Fett for a while. But much of that is now, of course, non-canon.
Pedro Pascal is the star of the new show, playing the titular Mandalorian, a lone gunfighter in the outer reaches of the galaxy. Also in the cast are Gina Carano, Nick Nolte, Giancarlo Esposito, Carl Weathers and, peculiarly, Werner Herzog, plus new names Emily Swallow and Omid Abtahi.
Set in the time between the fall of the Empire in Return Of The Jedi and the rise of the First Order in The Force Awakens, The Mandalorian will peek into unexplored corners of the Star Wars galaxy. "We’re having a great time working with this incredibly talented group and excited for everyone to see what we’re up to," says exec-producer Favreau. He's overseen the writing, with the directing pool including Dave Filoni, Taika Waititi and Bryce Dallas Howard.
Scheduled to start running on the Disney+ streaming service next year, the show has been shooting for a while.
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