'The Mandalorian' Season 2: What Fans Can Expect in October

The Mandalorian was the first major success for the Disney+ streaming service. Despite its occasional missteps, the series felt like a distillation of everything we love about Star Wars—the bizarre aliens, space faring adventure, and an eclectic cast of underdogs fighting against a seemingly insurmountable threat. Baby Yoda obviously didn’t hurt, either.

Spoilers for The Mandalorian Season 1 to follow!

Following an explosive, revelations-filled finale (Mando has a name and a face!), we can’t wait to see what Jon Favreau and company have planned for The Mandalorian Season 2. There were more than a few loose threads left to tug at, after all. Based on everything that went down in Season 1, we have a few ideas where The Mandalorian Season 2 could be headed. Let’s have a look.

baby yoda the mandalorian season 2 — The child in *The Mandalorian*.
Photo Credit: Lucasfilm/Walt Disney Studios

Details of Yoda’s race and home world have long been a mystery in the Star Wars universe, representing one of the few unknown frontiers in the series' canon. However, the final episode of The Mandalorian made solving the mysteries surrounding Yoda’s unnamed race central to the ongoing plot of the series.

With Mando now officially taking on the care of the Child—more popularly known as “Baby Yoda”—as a foundling, the Way requires him to seek out the Child’s people, and doing so would obviously require discovering the Child’s home world. This is not only an obvious narrative to continue in The Mandalorian Season 2, but, from a practical storytelling standpoint, provides the perfect excuse for Mando to explore more of the outer reaches of the Star Wars universe.

The Mandalorian Season 2 has a lot of questions to answer, but some of the most pressing ones to fans—this writer included—revolve around baby Yoda and the mysterious race he hails from. And let’s face it, any excuse to give fans more background on a character as beloved as Yoda is likely to be a win.

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Mandalore figured heavily into Star Wars: Rebels, particularly in the final season. That series ended on a fairly hopeful note, lifting Mandalore out from under Imperial rule. Unfortunately, The Mandalorian gives us every indication that things are dire on Mandalore.

For one, a large contingent of Mandalorians—including our titular hero—are on Nevarro. More importantly though, the repeated mentions of the Great Purge of Mandalore indicate that the Empire did not react well to Mandalore’s independence. We got inklings of what exactly occurred during the Great Purge during season one, and know the Empire seized Mandalore’s Beskar.

It’s also plausible that most of Mandalore was wiped out as a result of the Great Purge. After all, Mandalorians are viewed as almost mythic figures at this point, and there’s no mention of Mandalorians beyond the Tribe that set up the enclave on Nevarro.

Finally, at the end of Rebels, the Darksaber—an ancient Mandalorian-forged lightsaber—was given to Bo-Katan Kryze when she became the leader of Mandalore. The Darksaber is now in the hands of Moff Gideon. Given that there is no way a Mandalorian would willingly surrender an artifact like the Darksaber (more on this later), it doesn’t look good for Mandalore. Odds are The Mandalorian Season 2 will give us a deeper look into the state of Mandalore.

This is one of the larger questions going into The Mandalorian Season 2. At the end of episode 5 of Season 1 (titled The Gunslinger), a mysterious figure appears and approaches Fennec Shand—the assassin left for dead. All we see is what appears to be a dark pair of boots and a cape. That’s not a lot to go on.

The obvious choice is that the mysterious figure is actually the first appearance of Giancarlo Esposito’s Moff Gideon. The outfit matches, and Moff Gideon is wearing a blaster when we finally see him in the final two episodes, as is the mysterious figure in The Gunslinger. It would make sense that Gideon is dogging Mando’s footsteps in his search for the child.

The other popular theory is that the figure is Boba Fett—this hinges largely on the sound of spurs that we hear when the figure appears. Boba Fett was famously accompanied by the sound of spurs in The Empire Strikes Back. The problem is that The Mandalorian takes place several years after the events of Return of the Jedi, and, more importantly, Jon Favreau has stated unequivocally that Fett would not appear in The Mandalorian. This obviously wouldn’t be the first time a director has used this sort of blatant misdirect, but it certainly makes Boba Fett’s appearance in The Mandalorian Season 2 feel like a stretch.

The more likely possibility is that it was a) Moff Gideon, or b) an as-yet-disclosed new player in the game. Odds are that it's Gideon, but we can’t help but wonder why Favreau and company would not have made that more clear in the final episode. Time will tell.

darksaber the mandalorian season 2 — Photo Credit: Lucasfilm/Walt Disney Studios

The Darksaber—the blade used by Moff Gideon in the final episode of Season 1—is a major Mandalorian artifact.

It is a lightsaber forged by Tarre Vizsla, a legend during the Old Republic, and the first Mandalorian to join the Jedi Order. Following its creation, the Darksaber passed through generations of Mandalorians—even landing in the hands of Darth Maul for a period—before finally reaching Bo-Katan Kryze, who would eventually use it to unite the tribes of Mandalore against the Empire in the Battle of Yavin. As a result, the Darksaber has taken on an almost Excalibur-like significance in Mandalorian lore.

There is basically no way a weapon of such power and significance in Mandalorian culture will not eventually end up in the possession of Mando. It may not happen in The Mandalorian Season 2, but we have almost no doubt that it will happen.