Disney Gallery: The Mandalorian (2020) s03e01 Episode Script

1
We're in kind of a unique situation
in the Star Wars galaxy
where we're part of something bigger,
but we're also carving out our own
story that follows these characters.
The first season of The Mandalorian
was really about
just these simple stories
that were gonna be about
a bounty of the week.
I can bring you in warm
Or I can bring you in cold.
The events of season two
started to come together
and I think for Jon and Dave,
that really started to ricochet
in terms of where that could go
for season three.
We introduced a lot of new characters,
or, a lot of them are legacy characters,
in the second season.
And each one of them
had their own trajectory.
The Darksaber. It belongs to you.
She can't take it.
It must be won in battle.
By seeing how those characters interacted
and what was going on
in the Star Wars galaxy
at that time post-war,
there were certain things that started
to unfold in a very organic way.
Taking all the work
I had done with Mandalorians
and bringing it together with all the work
Jon and things he had imagined
about Mandalorians
were finding the way
between the two things.
And along the way,
we met other fantastic storytellers
like Rick Famuyiwa,
who became a part of our team,
Noah Kloor, who became a part of our team
and added depth and dimension
to everything we were doing.
Kathy Kennedy, ever since, you know,
bringing Dave and I together
to collaborate on The Mandalorian
in season one,
has helped us identify a lot of other
great filmmakers to work with.
So now, it's just not
one or two people's vision
of how these people come together,
it's a group of us.
And our galaxy's getting
bigger and more fuller
than it's ever been before.
The storytelling is not just about
good story well told,
it is also about pushing
the medium of filmmaking forward.
That is thrilling.
And every single season, Jon ups the ante.
It's just been an absolute
joy to come to work
and really to ask myself a question,
which has become a part of my mantra now,
"What am I gonna learn today?"
You know, between Rick and Jon
and Dave and Bryce
and whomever else
is working on a given day,
you can learn something from them,
and I steal it all.
I felt so good about that,
I wanna do it again.
The founding spirit,
I think, of the first season
was the idea of these talented directors,
in their own right
coming in to the show and bringing
their points of view and vision
but still having that point of view
sort of fit under the overarching umbrella
of how Jon and Dave have seen
the world from the beginning.
And so, I think as each season
has gone on,
there's been these new voices
that have come in.
I was a director
on Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
among a couple of other things.
I think they had the feeling that
someone who'd worked in animation
and sort of had a background
in dealing with
the kind of previsualization that you do
in storyboards
and in a lot of the phases of animation
might be a good fit
for the way this process rolls out.
I think your look has to come
all the way around and not stay there.
So it comes back to the front?
Yeah, back to the front,
because then we'll catch you
in a nice profile.
I've been a Star Wars fan since,
really since the first movie came out.
So hearing about the possibility
of being part of the show felt unreal.
I was editing my film Minari in 2019
and my editor was telling me,
"You have to watch this show
called Mandalorian."
And it became
the show that I was going to.
I was just talking to my agents
and I said,
"If there's anyway
I can talk to Jon Favreau,
"I'd love to just say hello to him
and then ask him for a job."
Lo and behold,
they were able to get a hold of Jon.
He had seen my film.
He said that he enjoyed it.
And we had a wonderful conversation.
And I basically told him I would love
to do this show if it's possible.
And he told me, "Okay, we'll have you."
It just really blew my mind and got me
so excited about coming in here.
You would barrel roll
as you are approaching the planet.
- Okay.
- We'll see.
Okay. Beautiful.
When I got the call to do
Mandalorian, I delved into it.
Obviously, I had heard about the Volume.
And it felt like a chance to try something
that I hadn't tried before.
Anything we can do to make it feel
like it's a shot about Baby?
Cool.
With this guy kind of
come flying at us through frame.
I think my background in cinematography
absolutely informs my work as a director.
I think with my heart,
I feel with my heart,
I shoot with my heart.
Our currency is empathy and is emotion.
And that translates
whether it's physically
and technically through the lens
or working with an actor
and making them feel something.
The Empire set out to punish us.
To wipe away our memory.
This experience has been
really eye-opening from me.
Because I'm somebody who spent
the better part of at least
a couple decades
thinking a grounded drama
had to be a literal grounded drama.
And then to realize,
thanks to The Mandalorian
that you drop anything
that one can relate to
into a world and it's still grounded.
And it's still relatable
and it's still emotional.
There's a challenge
inherent in this series
when it comes to relationships
because our main character
is wearing a helmet the entire time.
And so, I think that so much
of what is being explored thematically
has to do with intimacy,
vulnerability and kind of the mask
that we put over that.
Allowing a helmet or a mask
to be the face of a character,
that's something I really associate
with the original trilogy growing up.
You think of Darth Vader.
You think of the droids, you think
of C-3PO or you think of R2-D2.
Behave yourself, R2.
You're going to get us into trouble.
I really wanted to take on the challenge.
And Dave and I discussed this a lot.
"Can we have a show where somebody,
"where your lead character's face
is hidden?"
By balancing
that character out with Grogu,
you have this bifurcated lead.
Which is a very human, vulnerable,
empathetic, soulful little child
and then you have this character
who has lived life and done many things
You can only imagine what challenges
and adventures this guy has faced.
It was the combination of these characters
that became the heart and soul.
And we knew that we had to work our way
to that inevitable separation a few times.
And then this season was about
bringing them back together again.
A Mandalorian has to understand maps
and know their way around.
That way, you'll never be lost.
When we start season three,
he's squarely faced
with the ramifications of the decision
he made in season two
where he took off his helmet
in order to help The Child.
All right, pal.
It's time to go.
Don't be afraid.
There are repercussions
that happen because of that.
You have removed your helmet.
What's worse,
you did so of your own free will.
You are no longer Mandalorian.
And then the, sort of,
exploration of that opens up our world
into many different points of view
on what it means to be Mandalorian.
And what does it mean
to be The Mandalorian.
Your cult gave up on Mandalore
long before the Purge.
Where were you then?
Bo in many respects this season
is also The Mandalorian.
'Cause it's so much about
her story and her journey
and her, sort of,
initial ideas of going back
and bringing her people back together
that got derailed
after she lost the Darksaber.
I am here to join you.
There's nothing left to join.
What of your plans to retake Mandalore?
When I returned without the Darksaber,
my forces melted away.
She earned her stripes
in adventures that we've all seen.
From nobility
and she's been part of Death Watch.
She's existed in many different contexts.
And she's also a character
where there's room for development.
Not all Mandalorians are bounty hunters.
Some of us serve a higher purpose.
She believes in the Darksaber.
But the Darksaber alone
isn't gonna make you a great leader
just 'cause you hold a weapon.
She has to want to be this leader
and she has to have belief in herself.
She was a character that had not
completed her life's journey
of where she was going to land
as far as her identity.
And that's very rich
for opportunity for storytelling.
Without that blade,
she's a pretender to the throne.
Within this season,
we are really getting to experience
a full journey and a full performance
where Katee can just absolutely bring,
not only her incredible talent and her all
but this knowledge
and experience that she has
because she's played this character
for over a decade.
You succeeded where many have failed.
I've learned from the best, including you.
I wish I was good at something
other than war.
When Dave first approached me
to play Bo-Katan in Clone Wars,
it was really just taking
who he had created
and translating his vision
vocally on to the screen.
Go on. I can handle this.
When the idea came up for me
to play her in live-action,
I really had to stop and think about it.
Because I had absolutely zero idea
what she looked like not animated.
So I really had to learn
the character all over again
and translate that into movement.
In the way that she used her mouth
and the way that she walked and stood
and really start it all over again.
Which was hard. Harder than I thought.
I was part of the royal family.
I took the Creed
and was showered with gifts.
But the rituals
were all just theater for our subjects.
They loved watching the princess
recite the Mandalorian tenets
as her father looked on proudly.
Such a heart-warming spectacle.
We didn't know how season three
was gonna wrap up,
but we knew that we were gonna have to go
to Mandalore at some point.
We knew that
that's where things were headed.
And we knew that we were going to begin
to deal with what had happened
and what we had set up.
And we also knew that
because of the lore
around the rules and the Creed
among the Mandalorians with the helmet,
that as different groups
of Mandalorians came together
and as he revealed his face,
we knew that we couldn't just
hit reset and start over again.
So the decision was made.
What was true for the character
was going to be
that he was going to have to receive
some sort of redemption
if he were to be reaccepted
into this culture that he held so dear.
The Creed teaches us of redemption.
Redemption is no longer possible
since the destruction of our homeworld.
But what if
the mines of Mandalore still exist?
Mandalore was an interesting challenge,
in that we haven't seen
a live-action interpretation of that.
Dave Filoni created quite a bit of that
for the animated series.
And our job was to take that
and then translate to live action.
George Lucas had the idea
that the planet was devastated.
So it's pretty much
a virtual desert on the surface.
And the inhabitants of Mandalore
live in these artificial domes.
Inside the domes
is this very lush culture.
And it was really tricky
in terms of balancing,
"Okay, how much destruction
versus how much aesthetic taste
"to bring in for Mandalore?"
We looked at the nuclear Trinity test site
where the explosion was so hot
that it fused the sand
into a glass like material.
And Jon said that the idea
was that the surface of Mandalore
had undergone
such a series of nuclear blasts
that the surface
had fused into this shiny material
with this green color that trinitite has.
And we went to all sorts of lengths
to explore that,
including buying
some radioactive trinitite
that you have to wear gloves to handle.
And eventually, we settled
on a process that used a special resin
that gave us something that really looked
like the concept art and was durable.
You gotta do something
that's gonna last through production.
Jon and Dave, they love
the old school way of making films.
A lot of models.
Andrew had given me a call and said,
"You need to sculpt a cave set."
And then, Phil Tippett
was gonna collaborate
and bring his team in and actually
put all the flavor on the inside of this.
All the scenery.
So I basically sculpted the whole form
and then, Phil went in
and made it beautiful.
Part of what our memory is
of Star Wars from growing up,
is a lot of it is Phil's aesthetic.
Whether it was the dejarik chess board
with the stop motion chess characters
or, the rancor,
Phil Tippett was one of the original
collaborators with George Lucas,
and we thought that Phil
would be great to collaborate with
on what Mandalore would look like.
To create something
that was both tech and nightmarish.
Because we wanted the mines of Mandalore
to look different
from anything on the show.
And, of course, Phil Tippett's aesthetic
was something that we thought
we would really benefit from.
We actually use his models
to do photogrammetry
and help build it into the Volume
and into the CGI.
This is obviously a huge episode
for Star Wars fans to get to see Mandalore
and to get to see
the ruins of a city destroyed.
Look around.
There's nothing left.
A great society is now a memory.
You have people treading
and retreading some of the same footsteps
and going deeper
and deeper into the underbelly.
And how do you keep
the gradience feeling different and new?
Do we go from a more
translucent green to a deeper green?
And what does it feel like for Bo
to see Mandalore for the first time
as somebody who was raised there
and saw it destroyed,
versus The Mandalorian,
who has sort of fetishized it
and has never actually set foot?
And how do we see that
differently through each of their eyes?
"These mines date back to the age
of the first Mandalore.
"According to ancient folklore,
the mines were once a Mythosaur lair.
"Mandalore the Great is said
to have tamed the mythical beast.
"It is from these legends
that the skull signet was adopted
"and became the symbol of our planet."
The Mythosaur originates from a graphic
that was included
in the costume of Boba Fett.
It was a graphic that just
probably seemed pleasing at the time.
It was a skull
of some sort of tusked creature.
And over the decades,
it has grown to be a particular species.
And there's talk that the Mythosaur
was ridden by the Mand'alor
and that it was a creature
that was evolved on that planet.
And as you talk about
ancient Mandalorian history, it comes up.
But it all came from just that one visual.
And we referenced it back in season one,
when he's learning how to ride the blurrg.
Do you have a landspeeder
or speeder bike that I could hire?
You are Mandalorian!
Your ancestors rode the great Mythosaur.
Surely you can ride this young foal.
I loved it there because
it felt iconic for a western.
The riding of the horse,
the breaking of the wild mustang.
So that was fun to play with there.
But as we got deeper in
in going to Mandalore,
you start to say,
"Well, what can we pull into this?"
And how could we incorporate
a lot of the stories that have been told
that aren't necessarily canon per se
but still acknowledging
that a lot great creative minds
have been contributing
to Star Wars over the years?
The songs of eons past
foretold of the Mythosaur rising up
to herald a new age of Mandalore.
Sadly, it only exists in legends.
If you set something up
in a movie in your first reel
and you pay it off on the last reel,
that is really great feeling
of satisfaction
that you have this delayed gratification
of something paying off.
Well, with television, you can do that
over the course of many years.
And I find that extremely satisfying.
The Mythosaur moment for her
is this moment of faith
where she sees something
that should be impossible.
And she is asked to believe in it.
If the creature gets up out of the water
and reveals itself,
it's just way too obvious.
It has to be something isolated.
Something that only she sees.
Something that she has to make a choice.
Do you trust your eyes?
"Did I really see that?
How is that even possible?"
Did you see anything alive?
Alive? Like what?
Nothing.
We're a communal species.
We connect with one another.
We're influenced by the people
we spend time with.
And especially people that we face
challenges with and work with.
And so, what seems to be naive to her
maybe there's something that
It's not just a matter
of her filling him in
on how things really are on Mandalore,
but maybe his fresh perspective
is going to inform how she sees things.
Why are all of these things
that shouldn't be possible possible?
Why does this Mandalorian, Din Djarin,
believe in all this hokey things
that only Mandalorian children
were supposed to believe in?
But as she watches him
have this faith and believe in it,
the world around him starts to change.
And it starts to change for the better.
So she starts to change,
'cause she thinks maybe this is the way.
When you choose
to walk the Way of the Mand'alor,
you will see many things.
But it was real.
This is the Way.
This season, we were challenged
with creating seven distinct environments.
Two of them were environments
we've already seen.
One of the most fascinating ones for me
was actually revisiting Coruscant.
A trillion permanent residents.
Amazing.
All these people working together
to make something better.
It makes me feel rather insignificant.
So, in my episode,
once we transitioned to Coruscant,
we start to the episode off
in the opera house.
It's the same opera house that you see
in Revenge of the Sith.
So I went back
and looked at how that space
was filmed in that original movie
and also the visual language
in that movie.
And tried to recreate it
a little bit here.
In Revenge of the Sith
the character is going up the steps.
Anakin runs up the stairs.
And in here,
Pershing goes down the stairs.
So we tried to put the camera
in a similar spot
to give audiences a nod that,
"Hey, we're revisiting some places
that you may have seen in the past."
I'm very lucky.
And we're lucky to have you,
Doctor Pershing.
How are you finding the city?
Comfortable, I hope?
Yes. Though anything would be comfortable
compared to the Outer Rim.
Coruscant is one of those environments
or planets that is so rich
and has so much history.
When I was working with George Lucas,
designing it in 1995,
we actually designed
a majority of the planet.
And in the prequel films you only see
a small portion of that.
So there's a lot of layers of design
that have always been figured out
and we never really had
an opportunity to execute them.
One of the really fun ones for me was that
Coruscant has this very unique
form language for these speeders.
Air taxis.
And we had seen some of them already
back in the prequels.
I thought, "Wouldn't it be terrific
to tie the design continuity
"to bring those designs back?"
And we literally did that.
It's almost exactly the same,
same color palette.
And we just made it into
our own bespoke version for our show.
Ah. Look at that, here we are.
Amnesty Housing.
Please watch your step
as you exit the vehicle.
When I came on to this job,
Jon and Dave both told me
that I would do well
if I could figure out a genre
that I'd like to put this episode into.
So, as I was reading the script,
my mind instantly went to Hitchcock.
You sure we're alone?
Yep.
Ships are all inoperable.
No need to guard 'em.
The entire sequence
that we filmed in the train,
we tried to film
in a Hitchcock sort of mode.
We incorporated a lot of looks
and the types of suspense
that he uses in the visual language.
A lot of this show happens
with everyone wearing helmets.
But with Omid and Katy,
they had to kind of carry this episode
through their performance,
through their looks,
through the way in which they subtly
react to different things.
They were phenomenal.
Keep it together, Doc.
You're better at this than I am.
Oh, you'll get the hang of it.
We are not making typical TV.
I've been involved throughout my career
with doing television, man.
This is another creature.
It is so much bigger than.
It is so much broader than.
So much more involved.
I wasn't steeped in Star Wars lore.
But the material was so damn good.
Four years later and we're
still rocking and rolling.
It is your favorite director.
- Yeah!
- Yeah!
Yay, Carl!
You can't say it, I'm saying it for you.
Welcome back, uh, to 304.
Carl had a very big task this season.
With an entire episode
with a ton of moving parts.
I mean, we have kids
being taken by big birds
and tons of Mandalorians
and big huge fight scenes.
And rock climbing.
And, you know, his episode legitimately
had everything in it.
It's fascinating to me
that the Mandalorian culture
is something that we allude to throughout
every episode basically.
And in the episode
that I was fortunate enough to direct,
we open with this
great sequence of training.
And so, we get a chance to see
how you're introduced into that culture
with the various skill sets
that are necessary.
And the baby plays
a big part in that opening.
Ready.
Begin!
Whoa!
Three points. Winner!
What puts a measure on your story
is how creative can you be.
We try to give the audience something
that they've never seen before.
Like in season one,
Jon wants to make a Baby Yoda.
I'm like, "What? Why?
Why would we do this?
"That sounds like not a good idea."
But, you put that initial fear aside
and you say,
"Okay, well, let's really examine this."
And I was like,
"Jon, if you're gonna do this,
I'm gonna be there with you.
"'Cause I know
Yoda's one of George's favorite characters
"and we cannot mess this up."
But I also knew Jon a bit as a filmmaker.
And I know he's got a great heart
and a great sensibility for telling
stories that are meaningful to people.
And that maybe this little child
could turn out to be something special.
But we didn't think
it was gonna be a puppet the whole time.
We thought it'd be CG.
Jon's coming off of making
Lion King and Jungle Book,
where the CG is practically unparalleled
with its believability.
And here it is, we got Werner Herzog
telling us, "No. Believe in the puppet."
And well, the world did.
I would like to see the baby.
Uh
It is asleep.
We all will be quiet.
The Grogu puppet improves every single year.
And the Legacy performers
are always tinkering and finding ways
to honestly allow the puppet to do
as much practically as possible.
Don't underestimate how significant
his interpretation of the moment is.
Okay.
'Cause he's everybody's touchstone.
The best direction we get is when
they treat the puppet like it's an actor.
They tell it what to do
and we're all standing around to hear it.
And we're reacting
to what the director wants.
There's an unspoken chemistry
to this where we
Just getting to know him
and watching this character develop,
he's kind of got this personality
of his own that we all understand.
No, Grogu.
And, cut.
How Jon integrates Grogu
into these stories
and tells the story at times from
Grogu's point of view is so beautiful.
It's just beautiful.
It's the only word for it.
This is the Forge.
The Forge can reveal weaknesses.
We knew we had to tell more stories
'cause we've told flashbacks
about what happened to Grogu.
And how Grogu escaped the Jedi Temple.
We've shown little glimpses
and clips of his memory.
Most recently in The Book of Boba Fett.
And so, we wanted to continue
to tell that story in small chapters.
We had to figure out,
"What's the next chapter?
"What's the likely thing
that would've happened?"
Get the youngling to Kelleran! Go!
What was clear was we needed Grogu
to have a type of savior companion
that preceded Mando
and that it would be a Jedi.
And then it becomes important to say,
"Well, who is that?"
'Cause that'll be a big deal.
And for me,
it's always nice when it's somebody,
"in the family" here at Lucasfilm.
Someone that's been out there
representing Star Wars,
interacting with fans,
carrying the banner.
And Ahmed Best has been such an important
part of our Star Wars history.
Don't worry, kid.
Everything's gonna be okay.
I come in and see it's the baby,
do you want this to come down or stay up?
It'll never be up because then
you're not on guard anymore.
- Right.
- Right?
It doesn't come back up
until you pick up the second one.
-Now you're gonna take care of business.
-Got it.
He grew up as part of it.
Through all different eras of it.
Jon! We haven't seen each other
since I was 16-years-old on the prequels.
'Cause I was hanging around
during the prequels.
And he also has martial arts training.
He introduced the character
of Kelleran Beq, a Jedi, into Star Wars.
And we thought that this could present
a really cool opportunity
to incorporate him into The Mandalorian.
-It hasn't really hit me yet.
-Yeah.
I never thought I'd be back, to be honest.
Especially like this. So, it's crazy.
Don't worry. We're gonna meet up
with some friends of mine.
But hold on,
it's gonna be a bumpy landing.
When I wrote the character of The Armorer
in the very first episode
of The Mandalorian,
we were trying to fill in
what that Mandalorian lore was.
And we made the decision early on
that this character would be seen
as the shamanistic figure.
This was gathered in the Great Purge.
It is good it is back with the tribe.
This audition came along
that my agent said was
probably something to do with Star Wars.
I knew that this character was the leader
of a group of people in hiding.
And it said that she was Zen-like.
And that's what I had to go on.
I do remember that in the audition scene
I had to say the line, "This is the Way."
And, of course, I had no idea.
This is the Way.
This is the Way.
Jon said that especially for her,
they were really going back to a lot
of Kurosawa films and The Last Samurai.
And just that majesty and that stillness,
that regalness.
And that helped so much.
Emily has done a really wonderful job
in helping to breathe life
into this character
and to make the character human.
On top of the mask
and on top of the archetype.
Our people have strayed from the Way
and it is not enough for a few to walk it.
We must walk it together.
There's a lot of backstory
and there's a lot of moving parts
to the saga that seem like
they've kind of really started to come
to fruition with this season.
Now, many of you don't know Greef Karga.
And those that do fought against him
when you rescued me
from his ambush many cycles ago
on the streets of Nevarro.
Since then, he's had a change of heart
and has risked his life to save mine
as well as the foundling in my charge.
My episode centers around
Greef Karga and Nevarro.
I won't abandon my city.
We have to get the public to safety.
Greef Karga at this point
is a bureaucrat really.
But he is still a guy
who can handle himself.
And who will step up
when necessary to do some handling.
Don't mistake my hospitality for weakness.
Is that what you call gunning down
my helmsman in cold blood?
When he let down his guard on your planet.
He shot first.
There's a few different genres
that I feel this episode touches on.
Our pirates led by Gorian Shard
are definitely beholden
to classic buccaneers.
Right down to wardrobe details.
So we had a lot of fun with that.
But once the action really gets going
and the siege is under way,
the Mandalorians come to the aid
of the people of Nevarro.
And it turns into kind of a pitched battle
that feels a little bit like
something out of Saving Private Ryan.
It really does become
like a full on battle sequence.
There's explosions,
there's kind of handheld cameras,
there's all the signatures
of battlefield action.
You fall in love with a storyboard,
and we're never gonna get that.
Look at that.
Yeah.
- Three people midair at once.
- Wow.
With the fireball.
I'll pay you the highest compliment,
it looks like CGI.
This season's been fun just
playing around with different things
that we can do with jetpacks
and these weapons that we've been given
and these Star Wars rules.
We've definitely got to play with
a lot more different fun ideas.
This season there's a lot more Mandalorians.
We've had some times where we have
30 plus stunt people working at one time.
And just having to watch everything
and make sure everyone's performing
the same way and with the same intensity,
that's probably the hardest thing.
Just because of the number
and just the scale of what we're doing.
You'll get a little support fire
as he's coming.
And you can come up, boom, boom,
and Joe will pass you for the thing.
Pop, pop. But when she doesn't shoot,
watch. Boom, boom, boom.
You can come over here
and just come after her like this. Boom.
You'll come up into this.
As long you're in the front,
lead this charge.
Weapons are intrinsic
to the Mandalorian culture.
So I think that's something
really fun to get to explore.
One of the challenges for us this season
was the amount of Mandalorian weapons.
The quantity of it.
We still like to do
the same methods as season one.
So what we normally do
is start with the artwork.
We show the illustrations
to Jon and Dave and Rick and Doug.
Get approval on everything.
And then once we start building.
These are the notes we basically did
for Mando's new blaster that he's getting.
So we extended the barrel like you wanted.
Made it longer, inch and a half longer.
Changed the grip
to go back to the original grip
where the top's in center.
But still makes it feel Empire.
A cool gun for Mando.
Mando's blaster is iconic.
I love that gun.
We've had it for three seasons.
And it's a big change to go
to a new blaster for Mando.
But I think it works really well.
Star Wars has always been
the blending of technology
with the right amount of just pure
hand built craftsmanship.
Which I think is what's really
exciting about the world.
And so, I get geeked out as much by
the latest prop that I have to work with.
Or droid that's being built.
Or a costume and how it flows.
And how it feels lived in
as anything we're doing on the Volume.
Could you all put your helmets on for us?
Creating 60 brand new Mandalorians
from the three different
tribes was amazing.
We got to do a survivor look.
We got to do the original covert look.
And then we got to explore
the Bo-Katan group.
Former, I guess,
Death Watch or former Nite Owls.
We called them the Marines.
It was very much influenced
by the animation.
I designed this helmet
on a Southwest flight one day.
- Shut up. Really?
- It was on a napkin and I
I wanted Bo-Katan
to have a specific style cutout.
And so, it's based on a barn owl.
And it's like the beak
- and the eyes of the barn owl.
- Oh, cool.
It was fun to create each individual art.
With them all wearing
basically the same armor
but being able to distinguish
one from another.
Basically what we did was,
we sort of created an assembly line
in the creation of the armor itself.
But then, we found unique ways of,
especially with the survivors,
replacing bits of armor with like,
what would you find on a planet
that had been through an apocalypse?
Wood and leathers and furs,
anything you could put together
to protect yourself.
But because you're from a religion
of the Mandalorians,
you would find a way to sculpt that
into traditional shapes.
- B2 battle droid.
- Oh, that's cool.
Each individual Mandalorian tells a story.
And that's always what I tell my artists.
I wanna know the story behind
the choices that we're making
for every crack, every stitch.
Mary, my costumer, gets very frustrated with me
because I like to talk about
game time preparations.
I don't let her put my gauntlets on
or my gloves.
That's something I do.
It's like tying up my shoes
before a basketball game.
That's part of my process.
This is the Way.
This is the Way.
The first few times I wore the armor,
I had to rely so much
on what I knew it looked like
because it felt incredibly awkward.
And, um, it's funny now,
I meet so many of the members of the 501st
or the Mando Mercs, or the Rebel Legion,
who do the cosplay all the time.
They all just nod their heads
and they're like, "Yup. Yup. Yup."
We each begin as raw ore.
We refine ourselves
through trials and adversity.
Suit acting is very different
than acting with a face, if you will.
You really have to be conscious
of what a head movement says.
Every tilt, every little thing
was so loud on camera.
And so, we had to be incredibly specific
about what we were doing.
It was such a wonderful time
of trial and error.
Bo-Katan Kryze is going off to bring
other Mandalorians in exile to us
so that we may join together once again.
This is my fourth season
working with The Mandalorian family.
For a lot of the episode,
it's the introduction of a new planet.
It's the introduction of a new cast
of characters we've never seen before.
You will always be welcome
in our domed paradise.
I read the script and then I was like,
"Oh, okay, so casting,
what are you thinking?"
And Jon's all, "Oh, yeah, we already have
three key new cast members.
"Jack Black, Lizzo and Christopher Lloyd."
I was like, "Right. Okay!"
Bombardier.
Jon Favreau claims
that he wrote this role for me.
I think he did.
I love the name Bombardier.
I like to think that I'm a badass.
That I actually could
hold my own in battle.
There's no talk of that.
In the script it just says
that I used to be
- Yeah, it fits.
- a facilities planning officer.
- Is Bombardier a dancer?
- I think so.
Dude, his name is Bombardier.
It's got bomb in the name.
How can he just be a facilities planner?
He's got a blaster. You just don't see it.
What's so fun is that Lizzo and Jack
have been very public
about their support for Star Wars
and this show and the characters.
Oh, my God!
Amazing, right?
Yes, I got my Grogu hat on.
I'm a huge fan.
Their enthusiasm
was absolutely infectious.
Who wouldn't wanna party with Bombardier?
Everyone wants to party with Bombardier.
I'm gonna have to do a quick
research study on all dancing
that's ever taken place in any
Star Wars film or side series.
'Cause I definitely feel like
I need to have the moves.
Just a little taste
for the behind the scenes!
My job working with Jack and Lizzo
was to just not break.
Because no take is the same.
And my goal was just
to get out of the way.
Who wants to take on the champion?
They infused so much
energy and enthusiasm
and passion into every single moment.
The moons of Paraqaat.
The moons of Paraqaat,
that's a hit.
It reminds us yet again that,
"Oh, my gosh, we're making Star Wars.
"Isn't that bananas?"
Okay, this is I This is
If you guys wanna be on time today,
get this baby out of my hands.
A Quadro-blast!
I've never seen such a streak!
On Plazir, it's kind of this
idealized city of the future.
And as part of their working force,
they sort of lean into robots.
The citizens voted against
any interruption in droid services.
They can't live without it.
We thought, "On Plazir,
wouldn't it be terrific
"to have a cantina
but make it a droid bar?"
Can I help you?
That depends. Is this The Resistor?
This is.
Literally, this became one of
the most fun sets for me
because when you look around the room,
you're seeing droids
from all of our films,
from all the different eras.
All sort of in this one environment.
It's like the greatest hits
of all the droids in Star Wars.
And that was just
an enormous amount of fun.
And also really complicated.
He looks a little bit like
he's giving the middle finger.
Okay, tan droid,
put your left arm down, please?
One of the things that's important
to depict in terms of droids
is having the majority of them
be practical droids.
Like actually being there and being
performed and operated by human beings.
I think it was the most droids in one scene,
- I could be wrong, in a Star Wars thing.
- Yeah.
Including like, inside the sandcrawler.
- It was so cool.
- Yeah, 20 puppeteers.
- Yeah, 20
- Scrambling around doing
-Mostly doing two puppets at one time.
-Yeah.
Every person had at least two puppets,
maybe three.
You start here with these puppets
and as the camera went by
you jump over
to two other puppets down the line.
- It was really fun.
- Yeah.
- Looks so good.
- Team Legacy, y'all.
Thank you so much.
Bryce's episode
is a lot more lighthearted
than some of the other episodes
this season.
But she also has the task of this
tremendous heaviness
at the very end of it.
Which is where Bo-Katan
goes to get her people back.
And try to convince
them to follow her again.
I've come to reclaim my fleet.
It's no longer your fleet, is it?
Then I challenge you,
one warrior to another.
And it's this epic fight between Bo-Katan
and Axe Woves, played by Simon.
Do you yield?
In the first season that he was in,
in my episode, his character Axe Woves
was originally written to die.
And I've gotta say this, like,
Simon is so wonderful.
Part of the reason why we want to keep him
around is because he's so great.
I had no idea I'd be back.
And not only am I back
but I've come back to this arc.
That just knocks my socks off.
You'll never be the true leader
of our people.
You won't even
take the Darksaber from him.
He's the one you should be challenging.
Enough Mandalorian blood
has been spilled by our own hands.
Mandalorian belief is that
whoever possesses the Darksaber
rules Mandalore.
And you cannot accept it as a gift.
You have to win it in battle.
And for anyone who has seen
Clone Wars and Rebels,
they know that Bo-Katan
accepted it one time.
And she believes that moment led
to the Night of a Thousand Tears.
Which was the destruction of the planet
and the people.
Bo-Katan is a cautionary tale.
She once laid claim to rule Mandalore
based purely on blood
and the sword you now possess.
I think people expected Mando.
He had the sword,
he's gonna take the throne.
He's gonna change from a travelling
bounty hunter to Aragorn or something.
And you felt like, "Oh, that's seems like
where you're gonna go with it."
But if you look at the clues,
it actually hopefully,
makes you reach the conclusion
of where we went
because if you notice in the first time
he uses Darksaber,
it's heavy for him.
Even The Armorer tells him that.
There. Feel it.
You are too weak to fight the Darksaber.
It will win if you fight against it.
You cannot control it with your strength.
But then Bo-Katan gets her hands
on the Darksaber when Din Djarin's trapped
and she uses it like a fencing foil.
She coveted that Darksaber so much
but without even thinking
gives it back him before he wakes up.
After she rescues him.
And so, what many may have expected to be
a show down between the two of them,
ends up with them both going
for something very different
and working together.
And ultimately, all of the different
Mandalorian groups coming together.
Mandalorians.
It is time to retake our home world.
I need volunteers from both tribes.
They need each other.
And we are learning all the time
that we need other people
to help us in our life.
So that's why these things
are powerful and relatable.
For Mandalore!
For Mandalore!
In Star Wars, you want a feeling of hope,
a feeling of adventure but more so
uplifting positivity to be happening.
It is a sign that the next age is upon us.
I think we need a range of stories
and experiences in Star Wars
that go from being cute and fun
to being serious and dark.
You knew in the old movies
when Darth Vader showed up,
it was time to get serious.
But you knew when it was fun
when you see the Jawas or the Ewoks.
It was a little more lighthearted.
But you also knew
that those lighthearted things
that seem fun and simple
might pay off later in a big way.
They might be meaningful.
The smallest lives,
the most insignificant people
can sometimes rise up
and do the greatest things.
If you wanna see Baby Yoda walking around
in a metal body like exoskeleton
power suit like Ripley in Aliens
we've got that.
Yes. Yes. Yes.
I thought it was really fun idea.
I never try to lose touch with the kid
that saw Star Wars that I was.
And think, "Boy, I would've loved that."
Go, Grogu. Go.
I was actually piloting IG,
so I was the one who had
IG strapped to my shoulders.
And these guys puppeteered
the Baby inside of it.
Rick, Rick Galinson built IG.
Amazing piece of art itself.
Inside the cavity, where Grogu lives,
he has two control stations
to make him walk around.
And when Grogu moves,
these two make the character walk.
It actually moves Grogu.
So these are motorized and we have
a duplicate of this chassis area
that's a control station
and when we move these sticks like this,
these ones follow suit.
And looks like he's piloting the character
and not the other way around.
Once it got on set, we kind of knew
that something special was happening.
There's serious stakes and people
get hurt and it's a battle.
But here's this child,
this little Baby Yoda,
Grogu, that because
If he's nothing else,
he's filled with heart and compassion.
And he wants to save and protect.
And that's what he wants to do.
He protects The Mandalorian,
who doesn't seem
to need a lot of protection.
Grogu, I'm going to need you
to be brave for me, okay?
We can't keep running.
If we don't take out Moff Gideon,
this will never end.
With all great villains,
there's a guilty level of likeability
that we have as an audience
for these characters.
And even though we might revile
what they're doing or their motivation,
there's always been a certain charisma.
I mean, from Vader on, there was
an attraction to these characters
and I think that is what Giancarlo
brought to the role of Moff Gideon.
Thanks to your planet's rich resources,
I have constructed
the next generation Dark Trooper suit
forged from beskar armor.
The most impressive part
is that it has me in it.
Giancarlo's a storyteller.
And he thinks things through.
He considers it,
then completely invests in it.
And when you're working
with an actor like that,
you're really working with a partner.
They're helping you.
They're asking you the right questions.
So, it's a real collaboration.
Did it once here,
'cause I loved how it looks.
But then I did once
In fact, I did it
to retake the homeworld of Mandalore.
And I kind of like that too.
- Yeah.
- So we'll play it.
Part of what the success of Mando is
is that we're talking about mythology
and the hero's journey.
Even Moff's journey somewhat as a warlord,
as a warden of the galaxy with aspiration,
even his journey is the hero's journey.
Because he's looking
for something he doesn't have.
His first lines in that first season are,
"You have something I want."
I mean, that's powerful stuff.
There are so many repercussions
that have happened
because of the fall of the Empire.
And this figure in Giancarlo
was kind of a reminder
of what that past Empire was.
Long Live the Empire!
Long Live the Empire!
But he also in many ways is a free agent
and has his own ideas.
Moff Gideon sems to have really focused
a little bit more on the materials.
He had the Darksaber,
that enabled him to be stronger.
He creates this new Dark Trooper suit.
What was missing
that he's trying to put together?
Well, it's the Force, is what was missing.
He wants that kind of power.
Which I thought made it complete.
You were a talented people,
but your time has passed.
However, as you can see,
Mandalore will live on in me.
We never really
One of the challenges for Mandalore
is we wanted to imply
that there was a hidden base
where Moff Gideon
was conducting his experiments.
And we thought,
"What should that environment be?"
Because the planet itself
has been devastated.
We thought that there might be these
pockets of natural caves
and that's where the Empire would come in
and modify some of that architecture.
But then build
their Empire aesthetic to it.
We were gonna have these TIE Interceptors
and we were gonna turn them white.
Then we thought, "Instead of having them
"just sit on the tarmac of these hangars,
"how about if we hung 'em
from the ceiling like bats?"
It was all those
very subtle emotional cues
that we always try to build in
to sort of reinforce,
"This is an underground environment,
this is the Empire
"but we're seeing a fresh, new context."
And so, that whole environment
is now the centerpiece
for this giant battle at the very end.
We're in our final battle
between Moff and Bo,
which turns into the final battle between
Mando, the kid, and Bo and Moff Gideon.
Which ultimately we've been building to this.
So let's do some great work this week.
And have some fun doing it.
So, here we go, marking rehearsal.
And action.
Rick's episode, episode eight,
there's a lot of action on that one.
It's difficult but, man,
I love the challenge.
That one felt pretty damn good.
Lateef is one of the best stunt performers
I've ever worked with in my life.
He's so, so, so good.
In this season, we had an opportunity
to actually do some stunts
and some fights together
and I loved every minute of it.
My biggest struggle with Katee
is telling her no.
'Cause she wants to do everything,
which I love.
There was this moment where they said,
"Okay, and then you slide across the floor
and you bring out your shield
"and you protect Mando.
"But you immediately come back up
and start shooting again.
"The sparks are gonna come down.
"But don't do that stuff, Katee,
we'll do that with Joanna."
And I went,
"It's just a flickin' knee slide, right?
"Like a run, knee slide, shield up,
guns, keep going, right?"
He went, "Well, yeah."
I was like, "All right, cool."
So I just did it.
You could hear JJ, our stunt coordinator,
scream at the end of it.
'Cause he screamed at me
like I was his child
that had just done something
that was told not to do.
But that he was also slightly proud of.
And it was this, "Katee!
"That was awesome."
It was so good.
And I was so proud of myself.
Hand over the Darksaber
and I will give you a warrior's death.
I know the inference
was that always one day
that Moff Gideon probably
would meet his demise.
And that wasn't a problem for me at all.
It's just when and how
and how tangible it is for an audience
to see what may happen to him.
I love this particular franchise
because it's never clearly defined
what really happens.
Even for Luke Skywalker, when he goes
over the edge, he's over the edge.
You don't see that brutal demise or death.
And there's always a possibility
that the rise from the ashes is possible.
Looking at The Mandalorian,
he starts out as such a lone individual.
In the very description
he's the lone gunman.
Building him into a character
that not only accepts family
and having Grogu as like a de facto son,
but to welcome others into family
and be an arbitrator
between different groups of people
to bring them together
is quite a change for him.
Din Djarin's a Mandalorian
but he's not from there.
He's become one because of the way
he lives his life
and what he values and who he's met.
And who saved him.
And Grogu is in this family
not because that's his biological dad
but because they're fulfilling
those roles in each other's lives.
You are now Din Grogu,
Mandalorian apprentice.
With Star Wars, most of the time,
it's about family.
Different types of families.
Not just in way that it's your mom and dad
and close relatives
but families that are created
out of necessity.
Friends that come together,
people that have things in common
that create a bond
and become like a family.
There are many different
interpretations of family now.
And I think that, that's something
that people are relating to
in this great galaxy.
It's more about what you value,
what you're willing to sacrifice,
what you hold dear.
And the role that you fill
in each other's lives.
I like that that's where this landed.
I don't know
if that was what we set out to do
but storytelling isn't always about that,
it's what you discover and what comes out.
Resolving the season the way we did,
it does fulfill one of the western tropes
of the gunfighter moves on
and things change, his presence
has helped things take the next step.
But that doesn't mean
the gunfighter belongs there.
Maybe they get a brief respite,
but you know that new adventures
are around the corner.
It might feel like the ending of one adventure
but it's always the beginning of another now.