Pedro Pascal’s title character in the upcoming “Star Wars” TV show on Disney+, “The Mandalorian,” certainly looks and feels a lot like another popular bounty hunter in a galaxy, far, far away. But the show’s creators and its star assure that their bounty hunter has one major difference compared to Boba Fett.
“Our guy is a Mandalorian,” creator and showrunner Jon Favreau told Entertainment Weekly. Adds Dave Filoni, who directed the pilot episode for the upcoming series: “Boba Fett is a clone, according to ‘Attack of the Clones,’ and by asking [creator George Lucas].”
“He would say Boba Fett is not Mandalorian, not born on Mandalore. He’s more of a person indoctrinated into it, into the way of life, and gets a hold of the armor,” Filoni continued. In “Star Wars” lore, Mandalorians made the iconic armor that Boba Fett and his “father” Jango Fett wore in the films. Boba was technically an unaltered clone of Jango.
“The Mandalorian” follows the travails of a lone gunfighter in the outer reaches of the galaxy far from the authority of the New Republic. The series is set five years after the events of “Return of the Jedi,” when the galaxy is still digging through the rubble of fallen Empire. “Our guy is operating in a much more unforgiving landscape,” Favreau continued to EW. “A place where survival is difficult enough, let alone flourishing in that atmosphere and the politics have dissolved.”
“The Mandalorian” is one of the debut series for Disney+, the company’s upcoming streaming service. The service will launch on Nov. 12 and costs $6.99 a month. Unlike Netflix, all Disney+ episodes will be rolled out weekly. The series stars Nick Nolte, Werner Herzog, Gina Carano, Giancarlo Esposito, Emily Swallow, Carl Weathers and Omid Abtahi. Bryce Dallas Howard, Taika Waititi, Rick Famuyiwa and Deborah Chow directed episodes of the series.
For the record: Due to a misquote in EW’s original story, a previous version of this story included an inaccurate quote from Jon Favreau.