Now that the Star Wars fandom has had a few months to digest and process The Book of Boba Fett, it’s very apparent that one of the hotly contested talking points of the show has been the inclusion of the character of Din Djarin, more commonly known simply as the titular Mandalorian from the show of the same name. Some feel that the appearance was a natural fit, the overlapping and merging of shows into a single, coherent story. Others, however, contest that the show should have kept its focus on Boba Fett himself – it’s his name on the title, after all, right? – and that the continued storyline of Din (and Grogu) would have been a better fit as part of the upcoming third season of The Mandalorian. Regardless of where one falls on the debate, we finally have received a weigh-in from two of the major showrunners for each series.
Disney+ recently released Disney Gallery: Star Wars: The Book of Boba Fett, which breaks down the development and making of the series. In it, executive producers Dave Filoni and Jon Favreau touch on their approach to bringing Din and storylines from The Mandalorian into The Book of Boba Fett, stating that it was something they had decided to do from “the very beginning.” Filoni chimes in at first:
“At the very beginning, Jon and I look through all the season and, Jon has a bunch of things he wants to accomplish, and, you know, we both like Mando, and we felt that it would be difficult for us to go a whole season without seeing him. And so, he’s a friend of Boba’s, so it makes sense to bring him back into the story.”
This was not some spur-of-the-moment decision, it seems. They knew going into the show that they wanted to feature Din, as leaving him out would have caused potential problems with the storylines they want to convey for the overarching story they’re telling.
Jon Favreau expounds on this, adding that the closeness we saw develop between Din and Grogu was now gone, and this part of the timeline between the shows was ripe to tell us what happens next:
“Having The Book of Boba Fett come in the timeline and let everything settle, it allowed us to let some time pass, to take a breather, and meet The Mandalorian after he’d taken his helmet off and that The Child was no longer in his life. That father-child relationship that had developed was no longer there. And so his life, I think, would lose some of its meaning. That felt like fertile territory.”
He continues, touching on how Star Wars – unlike other franchises – is a story where its fans want to eat up the lore, and don’t mind when it’s handed to them via exposition:
“Exposition can always be a huge speed bump in the middle of the road. But in Star Wars, you’re at the edge of your seat ’cause you wanna know more about the lore. I always point back to the scene where the lightsaber comes out and Obi-Wan Kenobi starts talking about the Clone Wars and Luke’s father.”
Finally, Favreau touches on the setup of Mandalore and its backstory, feeling like now, during the arc of The Book of Boba Fett, was a good time to get into it, which would consequently need Din – and therefore Grogu – to help tell it:
“So, to have the backstory of Mandalore show up now, three seasons into our storytelling, because people are so curious about what was The Purge, what was the Night of a Thousand Tears, the Songs of the Eons Past. And so we started to begin to show imagery. Now that imagery had to be evocative of what George [Lucas] and Dave [Filoni] created in Mandalore and the animated shows. But this was our way to start to get into that.”
It should come as no surprise that Filoni and Favreau have grander machinations at play when it comes to telling their audience their stories within the Star Wars universe. After all, Filoni is well known to rope in plot points, places, events, and even characters that show up elsewhere in the continuity. It’s expected to see more of this interweaving in the upcoming third season of The Mandalorian, and even beyond, as we know that both he and Favreau are showrunning Star Wars: Ashoka as well.
Disney Gallery: Star Wars: The Book of Boba Fett is now streaming on Disney+.
