As soon as audiences saw Pedro Pascal's Mandalorian slice someone in half via a saloon's electronic doors, they were certain that this was going to be a very different Star Wars tale.
Yes, Baby Yoda - or 'The Child' as he's correctly known as - stole all of the column inches, but with just eight episodes, Jon Favreau and the various directors of each episode created something that truly captured the spirit of Star Wars.
Truth be told, there's barely a weak episode in the series with The Sin, Sanctuary, and Redemption being particular highlights.
Since its release on Disney +, The Mandalorian has been a massive hit and for a time, it even became the most in-demand streaming series in the US. Aside from this, the Pedro Pascal-led series has also proven to be popular with the critics too as seen by the 15 Emmy nominations it recently received.
During a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the show's executive producers, Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni, said that they're currently in postproduction on Season 2 which is due out in October.
However, there's even better news because production on Seasons 2 and 3 of the show are unlikely to be impacted by COVID, due to the show's emphasis on virtual sets and outside locations.
Favreau states: “The fact that the set is much more contained is a benefit because you can limit the number of people. A lot of the people controlling it are doing it remotely from what we call the Brain Bar, which is a bank of gaming computers, essentially. The amount of people near the camera could be much smaller than [usual].
"We also shoot a lot outside, which is helpful, too. We build to a moment in filming more like an animated production, where we have a lot of storyboards, a lot of discussions and scouting in virtual reality. We use cinematic tools in VR much the same way we did for The Lion King and The Jungle Book. A lot of times the actors you are seeing on the screen aren’t actually there on set," said the Iron Man director.
During a previous interview, Favreau confirmed that photography on Season 2 had finished before the lockdown was introduced.
“We were lucky enough to have finished photography before the lockdown,” he said during a virtual panel for the ATX Television Festival.
“Thanks to how technology-forward Lucasfilm and ILM are, we have been able to do all of our visual effects and editing and postproduction remotely through systems that had been set up by those companies for us.”
Season 2 of The Mandalorian is set to arrive on Disney+ this autumn, with Disney boss Bob Iger stating a planned release in October 2020, roughly a year since the show debuted in the US.
No official announcements have been made relating to the Irish release, but it’s assumed the show will launch simultaneously in every region where Disney+ is available.
Season 2 of #TheMandalorian coming Fall 2020 pic.twitter.com/8VQYLDMQ0V
— Jon Favreau (@Jon_Favreau) December 27, 2019
As for the plot of Season 2, very little is known but Temuera Morrison will return and he's expected to reprise his role as Boba Fett. Elsewhere, Katee Sackhoff will play a live-action Bo-Katan, Timothy Olyphant has an unspecified role, and Rosario Dawson is rumoured to be playing Ahsoka Tano.
This is the way.
