‘The Mandalorian’: Season 2 Is Going to Be Stuffed with Star Wars—and That’s Great

The world may’ve ground to a halt over the past two months, but y’know what’s still keeping a breakneck pace? Disney+’s The Mandalorian, a show that just keeps announcing major additions to its Season 2 cast. Rosario Dawson, Michael Biehn, Temuera Morrison, Katee Sackhoff, Timothy Olyphant—by the time you’re reading this article, it would be safe to assume that another fan favorite actor has been cast in a jaw-dropping role.

And this isn’t like the delightfully confounding assortment of actors that were assembled for Season 1 prior to the show’s debut (Gina Carano and Werner Herzog on the same show?!). The Season 2 castings have mostly come paired with a character announcement, revealing that major pre-existing are either returning or making their live-action debut. Sackhoff is playing Mandalorian warrior Bo-Katan Kryze, a character she’s voiced on the Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels animated series. Morrison will play the iconic Boba Fett in live-action for the very first time, after portraying the character’s “father” Jango Fett in Attack of the Clones and providing the voice for Boba in re-releases of The Empire Strikes Back as well as video games.

And, in the most major news of all, Dawson will portray Ahsoka Tano—quite possibly the most popular and important character to be introduced outside of the main trilogies—to live-action for the first time. We still don’t know who Michael Biehn and Timothy Olyphant are playing, but their involvement is enough to get fans hyped. And I haven’t even mentioned all the rumors flying around that WWE wrestler Sasha Banks may have a part to play in Season 2! This is a lot—but is it too much? Could the show be treading into Iron Man 2/Spider-Man 3/Batman and Robin territory?

I’ll just say it now: No. It is not too much. It’s just right, and I think there’d be more cause for worry if the show wasn’t going this hard for Season 2.

As I’ve already mentioned, the only real difference between the cavalcade of “Wait, what?!” casting announcements for Seasons 1 and 2 is the fact that the ones for Season 2 are of characters that we already know (Boba Fett, Ahsoka Tano, Bo-Katan Kryze). The list of actors involved in Season 1 was equally wild: Pedro Pascal, Carl Weathers, Werner Herzog, Nick Nolte, Taika Waititi, Gina Carano, Ming-Na Wen, Giancarlo Esposito, Bill Burr, etc. That’s a ridiculously stacked cast! And imagine what it would’ve felt like if we’d gotten a heads up that Season 1 was going to also introduce Baby Yoda, bring Death Watch and the Darksaber in live-action, dabble in every genre from western to samurai to heist, and expand greatly on Mandalorian lore. Just looking at this laundry list, The Mandalorian Season 1 also did too much—but it never felt that way.

Any worries about Season 2 come from us as viewers looking at these casting announcements through a lens of what TV is today instead of taking into account The Mandalorian’s refreshingly retro take on storytelling. Our brains are trained to assume that Sackhoff, Dawson, and the rest will be series regulars, as if Din Djarin is going to be zooming around the universe with Cara Dune, Ahsoka Tano, Bo-Katan Kryze, Boba Fett, and Baby Yoda all stuffed into the Razor Crest. I think it’s incredibly safe to say that he won’t be, and that—going off of The Mandalorian Season 1—all of these casting announcements are for guest star roles that might, might, max out at 3 episodes each.

Pascal was the only actor to appear in every episode of Season 1; Carl Weathers appeared in five (one of them as a hologram), Gina Carano in three, Ming-Na Wen in one. It’s more accurate to assume that we’re going to get an Ahsoka Tano episode, a Boba Fett episode, and a Bo-Katan Kryze episode and not a crowded ensemble that relies on too many diverging, distracting subplots. The Mandalorian gave us streamlined storytelling with a crazy big cast in Season 1 (I didn’t even mention Amy Sedaris or Clancy Brown or Richard Ayoade or…). They can do that in Season 2.

And this is exactly what The Mandalorian should be doing in Season 2, especially after that shocking finale moment with Moff Gideon carrying the Darksaber. All of these guest stars flow effortlessly from the show’s premise. The Darksaber begs the show to include Bo-Katan Kryze. Bo-Katan is also the leader of Death Watch, the faction that rescued Din Djarin when he was a kid. And Bo-Katan leads us to Ahsoka Tano, one of Kryze’s allies.

Tano’s also an erstwhile quasi-Jedi who was last seen in Star Wars Rebels partnered up with another Mandalorian warrior: Sabine Wren. And Boba Fett is the most popular Mandalorian ever, so why wouldn’t the show include him eventually? There’d be reason to worry if The Mandalorian announced that Samuel L. Jackson was returning as Mace Windu, or that Jodie Comer would reprise her role as Rey’s mom. Announcements like those would indicate that The Mandalorian was veering off into completely unrelated territory, and it’s not time for that yet. That’s what fifth seasons are for!

This interconnectivity is what Star Wars TV is about. When Star Wars Rebels picked up the baton in 2014 after the sudden cancellation of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Rebels spent Season 1 laying its foundation before incorporating Clone Wars characters and plots in the Season 1 finale and the rest of its run. And when Clone Wars picked the baton back up for a final season this year, it built on the foundation that Rebels laid. Now, with Clone Wars and Rebels concluded, it’s time for The Mandalorian to hit hyperspace, baton in tow.

Call me an optimist, but I don’t think there’s anything to worry about with The Mandalorian Season 2. Every announced guest star feels like a natural extension of the show’s premise, and it teases that we’re going to actually get answers to some of Season 1’s biggest mysteries way sooner than we thought (How did Moff Gideon get the Darksaber from Bo-Katan?!). I’m ready for Season 2, whenever Disney+ is able to deliver it… and y’know what? I’m even gonna cross my fingers and hope that Timothy Olyphant is playing Dengar.

Stream The Mandalorian on Disney+