Star Wars Rebels Showrunner Hopes to Deliver "Mandalorian Madness Everybody Wants"

While Star Wars Rebels season three has been dominated by talk of Grand Admiral Thrawn, changes [...]

While Star Wars Rebels season three has been dominated by talk of Grand Admiral Thrawn, changes and revelations about our understanding of The Force, and how Kanan Jarrus will deal with his new blindness and crisis of faith, the trailer also teased something massive for Sabine. The young Mandalorian Rebel will be seeing her compatriots again, along with some family members, and reaching into Mandalorian lore. She even, at some point, will gain her family, Clan Viszla's, birthright: the ancient Darksaber, a black-bladed lightsaber variant.

That story will be much deeper and take longer to unfold than some Star Wars fans might be expecting, showrunner Dave Filoni revealed in an interview with ComicBook.com. He knows how immensely popular - and mysterious - the Mandalorians are, and hopes to live up to that in every way. That means "going a long way to explaining" why the honor-bound Mandalorians would ever work for a government or organization like the Empire.

"That's one of the tricks, isn't it?" Filoni asked. "We're going to meet some characters that people don't know of yet that really will throw that all into, I hope, crystal clarity."

When they were first developing Star Wars Rebels, despite the fun he had with Mandalorians in Star Wars: The Clone Wars, they had no intention of going back to the warrior race.

"Just what's been going on on Mandalore was something that I never really thought we'd deal with when we started this series," he revealed, though they did include Sabine to "leave the door open." The way that character, voiced by Tiya Sircar, grew organically in the series and "got more and more interesting" made the team decide to investigate her family.

"Once you deal with her family, you have to say, 'Okay, what's the politics of what's going on there, and how did she wind up an outcast really?' Let's really knuckle down on that. We've said certain things, and we know we have our broad generalizations of it, but what are the specifics of that story?"

sabine-mandalorian-rebels-s-3
(Photo: Lucasfilm Animation)

Filoni promised that they're telling "a rather detailed story of Sabine and what actually went on there [on Mandalore], and why she is somewhat exiled, in her mind or in reality, from her family." The story will show what's happened on Mandalore since it was taken over by Darth Maul toward the end of the Clone Wars, and how "everything just kind of escalated." Current surviving members of Sabine's family will be around, too, and when Sabine and her family reconnect, it will "cause a big amount of action to happen on Mandalore itself."

The executive producer and supervising director noted their luck in getting "fantastic actors" every time they bring new Mandalorians on the show, including Kevin McKidd as Fenn Rau, who returns for season 3.

"You couldn't find somebody more enthusiastic about being part of Star Wars than he is," Filoni said - a huge statement from someone who has worked with the talents across both of these immense animated series. He teased "some of the other casting" but wouldn't reveal it just yet.

rebels-sabine-s-3
(Photo: Lucasfilm Animation)

As for the return of Bo-Katan, which voice actress Katie Sackhoff let slip at a Comic-Con earlier this month, Filoni cautioned that "some things might be very far off. More far off than the fans realize, or than even the actors portraying them," so that may be a long wait. He did note that it's a thrill and "amazing" to see fans excitement over a character like that even possibly returning. While he couldn't confirm if or when we'd see that, Filoni did say he's thinking of the fans when dealing with this major storyline.

"Hopefully it's the Mandalorian madness that everybody out there wants because I know they're a big deal, and I've been involved for quite some time with their history now. Never saw that coming when I came here either. It's funny, the areas of Star Wars I've gone into and really illustrated in a lot of detail wasn't what I ever thought I would do when I started with the Clone Wars."

Star Wars Rebels returns Saturday September 24 at 8:30 p.m. ET/PT on Disney XD with a special hour-long premiere.

0comments