Star Wars: Fan-Favorite Babu Frik to Appear in The Mandalorian

By Adam Barnhardt

In the digital age, it doesn't take much for a character to become a favorite amongst those engrained in pop culture. Take Babu Frik as an example. The character appeared in just a couple of scenes in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker and quickly became a favorite amongst fans, largely because of the character's ability to steal scenes with his comedic relief. Now, hot off the press from Anaheim's Star Wars Celebration this weekend, word has it the spice runner will soon return to live-action.

Announced during a panel including Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni, it was revealed that Babu Frik will appear in The Mandalorian Season Three. Given the timeline of the Disney+ show to the character's appearance in Episode 9, we'll see him roughly 25 years or so before his times roaming the galaxy with the Spice Runners of Kijimi.

Not only that, but Favreau, Filoni, and crew revealed some footage from the upcoming season, confirming Frik wouldn't be the lone Anzellan to appear. According to a description from ComicBook.com's Jamie Jirak, a whole slew of the species appeared in a brief teaser shown exclusively to those in attendance.

At one point, Babu Frik was going to serve a more pivotal role in the sequel trilogy as a psychic medium. Instead, creature supervisor Neal Scanlan previously the crew worked to rework the character heavily to fit more naturally into the story at hand.

"The real idea from J.J. was that little Babu would be a character very much like he is in the film, but not necessarily doing the job that he's doing in the film," Scanlan explained. "He was much more of a kind of a medium almost. Originally, Rey went to see Babu in order to find some information and he almost would exist in an environment very specifically tailored to his own size, so almost scaled to him. So when we started to design Babu—Ivan Manzella designed him, and he was costumed very differently than what you see in the final movie. So as a character, he was there very, very early on in J.J.'s world, the role that he played changed several times."

The Mandalorian season three will premiere in February of 2023 on Disney+.

What other characters do you hope to see return soon? Let us know your thoughts either in the comments section or by hitting our writer @AdamBarnhardt up on Twitter!

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