Star Wars: The Mandalorian Star Taika Waititi Wants Fans to Petition for IG-11’s Return

Warning: Full spoilers for the first season of The Mandalorian below!

A fan favorite in horror and Marvel circles thanks to his movies What We Do in the Shadows and Thor: Ragnarok, New Zealand filmmaker Taika Waititi made his debut in a galaxy far, far away with The Mandalorian not only as a director, but a character. Waititi lent his voice to the titular character’s fellow bounty hunter, turned Baby Yoda caregiver, IG-11. After seemingly meeting his end in the first episode of the series, Waititi’s character returned with a quieter, gentler personality, though in the end he ultimately sacrificed himself to save his new friends. All that in mind, Waititi is hoping the rabid fanbase for Star Wars can make sure he returns.

“I feel we just need to start a petition because I think that character, really, he held up the entire season, didn’t he?” Waititi told TheWrap in a new interview. “From episode one all the way through, he was the hero.”

Waititi’s place in Star Wars lore will seemingly be a place of great pride for the recent Oscar nominee, who held it up as something he’d already achieved in the franchise when asked if he would direct a Star Wars movie.

When Waititi’s character was first revealed to be part of the series, many fans assumed it was the fan-favorite IG-88 bounty droid as seen in Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back. Series executive producer Dave Filoni previously spoke about why they decided to make a new character for The Mandalorian instead of bringing back the classic droid.

“I love and respect the old characters and the classic characters – and sometimes I think maybe I’m a bit too reverent with things – but I like areas that are undefined now….So a droid like IG-88, if you know the Expanded Universe and the Star Wars history, there are a lot of stories around him or what might’ve happened to that particular droid. So out of respect for people that have been with this franchise a long time, it’s like, ‘Well if we do something with this space, would that be contradicting those stories?’ So it’s better just to say, ‘Well, there’s other droids,’ it’s not like it was a unique assassin droid. And then we have a little more free-range. I mean, people forget in Empire, you never even see him walk or take a step – the prop was actually bolted to the floor. So just giving him feet was something new and original. But yeah, I just gravitate to the open field that you get with new characters, and then when you do bring up something, if you choose to, like when we brought Obi-Wan finally into Star Wars Rebels, I think it becomes significant and special.”

The second season of The Mandalorian has already been confirmed by Favreau, with the showrunner announcing after the season finale that the next batch of episodes will premiere in the fall of 2020. It’s unclear if Taiki will return to the series after IG-11’s explosive finale, but perhaps a different IG droid with the same voice could appear. For the time being, Waititi will return to the MCU for Thor: Love and Thunder, so his time in the galaxy far, far away might be over for now.