The Mandalorian Season 3 Premiere Resurrects Fan-Favorite Dead Character

The galaxy far, far away’s favorite bounty hunter and youngling are back in business. The Mandalorian made its long-awaited return to Disney+ on Wednesday, premiering its first new episode in over two years. That said, it has been a little less than 365 days since fans last saw Din Djarin and Grogu, as the two made guest appearances in The Book of Boba Fett. Their two episodes in that series proved to be crucial to the overall Mandalorian narrative, evident by Djarin and Gorge’s unexpected reunion. The Mandalorian Season 3 picks up where The Book of Boba Fett left off, as the duo are seen together throughout the third installment’s promotional material.

Warning – The rest of this article contains spoilers from The Mandalorian Season 3 Episode 1.

The Mandalorian Season 3 premiere features a reunion between Pedro Pascal’s Din Djarin and Carl Weathers’s Greef Karga, who is now a High Magistrate on Nevarro. Also present on this planet is a statue of Taika Waititi’s IG-11, a droid bounty hunter who perished at the end of the first season. Mando realizes that this statue is actually made of parts of IG-11 himself. This gives Mando the idea to revive IG-11, as he wants to use him to assist with navigating the mines of Mandalore.

It takes only a matter of minutes to IG-11 to regain feeling in his robotic fingers, as he sits up shortly after this resurrection surgery begins. His new life is short-lived, as upon spotting Grogu, IG-11 defaults to his past programming, attempting to kill the young member of Yoda’s species. Mando shoots IG-11 multiple times, resulting in the droid being made obsolete once more.

Those events aside, this seemingly won’t be the end of IG-11 in The Mandalorian Season 3. Mando deciphers that IG-11 needs a new memory circuit to be repaired properly.

Waititi himself was listed as IG-11’s actor in the credits. If Mando fulfills his mission to successfully reboot his old ally, look for Waititi to consequently have a much larger role in the series. The critically-acclaimed director helmed episodes of The Mandalorian in the past but is not among the filmmakers directing Season 3.

The Mandalorian Season 3 Episode 1 is now streaming on Disney+.