Star Wars: The Mandalorian Producer Details Why He Included That Willrow Hood Easter Egg

Creator of The Mandalorian Jon Favreau has a deep passion for the Star Wars franchise, which was fully on display in the latest episode of Disney Gallery: The Mandalorian when the filmmaker explained the significance of the series’ “Camtono,” a mythical item fans had previously seen being carried in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. Favreau found a way to incorporate a number of Easter eggs from the furthest reaches of the galaxy far, far away, but for those who didn’t pick up on the significance of the item, he detailed how Willrow Hood and his appearance on Cloud City with an ice cream maker birthed a fan-favorite Easter egg.

In the sequel, a then-unnamed Hood was seen fleeing Cloud City with what was clearly a repurposed ice cream maker, only for The Mandalorian to confirm that it was a device used to transport valuable items, solidifying that Hood was actually attempting to escape Cloud City without leaving behind anything important to him.

“Can we please talk about the ice cream maker?” Favreau pleaded to other Mandalorian directors in Disney Gallery. “I think the ice cream maker is the most specific … it was the Camtono, the thing that he would carry the Beskar around in.”

He continued, “To me, it’s the deepest, deepest cut. There’s a bunch of people at Celebration that dress up as a character they’ve named ‘Willrow Hood.’ It’s somebody running in the background at Cloud City as everything’s going crazy, running with a prop that… clearly, he was a deep background character. So it’s just an off-the-shelf ice cream maker. So it’s a bucket with a little motorized thing on it that you plug in to make ice cream.”

This is far from the only Easter egg included in the series, as the creative team found ways to honor things like The Star Wars Holiday Special and even the made-for-TV Ewok movies.

“This thing has become such a focus of the fans that they have people who dress up and find that ice cream maker so that they can go to Celebration in the jumpsuit,” Favreau detailed. “And then they have… it’s a highlight of Star Wars Celebration that they have [the running of the Willrow Hoods].”

He added, “And everybody goes berserk, they love it. Because, if that’s not the essence of being a fan, I don’t know what is.”

Not only did Favreau use the item to reference the fan-favorite character, but he also likened it to a famous relic from a Quentin Tarantino film.

“So we took the ice cream maker and made it the thing like in Pulp Fiction when you open the… the golden briefcase light,” Favreau pointed out.

Season Two of The Mandalorian is slated to debut on Disney+ this October.

Were you excited to see this Easter egg in the series? Let us know in the comments below or contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter to talk all things Star Wars and horror!