Although the internet, including many The Mandalorian cast members, were celebrating the recent announcement that David Filoni has been made the executive creative director of Lucasfilm, Variety has pushed its glasses up with a report clarifying that the promotion actually happened last summer, but the company only got around to updating its website this week. It’s a good thing Variety did this digging, because its report on the matter also unearthed the news that the planned Mandalorian spinoff Rangers of the New Republic is no longer active in development.
First announced in December 2020, little was known about the planned spinoff. In GameSpot’s previous reporting, we speculated that the series might be set concurrently with or at least in the same time period as the events of The Mandalorian, since the New Republic is the government that cropped up between the original movie trilogy and the newest trilogy. Before MMA fighter Gina Carano’s being fired by Lucasfilm for Instagram posts comparing the persecution of Jewish people in Nazi Germany to “hating someone for their political views,” she was expected to feature in the spinoff somehow–now, both she and the show have been sunset from the Star Wars franchise galaxy.
Meanwhile, The Book of Boba Fett (set to premiere in December) and Ahsoka (which doesn’t yet have a solid release date), the other current Disney+ TV series spinoffs, are moving forward as planned. Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy has indicated each of these spinoffs take place within the same timeline, and will ultimately culminate in a “storytelling event.” It’s anyone’s guess what that might mean.
The Mandalorian Season 2 came to an end back in December, and it left fans with a shocking revelation about where the series will be heading at the start of Season 3.
