The Mandalorian Season 4 may still be possible, despite the next Star Wars movie. Jon Favreau had started working on the scripts for The Mandalorian Season 4 as far back as May 2022, and had finished them by February of the next year. When the upcoming movie The Mandalorian and Grogu was announced in January 2024, it was generally assumed that this had been adapted from Favreau’s Season 4 script. But it seems that may not be the case.

Speaking in the latest issue of Empire Magazine, Favreau – who’s also director of The Mandalorian and Grogu – dropped some surprising new information on Season 4. “We were planning on doing a fourth season,” he confirmed. “I had actually written all of that. I still have Season 4 sitting on my desk here.” According to Favreau, the script of The Mandalorian and Grogu is something different; “It’s structured around a movie structure, as opposed to a serialized weekly television show. So there’s a larger throw to the whole thing.”

What Does This Mean For The Mandalorian Season 4?

The scripts may not be the same, but The Mandalorian Season 4 does still seem unlikely after The Mandalorian and Grogu. In early 2023, there were reports that Disney had instructed Lucasfilm to “ramp up” production of the movies; it’s telling that only one live-action Star Wars Disney+ TV show is currently known to be in the works, while The Mandalorian and Grogu has wrapped production and Shawn Levy’s Starfighter movie is currently filming. Lucasfilm’s focus now lies on the big screen, and the hope will be that Din Djarin and Grogu transition smoothly to this new medium.

The ultimate test will be when The Mandalorian and Grogu actually hits theaters, on May 22, 2026. Lucasfilm’s hope will be that the popularity of “Baby Yoda” leads to families who don’t even subscribe to Disney+ heading to see the movie, and Favreau stresses the film’s accessibility in his Empire interview. The story will tie in with what’s happening in Ahsoka Season 2, but Empire note that “newcomers who don’t know their Ahsoka from their elbow can jump right in.” If the movie performs well, it’s likely The Mandalorian will evolve into a film franchise.

That said, it is pleasing to see that Lucasfilm hasn’t just adapted a TV script into a movie. The studio had previously done the inverse for three Disney+ TV shows (The Book of Boba Fett, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Skeleton Crew), and they didn’t consistently land well. Film and TV are very different mediums, and what works in one will not necessarily do well in another. It’s fascinating to speculate at a future where Din Djarin and Grogu continue their adventures on both big and small screen, the best of both worlds, even if that does still seem unlikely.

What do you think? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!