Reactions to the premiere of The Mandalorian and Grogu are coming in (even if they’re still embargoed)… and let’s just say they’re not good. Folks we’ve talked to have said it’s a train wreck. It’s a filler episode for a season never made from a TV show that jumped the shark a couple of years ago. And that’s Disney’s big Star Wars return for the silver screen.
Oy ve.
In all of this, prepare for Jon Favreau to unfairly take a huge PR hit and be ridiculed. He’ll likely be the scapegoat. Pedro Pascal just “came out” with a male romance and a kiss on Stephen Colbert’s lips… that’s a solid marketing defense in Hollywood. Writers won’t want to take a swing there or send him blame. Is that fair? It just is what it is. Dave Filoni, meanwhile, can claim he’s brand new at Lucasfilm… this movie was called for by Kathleen Kennedy, by Bob Iger. But Favreau: he’s the director. It’s on him.
So damning. https://t.co/zP824CACau
— Robert Meyer Burnett, Viceroy of Verisimilitude (@RMBee) May 15, 2026
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That’s unfortunate, because we’ve been covering for a very long time that this entire project was hijacked and that he had lost control to a Dave Filoni who just isn’t up to the task (see the Ahsoka series). Filoni, remember, is the guy Kathleen Kennedy thought should run all stories for Star Wars going forward. Or was that Rian Johnson? It’s hard to remember these days.
For years, The Mandalorian was the safest bet in modern Star Wars. While the sequel trilogy divided the fanbase and other Disney+ projects produced mixed reactions, Din Djarin and Grogu became a rare point of broad agreement in the first two seasons. That is why Lucasfilm’s decision to pivot away from a fourth Disney+ season and into a theatrical movie, The Mandalorian and Grogu, is one of the most conniving business decisions in a while. Disney wants to keep the budget for such a thing away from Disney+ so streaming looks like’s it more profitable, so they allegedly tossed this into film production to please investors. The problem was, they needed a movie script and they needed to discard any more seasons. That meant retrofitting a TV series finale with 8+ hours of content into a 2 hour Star Wars silver screen return!
Dave Filoni says he “couldn’t even say” what the craziest #StarWars pitch he’s heard since taking over as Lucasfilm president:
“At the time, when Jon [Favreau] came in and pitched a child of Yoda’s species, that might’ve seemed crazy… Crazy is opportunity sometimes.”… pic.twitter.com/QKFnpvY0et
— Variety (@Variety) May 15, 2026
To carry the water of the C-Suite decision, the Lucasfilm leaders did their duty. Favreau described the appeal simply: bringing “the Mandalorian and his apprentice Grogu to the big screen” was “extremely exciting.” Kennedy also framed the project as a natural theatrical fit for characters Favreau and Filoni had brought into the franchise.
What makes the project especially interesting is that it did not begin as a clean-sheet movie concept. Before The Mandalorian and Grogu became Lucasfilm’s first new Star Wars film in years, Favreau had already written a fourth season of The Mandalorian. In February 2023, Favreau said Season 4 had already been written, explaining that he and Dave Filoni had mapped out the story together because the series needed to connect properly with other shows set in the same era, including Ahsoka and Skeleton Crew.
But then… things changed. A movie was needed, and the collapse of everything else in Star Wars land meant it couldn’t have connections to other properties, ’cause those properties might be discontinued at any moment under new Disney executives.
Opening shot from The Mandalorian and Grogu trailer – Star Wars, YouTube
That means the movie appears to have emerged from the wreckage of a much larger television plan. The original Season 4 was not merely another set of episodic bounty-hunting adventures. According to Favreau’s more recent comments, that abandoned season would have tied more directly into the post-Return of the Jedi era’s wider mythology, including the fallout from Ahsoka and the looming threat of Grand Admiral Thrawn. Favreau told GamesRadar that the Season 4 plan “did tie in to what had happened,” while the film had to become more self-contained because a movie audience cannot be assumed to have watched three prior seasons and multiple related Disney+ series.
That is where Filoni’s role becomes crucial. Lucasfilm’s official materials now credit The Mandalorian and Grogu as written by Jon Favreau, Dave Filoni, and Noah Kloor. However, Filoni would also reveal that his job as writer was to come in and retool the script according to his vision of Star Wars and where Star Wars is going now. Favreau, thusly, was working on a retrofitted TV season four finale that could not reference other Star Wars stuff and now was being re-written in large part by his boss who has struggled mightily in recent years on any content he has released.
Talk about a no-win scenario for Favreau, who was under contract and could not likely exit the project!
LONDON, ENGLAND – APRIL 08: Jon Favreau attends the Ahsoka panel at Start Wars Celebration 2023 in London at ExCel on April 08, 2023 in London, England. (Photo by Jeff Spicer/Getty Images for Disney)
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Favreau has also confirmed that Filoni stayed “closely in step” with the film’s development. He said Filoni was one of the writers and producers on the movie and also directed second unit, specifically the puppet unit. That detail matters because Grogu is not just a mascot in this story. Official descriptions of the film now call Grogu Din Djarin’s “young apprentice,” and the final trailer was promoted as a coming-of-age story about Grogu’s journey alongside his adoptive father.
The creative pivot seems to have required a delicate balance. Favreau had Season 4 material that was built for television: multiple characters, extended callbacks, broader world-building, and a stronger connection to Ahsoka. A theatrical movie required a different structure. And the total failure of Ahsoka on Disney+ likely meant deep worry about any theatrical connections. The declining popularity of the Sequel Trilogy is further problematic. Favreau has said that, for a movie, especially the first Star Wars film in seven years, the story needed to welcome new viewers while still rewarding the core audience. He compared the challenge to George Lucas dropping audiences into the middle of an adventure in the original 1977 Star Wars, while still making the story legible and complete.
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – MAY 23: (L-R) Leslye Headland, Dave Filoni, Chief Creative Officer, Lucasfilm and Kathleen Kennedy, President, Lucasfilm attend the launch event for Lucasfilm’s new Star Wars series The Acolyte at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood, California on May 23, 2024. (Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images for Disney)
That shift may also explain why Filoni’s involvement is so important. Filoni is the executive most closely associated with the interconnected “Mandoverse” mythology. He created Ahsoka, helped build the animated foundations of modern Star Wars, and has long been treated by fans as Lucasfilm’s chief continuity steward. But he’s also the guy many blame for having destroyed the “Mandoverse” after the first two seasons of The Mandalorian. Essentially nothing from Lucasfilm since then has been viewed as high quality by the market. If Season 4 originally functioned as connective tissue between The Mandalorian, Ahsoka, and the larger Thrawn storyline, then Filoni would be the person best positioned to help Favreau decide what to keep, what to delay, and what to remove for a theatrical audience. And yet having to strip all of that out for the movie would mean Favreau simply got the worst of what Filoni can offer: re-writing a legendary director’s salvage script again, this time without the Filoni characters that might be his forte.
That does not mean the larger plan is gone, but it’s likely being wrapped up quickly for a Disney-directed shift in Star Wars away from the Sequel Trilogy and the Mandoverse. A box office flop, that now looks more-likely-than-ever for The Mandalorian and Grogu could hasten the move. Favreau’s comments indicate that Ahsoka Season 2 remains the place where the higher-level Thrawn storyline can continue, while The Mandalorian and Grogu becomes a more accessible adventure built around the relationship between Din and Grogu.
In the end, Dave Filoni’s contribution is more than helping write a movie. He helped translate one version of Star Wars into another: from a serialized streaming chapter built out of discarded Season 4 plans into a theatrical relaunch designed to stand on its own, but likely coming up very short. The problem will be who takes the brunt of criticism for this huge blunder. From our understanding of what’s been happening behind the scenes, it’s not Jon Favreau who has produced a stinker. It’s the Kathleen Kennedy, Dave Filoni, Bob Iger decisions giving Favreau an impossible task with a script that reads like a mid-tier Star Wars cartoon episode rather than a theatrical release.
UP NEXT: ‘The Mandalorian and Grogu’ Early Reactions Are Mixed
