Jon Favreau says The Mandalorian's big Luke Skywalker cameo wasn't always the plan
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One of the big mistakes Disney made when it was putting together its new Star Wars movies is that it went in without any real plan. J.J. Abrams built a “mystery box” in The Force Awakens without really figuring out what was inside it, Rian Johnson decided in The Last Jedi that the thing in the box doesn’t necessarily have to be the thing you expect it to be, and then Abrams came back and declared that, no, the box actually contained everything you ever dreamed of even if it doesn’t make any sense and comes at the expense of thematic depth. Apparently, though, diving right in and letting the current take you isn’t always a bad idea for Star Wars.
Speaking with the Writers Guild Of America West recently (via IndieWire), The Mandalorian creator Jon Favreau revealed that the big moment from season two of the hit Disney+ series wasn’t even initially part of the plan. We’re talking, as spoiled by the headline of this story, about the unexpected arrival of a digitally de-aged Mark Hamill as Luke Skywaler in the show’s second season finale, who responded to a call from little Grogu in a previous episode and lightsabered the shit out of some stupid Imperial robots. The show had been teasing for a while that some Jedi would eventually stop by for a visit, but Favreau said they hadn’t always intended it to be Luke Skywalker.
The way Favreau explained it, he and the writers came up with the idea of Grogu going to an ancient Jedi temple thing and then eventually being taken away by a Jedi first, and then later landed on the idea that it would actually make sense for the Jedi to be Luke Skywalker himslef. Favreau said that they “have a tremendous amount of freedom” when it comes to existing Star Wars canon because of when the show is set (post-Return Of The Jedi and pre-Force Awakens, when Luke happens to be running a Jedi school), but he and writer/director/all around Star Wars guy Dave Filoni are still apparently in “constant discussion” about how everything on The Mandalorian could impact or be impacted by the Star Wars canon—which actually sounds like way more planning than the movies had.