Here's the first trailer for The Mandalorian and Grogu
The first Star Wars film in theaters since 2019's Rise of Skywalker
We finally have a first (well, aside from a teaser screened at a convention) look at the next Star Wars film to hit theaters: Lucasfilm has released the first trailer for The Mandalorian and Grogu, which hits theaters on May 22nd, 2026.
It's ... something. On one hand, I'm digging the prospect of a new Star Wars film in theaters, and this looks like it's leaning into the things that made the streaming series fun: lots of action and humor, creatures, ships, set pieces, and so forth.
On the other, it looks like an episode – maybe a supersized one – of the series, and I'm not sure how well that'll translate to the big screen in the way that we expect when we see a Star Wars film in theaters.
Here's the trailer:
The film is a continuation of The Mandalorian, the streaming series that launched on Disney+ back in 2019: it introduced audiences to Din Djarin, a lone Mandalorian who's tasked with tracking down a diminutive alien (Grogu, née Baby Yoda) for a former Imperial officer. As it turns out, Grogu is Force-sensitive, and when Djarin realizes what his employers have in mind for the child, he ends up taking him under his wing and goes on the run.
Over the three seasons that the show has run, it's introduced audiences to the wild west influences of the Star Wars franchise: the Empire has fallen, but the New Republic hasn't quite taken hold throughout the galaxy, so we're in a period of chaos in the outer rim: there are pirates, former Imperial forces, settlers, and criminals all trying to make their way in the galaxy, and a whole bunch are trying to get their hands on Grogu. Along the way, Djarin learns more about his heritage as a Mandalorian, helps out plenty of settlers and encounters plenty of strange creatures and characters.
Looking back, Disney fumbled how it revitalized the Star Wars brand when it released the sequel trilogy starting in 2015 with The Force Awakens: it didn't have much of a direction or end-goal, and the results were divisive, diverging too far from expectations tonally and thematically. When it was released, The Mandalorian felt like like something of a restart: it set a new-yet-familiar tone for the world, introduced just enough references to other parts of the franchise, and was a compelling story set between The Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens.
Its star has dimmed somewhat since then: in its rush for content, Disney opted for quantity over quality, and while the show's first two seasons are stellar, its first spinoff series The Book of Boba Fett was a misfire, and the third season felt somewhat aimless, undercutting the second season's ending. Another spinoff show, Ahsoka, came with a lot of baggage and homework to really stand on its own, while the YA-themed Skeleton Crew captured a lot of the fun, but maybe stood a little too much on its own. Another spinoff, Rangers of the New Republic was iced after its star was summarily booted for some of her online comments during the COVID-19 pandemic. (She's since sued and settled with Lucasfilm, and I wouldn't be surprised if we see her return at some point.)
Andrew Liptak
Since the Star Destroyer filled screens in the opening moments of Star Wars in 1977, the franchise has always been a big theatrical experience, bringing spectacle and action to viewers, something that Disney continued with the relaunch of the franchise in 2015. While feelings towards the sequel trilogy have been mixed, it hasn't been for lack of trying to see how we'd return to the Galaxy Far, Far Away in theaters: plenty of directors have been tackling that challenge, but while Lucasfilm found a good amount of success on the small screen, nothing's made it through the pipeline until now.
All of that brings us to this new film. The streaming world has cooled significantly since The Mandalorian debuted, and while a fourth season of the series is written, the studio opted to shift focus back to theaters, and is putting its two biggest characters front and center for the franchise's return.
That's good in some ways: Baby Yoda has become a ubiquitous part of the Star Wars franchise, and that's not a bad thing when you're looking to relaunch a theatrical franchise. In the first two seasons, director Jon Favreau and Lucasfilm VP Dave Filoni demonstrated that they know how to construct a Star Wars story that plays well to fans. Filoni is well-versed in the ins and outs of the franchise's lore and I have little doubt that this'll be a film that'll look and feel like a part of the world.
But can they tell a story that's consequential to that world – or to its characters? One of the things that I liked about the show was that it felt like a smaller story within the larger galaxy, one that didn't need to be bigger than it was, until Favreau and Filoni started building it out further, drawing connections to the animated prequel series Clone Wars and Rebels, and doing a bit of set-up for the world that we'd see in the sequel trilogy. This isn't a problem unique to The Mandalorian: look no further than the middling years of the Star Wars Expanded Universe when Luke and Leia and Han and Chewie were involved in "Imperial baddie of the week coming back to cause problems." It's easy to lean into what fans want – more adventures with their favorite characters – and overstay their welcome.
That's what I feel happened here: The Mandalorian 's second season ended with Mando handing off Grogu to Luke Skywalker, seemingly fulfilling his duties to keep the little guy safe. But Grogu was too popular to just hand off and abandon, so his coming back into Mando's care in Book of Boba Fett now seems inevitable, even as it undermined what would have been a good bow on that particular story, with whatever came next focused on testing the show's titular character in new ways. Now, we have a big screen adventure for the two of them.
The real question here is: what will The Mandalorian and Grogu bring to the character's story? Clearly lots of excitement, which should be fun to see on the big screen: we've got a pitched AT-AT battle, monsters, starships flying this way and that, and more. But a good story requires growth and change, a storytelling practice that isn't exactly a strength of an episodic television series, and we've seen these characters reset for more of the same already.
So: will the events in this film actually push and change them into different characters than when the film started, or is this just another outgrowth of Disney's drive for content: a standalone episode with a beefier budget, one that ends on the right note that keeps the door open for more adventures down the road, depending on the box office growth?
We'll find out when it hits theaters next year.