Some fans of The Mandalorian have been calling for star Gina Carano (Cara Dune) to be let go, but it looks like frontman Pedro Pascal is in her corner.
The second season of The Mandalorian, Disney’s live-action Star Wars show, premiered on Disney+ on October 30, and I have been loving the new episodes. The season 1 finale featured an epic showdown, with Mando (Pedro Pascal), Cara Dune (Gina Carano), Greef Karga (Carl Weathers) and Baby Yoda on one side and the vile Moff Gideon (Giancarlo Esposito) and his squadron of death troopers on the other. Our heroes managed to escape with their lives, but so did Gideon, who is still hellbent on capturing the Child.
Thus far, season 2 has chronicled Mando’s attempts to find other Mandalorians, who he hopes will be able to help him return Baby Yoda to his kind. This season has featured several familiar faces from season 1, including the amazing Amy Sedaris as space mechanic Peli Motto. Former MMA fighter Gina Carano is also back to reprise her role as shock trooper-turned-mercenary Cara Dune, and fans are having mixed reactions.
As we’ve previously reported, Gina Carano got herself into some hot water with Star Wars fans, with some even calling for her to be fired from the show. It all started when fans asked Carano to add her pronouns to her Twitter bio, a growing trend among celebrities on the platform to show support for their transgender fans. In response, Carano added the words “boop/bop/beep” to her profile, which many felt was disrespectful to the transgender community.
The next incident occurred just a few weeks ago. If you’ve been following the 2020 U.S. election, then you know it’s been a bumpy ride. Even though President-elect Joe Biden won by the same amount of electoral college votes that led Donald Trump to victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016, the current president has refused to concede, although he did allow a formal transition to start the other day. Instead, he’s spread unfounded conspiracy theories about voter fraud to undermine Biden’s win. On November 5, Gina Carano seem to tweet support for those conspiracies:
We need to clean up the election process so we are not left feeling the way we do today.
— Gina Carano 🕯 (@ginacarano) November 5, 2020
Put laws in place that protect us against voter fraud.
Investigate every state.
Film the counting.
Flush out the fake votes.
Require ID.
Make Voter Fraud end in 2020.
Fix the system. 🇺🇸
She has also accused the Democratic party of trying to keep the public in the dark about the election on purpose. The tweet she posted compared wearing masks to being blindfolded by our leaders. You have to admit that it seems pretty tone-deaf at a time when the coronavirus pandemic has killed over 266,000 people in the United States alone, and counting.
— Gina Carano 🕯 (@ginacarano) November 15, 2020
As you can imagine, all of this did not sit well with people. According to IndieWire, Carano is set to appear throughout the rest of the ongoing second season, but fans of The Mandalorian have been calling for her to be fired from the series, with the #FireGinaCarano hashtag gaining strength since Carano returned as Cara Dune in “Chapter 12: The Seige.” On the other hand, the actress has gotten support from some fans who say that firing her would be a form of censorship. Disney has not yet commented.
One person who’s in Carano’s corner is her costar Pedro Pascal. He posted a promotional poster for The Mandalorian on his Instagram account a few days ago, calling Gina Carano “indomitable.”
And then today, Pascal posted fan-made art of Din Djarin and Cara Dune embracing, captioning the photo “Friendship.”
Pascal hasn’t commented directed on the criticism Carano has received, but this seems like a pretty clear show of support.
It’s an open question whether Carano’s tweets justify letting her go from the series, but there is precedent. Rachel Butera, the actress who played Leia Organa in Star Wars Resistance, was recast in 2018 after she publicly ridiculed Dr. Christine Blasey Ford during Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings.
I’m anxious to see how this situation unfolds and especially curious over how (or whether) Disney reacts. In last week’s episode, “The Siege,” Cara Dune was offered a job fighting the remnants of the Empire, which could either be a graceful exit or the start of a whole new chapter. Only time will tell.
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