The Mandalorian returns for its third season in just a couple weeks! That means more adventure, more fun with Baby Yoda, and more wondering whether that’s actually Pedro Pascal in Mando’s armor or if that’s a stuntperson.
Pascal’s character spends almost the entirety of the show with his face completely covered, so it can be hard to be sure. But rest assured: he’s under there a good chunk of the time, at least long enough to learn how uncomfortable it is. “It’s like putting on a head-to-toe glove with weights on it,” Pascal told Empire. “It’s ironic that you can’t see any facial expression because it puts you in the world so completely, and instantly makes the character feel real – but you can’t see shit!”
"They’ve continued to finesse and make it more comfortable, but it’s like going blind. Your breath completely fogs up the narrow slit that you can see through. There’s no peripheral vision. If there’s a hole, I’m gonna fall into it."
But at least there are some upsides: “When it’s on, you immediately feel powerful, protected, dangerous, and like a protector,” Pascal said. Until you fall in a hole, anyway.
Katee Sackhoff talks playing Bo-Katan Kryze in The Mandalorian
When last we left Mando, he had won the Darksaber from the vile Moff Gideon, which means he might now be in charge of the planet Mandalore, something he did not intend. That could bring him into conflict with fellow Mandalorian Bo-Katan Kryze (Katee Sackhoff), who has her eye on the top job.
Bo-Katan is another character who spends a lot of time with her face obscured by a helmet. Five different women have been in that suit. “If one person has a better skill-set than the other, well, that person needs to put the suit on that day,” Sackhoff said. “That being said, I have a wicked knee-slide. I’ve been practicing my knee-slides on my mum’s kitchen with dish rags since I was five years old, so when that knee-slide comes up, you’ll know: that’s me. There are holes in my suit because I had to do that so many times. I came home with so many bruises on my knees. But I love that. If I came home with bruises, it was a good day!”
Although Sackhoff debuted as Bo-Katan in The Mandalorian season 2, she also voiced the character in the animated shows The Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels, so she’s been with her for a while. “I really do know her – her pain is my pain. When she experiences something, I really feel it,” she said.
The Mandalorian boss talks about endings
Both The Clone Wars and Rebels were created by Dave Filoni, who is now working on The Mandalorian. If anybody knows where the story is going, it’s him. “There’s a big question at the end of Season 2, of what will Mando do next? Is that relationship over? In life, things don’t always come to a perfect ending,” Filoni teased. “I think things can continue on, and your adventure continues every day. I used to think about it with Clone Wars all the time. When is that battle over? When is that struggle over, because it culminates in Revenge Of The Sith? But that can’t be the ending for that show, even though that’s the ending of that era. That took a while to figure out.”
"I think that in some ways you want each season to have a feeling of an ending. But in a lot of what I’ve done, I don’t like hard endings. I like reading books in a series and then thinking, ‘Oh, there’s another book, and this is going to keep going.’ It’s always sad for me when an adventure ends and the characters are seemingly done with their journey. So I think there’s always that little bit of hope that something can continue."
We’ll see the next leg of this particular journey when The Mandalorian season 3 premieres on March 1 on Disney+.
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