There's no denying that Star Wars is one of the biggest and most influential sci-fi franchises of all time, but its upcoming movie has still needed to be pretty clever when it comes to giving itself the best shot at doing well. The Mandalorian and Grogu will be the thirteenth entry into the collection of Star Wars movies when it lands in May 2026, but also the first Star Wars movie overall for a notable period.
Star Wars has become a sprawling multi-media franchise since the first movie premiered back in 1977. Despite spawning countless novels, TV shows, comic books, video games, and more, Star Wars is still seen first and foremost as an entity built for the big screen. This makes it all the more interesting that The Mandalorian and Grogu is actually an outlier for the space opera in recent years.
Why the Mandalorian & Grogu is the first Star Wars movie since 2019
Before Disney purchased Lucasfilm in 2012, Star Wars movies were landmark occasions that were commonly met with more praise than criticism. Disney got off to a good start when The Force Awakens arrived in 2015, but then it all started to become far more turbulent for the new Star Wars rights holders. 2017 continued the sequel trilogy with The Last Jedi, which was extremely despised pretty much universally by fans.
The sequel trilogy's final installment, 2019's The Rise of Skywalker, was a slight improvement, but was still not deemed up to the standard of the pre-Disney era. The trilogy made a lot of money, but the scripts came under heavy fire. 2016's Rogue One did earn Disney immense praise (and more money), but The Rise of Skywalker was a step too far for disgruntled audiences.
To make their point, fans boycotted 2018's Solo, which told the origin story of the character made famous by Harrison Ford. Although it's not objectively bad, the movie's lack of box office revenue led to the decision to shelve further Star Wars movies beyond The Rise of Skywalker the following year.
When The Mandalorian debuted in 2020, the franchise's first live-action TV show set within the new canon took the world by storm. This triggered a change in course for Star Wars as it started to focus on TV shows for Disney's streaming service rather than feature-length epics for the big screen. This new direction is also why the 2022 Obi-Wan Kenobi miniseries came out as a show rather than a theatrically-released movie as originally planned.
The Mandalorian gives Star Wars the perfect path back to the big screen
Although it has gradually woven itself into the larger Star Wars universe, The Mandalorian initially allowed fans to enjoy the franchise without dwelling too much on its recent shortcomings. It's an almost universal truth that even those who oppose the Disney era hail The Mandalorian as being a return to form for Star Wars.
So, while greenlighting a new Star Wars movie may seem like a risky move given how successful the TV arm of the franchise has been, it's actually one of the safest bets out there if said movie is essentially just a feature-length episode of The Mandalorian. I'm sure the upcoming movie will be possible to watch without first seeing the show, but it seems very much to be a cinematic finale for the beloved Disney+ project.
If The Mandalorian and Grogu performs well at the box office and receives praise from critics and fans, it seems more likely that Star Wars will be on its way to reclaiming its reputation as a franchise that's perfectly suited for movie theaters. It's a great way of testing the waters, and comes with about as little risk as a new Star Wars movie can hope for.
The Mandalorian and Grogue premieres May 22, 2026.