The Mandalorian & Grogu Trailer Just Broke A 47-Year-Old Star Wars Rule

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The upcoming movie, The Mandalorian & Grogu, will do something no other Star Wars film has done before when it arrives in theaters in Summer 2026. It will be the first big-screen adventure for Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) and Grogu, characters fans first met in the Disney+ series The Mandalorian. This film is the first Star Wars movie to be released since 2019’s The Rise of Skywalker, and it will stand out from everything that came before in an important way.

Since its debut in 1977 with Episode IV: A New Hope, Star Wars has stayed popular by focusing on human characters and their stories. While aliens are common in Star Wars films, they haven’t been the central figures, unlike franchises like Star Trek or Avatar. Over the past 11 live-action films, keeping humans at the heart of the narrative has been a key element in keeping the franchise relatable to its large audience.

The current trend will likely change when The Mandalorian & Grogu comes out. The trailer for the new Star Wars series created by Jon Favreau showed a lot of Grogu and the Mandalorian, Din Djarin, but noticeably few human faces. This could make it harder for viewers to form a connection with the characters.

As a longtime fan, I noticed a big shift in the new The Mandalorian & Grogu series compared to the original. While the first The Mandalorian had a good number of familiar human faces – I especially enjoyed seeing Carl Weathers as Greef Karga, and Giancarlo Esposito’s Moff Gideon was fantastic – this new installment seems to have completely removed humans from the regular cast. The trailer really focuses on all the different alien species Din and Grogu will be meeting on their journey, which is a pretty striking visual change and definitely hints at a broadening of the universe.

Sigourney Weaver plays Ward, a New Republic leader, and is one of the few recognizable human faces shown in the trailer for The Mandalorian & Grogu. Despite being featured prominently in the trailer, Weaver has said she only filmed for a few days, hinting that her role in the movie won’t be very large.

While the new movie, The Mandalorian & Grogu, likely features some unannounced human characters—we even saw glimpses of them in the trailer—it will be different from previous Star Wars films by keeping these characters primarily in the background. So, expect to see people, but they won’t necessarily be main characters.

The original Star Wars trilogy focused on a core trio of human characters: Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, and Han Solo. While the story included memorable non-human characters like Chewbacca and Yoda, they generally played supporting roles. This allowed audiences to easily connect with and root for the human heroes at the center of the narrative.

The original focus on human heroes carried over into the Star Wars prequels, starring Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor), Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen), and Padmé Amidala (Natalie Portman). The Star Wars universe continued to include a wide variety of alien creatures, and the prequels introduced memorable characters like General Grievous, Jar Jar Binks, and Darth Maul.

The newer Star Wars films also focused on a fresh group of characters, including Rey, Finn, and Poe, along with droids like BB-8 and supporting characters like Maz Kanata and Captain Phasma. Even the standalone spin-off movies, like those featuring Jyn Erso and a young Han Solo, were promoted with human characters as the main focus.

In the main Star Wars movies, humans have always been the central characters, while aliens and other non-human beings typically played supporting roles. But the upcoming release, The Mandalorian & Grogu, seems to be changing that. This time, the main characters aren’t human—or are concealing their humanity—and humans will be part of the supporting cast alongside various alien species.

The movie The Mandalorian & Grogu will hit theaters on May 22, 2026. Jon Favreau, who created The Mandalorian series, is directing, and he wrote the script with Dave Filoni. This film will continue the story of the Mandalorian and Grogu instead of a fourth season of the Disney+ show.

How The Mandalorian & Grogu Breaking a Trend Benefits Star Wars

Focusing on non-human characters in The Mandalorian & Grogu is a significant shift for the Star Wars universe, and it’s a change many fans will likely appreciate. With so many unique species in the Star Wars galaxy, giving them more prominent roles after eleven films feels new and exciting for the show.

Disney+’s The Mandalorian has already shown how popular a show doesn’t need a traditional human lead to succeed. Both the mysterious Din Djarin and the endearing Grogu (often called ‘the Child’) quickly became fan favorites. This success demonstrates that audiences connect with characters regardless of what they look like. The new series Ahsoka, starring Rosario Dawson as the Togruta Ahsoka Tano, further supports this idea.

With Star Wars moving forward, we can expect to see both human and alien characters continue to play important roles. One way to keep the stories fresh and exciting could be to focus on some of the franchise’s more obscure alien species, potentially attracting new and existing fans.

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2025-11-15 07:36