Pedro Pascal Reveals Intriguing New Details About The Mandalorian

Every day — nay, every hour — we encroach upon The Mandalorian's arrival on Disney+ seems to foster a new peak of anticipatory hype. The stakes are pretty monumental not just for Star Wars going forward as a franchise (and without a Skywalker at that), but also for Disney+ as a platform intended to carry Disney and its properties through the inevitable bursting of the streaming-format bubble. No pressure at all. 

That's a big reason why any information about The Mandalorian hasn't been very forthcoming, and whatever has been said has been carefully put. Hype must be carefully crafted and never permit too much revelation, lest this social media age attach to some contextless bit of nothing and preemptively decide en masse that this new bit of Star Wars lore is already terrible. 

With just days until launch, the press tour for The Mandalorian is in full swing. In talking to AP Entertainment, Pedro Pascal, who leads the series as the titular Mandalorian, opened up a bit more on what we can expect to see on November 12. What he described is at once a return to traditional Star Wars form and also something of a diversion from it.

Pascal's discussion of The Mandalorian mostly focused on character motivations and moral backdrops. The actor explained, "They separate good and evil so perfectly in the world of Star Wars. And in this one it's like we're way more in the center. We're past those borders and very, very linear, very specific lines of definition." 

He's correct – Star Wars is indeed one of the franchises that immediately comes to mind when we consider massive contests of pure good versus pure evil. The Mandalorian aims to color outside those lines, and rightfully so — no universe is populated only with avatars of polar morality. Arguably one of the strengths that gave the now-defunct Expanded Universe novels so much staying power over the decades was that they pulled away from that kind of absolutism and took the time to examine smaller stories. 

Star Wars has always had Westerns at its conceptual heart, and while The Mandalorian series creator Favreau is certainly interested in refocusing on that truth, the series isn't necessarily a White Hat Hero jaunt. Pascal's co-star Gina Carano, who plays the ex-Rebel Shock Trooper Cara Dune, explained in the same interview, "We can be pulled to any side, any one of us. Even when you begin the journey with the Mandalorian, you're not sure what side you're on." 

And isn't that fitting? The Mandalorian is set five years after Return of the Jedi, and we know now from The Force Awakens that the Resistance's victory was far from clear cut. When regimes topple, nobody knows quite what to do. Some live in denial and try to act as if everything is the same as it always has been. Some join the cause that defeated them in hopes of finding security. Most just try to survive while the world sorts itself out into a new paradigm of mores. In short, it's a mess — and Star Wars could stand to get a little messy. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story toyed with moral ambiguity in its characters before ultimately realigning into a story about sacrifice for the greater good. It seems that this new slate of personalities coming in The Mandalorian may be selfish and imperfect and even wrong — but never unsympathetic. Sounds like a burst of newness from which the Star Wars property can benefit.

Catch The Mandalorian on Disney+ on November 12.