Star Wars is a television-focused franchise at the moment, but it’s been made clear that the lack of movies is temporary. While the Mando-verse is flourishing with The Mandalorian and its various spinoffs, plans are in motion to bring the action back to the big screen. But while there have been developments, work isn’t going as smoothly as fans could hope for.
Damon Lindelof, writer of shows like Lost, Watchmen, and Mrs. Davis, turned in a draft of a script for a new Star Wars movie, but it wasn’t what executives were looking for, and according to Lindelof, he was “asked to leave” the project. New details about this rejected script suggest it could have finally given Grogu what his character needed — a personality beyond gurgling and moving stuff around. Intriguingly, this detail will apparently survive into future drafts.
According to leaker Jeff Sneider, Lindelof’s plan for the next Star Wars movie was to flash into the future and feature Helen Mirren as an elderly Rey. Sneider claimed the action would be set about 60 years post-Rise of Skywalker, and it would feature an older Rey training two Jedi, a man and a woman.
We know now this isn’t the path Star Wars will take. Instead, Daisy Ridley will return for a new movie that will follow her Rey 15 years after The Rise of Skywalker as she attempts to rebuild the Jedi Order.
Either way, sending characters into the future would allow the franchise to show us a grown-up Grogu. Grogu is a member of Yoda’s species, who are known for their green skin, big ears, and long lifespans; Yoda was about 900 when he died, and 100 when he attained the rank of Jedi Master.
Grogu was born about 41 years before the events of the original trilogy, and in The Mandalorian he’s 52 but still cooing and toddling around. Granted, he’s already had a fair bit of Jedi training. As a youngling, he grew up in the Republic until the Empire replaced it, and he squeezed in two years of training with Luke before he decided to return to the Mandalorian life.
All this training is great, but no matter how much he studies as either a Jedi or a Mandalorian, he’ll never be able to do more than the average toddler while he’s on The Mandalorian. He’s still cute, but his shtick has grown old. It’s a problem Season 3 tried to solve by giving him some more abilities, but the longer he remains an adorable baby, the longer we’ll have to wait to learn how he’ll grow up. There’s only one possible cure — time — which is what Lindelof’s script promised.
If Lindelof’s idea for the next Star Wars movie had made it to production, Grogu would have been about 130. With the new timeline, he’ll only be 95. Both approaches give us the opportunity to see a walking and talking Grogu, but with the timeline tweaked, we may see him as a still relatively young neophyte rather than a veteran Jedi Master. But while he may not become the combination of Jedi and Mandalorian he deserves to be, he may still stop by to say hi.
