The Book of Boba Fett star and Fennec Shand actor Ming-Na Wen tells the story of how she thought the spin-off was actually The Mandalorian season 3.
Fennec Shand actor and The Book of Boba Fett star Ming-Na Wen has told the full story of how she thought the Boba Fett spin-off series was actually The Mandalorian season 3. Making her Star Wars debut in The Mandalorian season 1, Wen’s Fennec Shand was originally killed off, but was resurrected in season 2 as Boba Fett’s right-hand. She has since lent her voice to Star Wars: The Bad Batch seasons 1 and 3 to portray Fennec in animation, though she did not return to The Mandalorian season 3 – despite her once thinking she already had.
While speaking with fellow Star Wars actor Katee Sackhoff on The Sackhoff Show, Wen reveals exactly how she thought she was working on The Mandalorian season 3 instead of the Boba Fett spin-off series. She emphasizes that the secrecy of the scripts and production code names kept her from thinking much about the production’s name change, and that her manager and agents also surmised she was in negotiations to become a regular on The Mandalorian for season 3. It wasn’t until Wen got to set that she found out the truth.
Wen tells Sackhoff that two crew members, one of whom was the hair designer Maria Sandoval, approached her and asked if she knew the name of the show. After she responded confidently with “Mandalorian 3,” they were shocked to realize she truly didn’t know that it was her show. Upon learning this information from them, Wen approached her fellow The Book of Boba Fett star and Boba Fett actor Temuera Morrison to find out the whole truth.
I learned on set, I went to Tem [Morrison] and I’m like, “Tem!” Like a five-year-old! “Did you know that this is another series? Like it’s not Mandalorian?” […] So he just went, “Yes, it’s called The Book of Boba Fett.” I’m like, “You knew!” He’s like, “Of course I know!”
It Makes Sense Why This Show Was Still Thought To Be The Mandalorian Season 3
While Wen makes it clear that she believes it was a specific combination of factors that caused such confusion for her, particularly her own habit of being rather oblivious, it’s still no wonder that she was operating under this mindset even while on set of The Book of Boba Fett. The latter half of the spin-off series focuses almost entirely on Din Djarin, with episode 5 failing to even feature Morrison’s Boba Fett as it instead tells the story of what The Mandalorian’s titular hero had been up to ever since Grogu had left.
Even its stars and crew members on set had no idea what project they were working on.
Wen, then, could very well have had her scenes with Din Djarin early on in production, thus leading her to believe that she was truly working on The Mandalorian season 3. This proves just how much The Book of Boba Fett really did lean on The Mandalorian; even its stars and crew members on set had no idea what project they were working on. Given that The Book of Boba Fett was a surprise announcement in The Mandalorian season 2 finale, this could have been because of secrecy, but it still highlights The Mandalorian’s problematically strong stake in the story.
