‘Star Wars’ Will Temporarily Replace Grogu Next Year, Amid Character’s Uncertain Future

Grogu won’t be returning to Star Wars any time soon…

The Mandalorian Season 3 hardly left Disney+ subscribers stunned earlier this year. While the first season left many fans with “a new hope” for the franchise following the disastrous Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, Season 2 is where the cracks started to show.

Stuffed with more cameos than you can shake a lightsaber at, Season 2 did impress fans hoping for some connective tissue between the live-action Star Wars series and beloved animated entries Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) and Star Wars: Rebels (2014).

Unfortunately, Season 2’s ending also became The Mandalorian‘s undoing, which was apparent in spinoff show The Book of Boba Fett (2021), which undoes the explosive finale in which Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) rescues young Grogu from Imperial forces.

If you hadn’t watched The Book of Boba Fett by the time Season 3 arrived, you’d have been understandably confused at seeing “Baby Yoda” back with Din Djarin/the Mandalorian (Pedro Pascal), despite having been whisked away by the iconic Jedi Knight.

The Mandalorian (2019) executive producer, Dave Filoni, previously suggested that there aren’t any solid plans for Grogu in the future, saying, “I think it depends how much farther we go forward [with the character],” despite suggesting elsewhere that Grogu will likely live until he’s a very ripe old age like Master Yoda.

Grogu will obviously return in The Mandalorian Season 4, which is already in development. Still, there’s no telling when it will arrive on Disney+, especially when you take the WGA (Writers Guild of America) strike into account. We don’t even know whether Grogu will appear in the upcoming theatrical “Mando-Verse” film, which Filoni is directing.

But while we all wait to see how the future pans out for Grogu, next year, Star Wars will unleash a ground-breaking experience for the faraway galaxy: an open-world video game called Star Wars Outlaws (2024), which will offer plenty of distraction for fans who have become as equally concerned for the Mando-Verse as they once were for the Sequel Trilogy.

Star Wars Outlaws takes place between the original Star Wars Trilogy films, Star Wars: Episode V — The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Star Wars: Episode VI — Return of the Jedi (1983). It follows Kay Vess, a “scoundrel” who must undertake one last mission to free herself from a life of “scum and villainy.”

As seen in the epic trailer, at her side is an adorable “Axolotl” pet named Nix, who, as teased in the gameplay overview, will help Kay on her quest to start a new life. While Star Wars is no stranger to cute little side-kick creatures, whether the Ewoks or one of the many droids, such as R2-D2 and BB-8, Nix will temporarily replace Grogu for many fans.

Once the game hits shelves next year (although no specific date has been set yet), plenty of toys and other lines of merchandise will follow, and you can bet your bottom Galactic Credit that Nix will be one of them. Whether or not he’ll become quite as popular as Grogu remains to be seen, though it’s fair to say that this is very unlikely.

Nevertheless, fans waiting to see Din Djarin and Baby Yoda back on the screen will at least have Kay Vess and Nix to keep them entertained. Who knows — by the time The Mandalorian returns to Disney+, fans may no longer even care all that much about the bounty hunter and “the Child.”