The Mandalorian Movie Is Leaving Behind a Major Star Wars Mandoverse Character

It’s been a year since Din Djarin and his young bounty hunting apprentice Grogu settled down on Nevarro to enjoy some much needed rest and relaxation. But we know that vacation won’t last forever. The upcoming Star Wars film, The Mandalorian & Grogu, will see the duo back in action, and they’ll be taking on the Empire once again, as revealed in a trailer shown exclusively to fans attending D23 earlier this month. Not only will they face off against the usual stormtroopers but their adventure will even take them to an ice planet populated by AT-ATs that may or may not be Hoth!

With the odds once again stacked against Din and Grogu, you’d expect a few other characters from The Mandalorian to pop in and lend our heroes a hand. Could Katee Sackhoff’s Bo-Katan show up, for example? Perhaps even Deepfake Luke Skywalker? Unfortunately, one character from the Mandoverse that we allegedly won’t see in the new movie is Boba Fett, the original bounty hunting Mandalorian. The sad news comes from Boba actor Temuera Morrison himself, who confirmed during a Screen Rant panel at Fan Expo Chicago that he hasn’t been asked to reprise his role in the film.

“I’m still waiting for a phone call to be quite honest,” Morrison said. “I think we’re just put on the shelf for a little bit. Maybe we come off the shelf later.”

Morrison also revealed during the panel that he was originally set to appear in a new season of The Mandalorian before Disney decided to continue Din and Grogu’s story as a feature film: “There was going to be a Mando [season] 4, I think, and I was going to turn up in that, but as of now, I’m still waiting for a phone call, to be quite honest.”

This echoes Morrison’s comments last year about his absence from the show. While speaking at the SUPANOVA Comic Con and Gaming convention in Melbourne, Australia in 2023, Morrison confirmed that he had expected to come back for The Mandalorian season 3, which saw Din and friends liberate Mandalore from the Empire, before plans changed: “Nobody rang me. I was waiting for the phone call in New Zealand, waiting and wanting to give up.”

At the time, Morrison speculated that he was not asked back for more episodes because of Disney budget cuts, saying, “I think there is a few changes going on. We also come under the big umbrella known as Disney now too. So it’s one of the last few conversations we had in L.A. The conversation started like, ‘Oh look, we’re having a few changes. We’re having a few cutbacks.’ And when you hear that at the other end of the line, it’s no good trying to negotiate any more money, that’s for sure. So we’ll see what happens.”

Boba Fett hasn’t appeared onscreen since his 2021 solo series, The Book of Boba Fett, which saw the bounty hunter replace Jabba the Hutt as the daimyo of Mos Espa. While the series shed light on how Boba survived the sarlacc pit after Return of the Jedi, Lucasfilm also made the confounding choice of sidelining the character on his own show for several episodes in order to pick up where The Mandalorian season 2 cliffhanger left off. What was pitched as a homecoming for Boba, a character long deserving his own solo adventure, became a show about Din and Grogu reuniting midway through its run. It’s a storytelling decision that even Morrison has jokingly questioned ever since the show aired.

“Well that Mando guy stole a few chapters of my book,” he said at SUPANOVA last year. “It was painful watching him turn up with some black new lethal sword. And the way he turned up in my Book of Boba, he just destroyed everybody. I’m sure this guy is… ah… ruining my show. But I couldn’t say anything. I’m not the writer, so I have to bear it I guess.”

Sadly, it sounds like Boba Fett won’t get a chance to make things right in The Mandalorian & Grogu, although we do hope to see Morrison back in the armor sometime soon. While we’ve never been shy about pointing out his Book‘s many, many issues, Morrison himself wasn’t one of them. Let’s hope he at least gets a cameo in Dave Filoni’s New Republic movie?

The Mandalorian & Grogu hits theaters on May 22, 2026.