IF YOU’VE seen any of the early promotion for The Mandalorian Season 3, there’s a chance that what you’re seeing isn’t quite syncing up with what you remember from The Mandalorian‘s Season 2 finale. If you recall, that was when Mando (Pedro Pascal) and friends, after defeating Moff Gideon (Giancarlo Esposito), saw Grogu (aka Baby Yoda) head off to Jedi training with Luke Skywalker (a digitally deaged Mark Hamill). In the trailers for Season 3, Mando and Grogu are back together on a new adventure. What gives?
Well, what happened is The Book of Boba Fett, that’s what gives. Midway through the 7-episode Boba Fett spinoff series, the titular bounty hunter (spending that series trying to “go legit” as a local crime lord) seeks out the help of his old friend Mando. And at that point, we catch up quite a bit with Mando (real named Din Djarin), learning what he’s been up to since the Season 2 Mandalorian finale, a few key plot points from there, and even setting some vital stuff up for Mandalorian Season 3.
“It’s going to be interesting to see how this unfolds for people who may not have seen The Book Of Boba Fett,” Jon Favreau, co-creator of both The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett, told Empire in a recent interview. “But I think The Book Of Boba Fett offered time to pass. You saw what Mando was like without Baby Yoda and we saw what Grogu was like without the Mandalorian and neither of them was doing too good. So them coming back together was a really good plot point that allows us to jump back into Season 3 while maintaining the central relationship.”
Below, we detail a bit more on what you’ll need to know about how The Mandalorian ties in with the events of The Book of Boba Fett.
How did Grogu (Baby Yoda) and The Mandalorian reunite in The Book of Boba Fett?
Season 2 of The Mandalorian left with Grogu heading off with Luke Skywalker to begin his Jedi training, and that’s where The Book of Boba Fett picked up—with Mando and Baby Yoda separated.
After Mando finds The Armorer and Paz Vizsla (more on that below), he makes his way to Luke’s new Jedi Academy where he initially plans on giving Grogu a gift that he had made specifically for him—a chainmail armor shirt forged from a Beskar spear. Mando believes that this is Grogu’s right as a foundling of Mandalore.
But when Mando arrives, he runs into his old friend Ahsoka Tano (once again played by Rosario Dawson, getting audiences ready for her own Mandalorian spinoff set to debut in 2023). While Mando wants to bring his little friend his gift, Ahoska warns that interference will only make Jedi training harder for Grogu. Mando takes a good hard look at his pal and decides its best to head out.
However, Mando doesn’t realize that Grogu is also having trouble with his own Jedi training; he misses Mando, and Luke sees that our little miniature Yoda-esque hero isn’t fully committed. He gives Grogu a choice: he can commit to the Jedi training fully, or go back to his friend, The Mandalorian.
Later, while we see The Mandalorian on Tatooine helping Boba Fett deal with a crime syndicate—he owed Boba and Fennec Shand a favor after Season 2 of The Mandalorian—Grogu pops his cute little face up during a chase sequencer, much to Mando’s excitement. As it turns out, Peli Motto (more on her in a moment) helped the little fella hitch a ride back to Tatooine to link back up with his father—as she could tell that both of them were missing one another.
After Mando and Grogu (both contributing) help Boba and Fennec deal with their problem, we see the duo reunited and jetting out on another mission.
What’s up with The Mandalorian’s new ship?
If you once again think back to The Mandalorian Season 2, Mando’s ship—his Razor Crest—was destroyed. In The Book of Boba Fett, once he returns to Tatooine, Mando links up with his old friend Peli Motto and calls in a favor: that she owes him a new ship. She doesn’t have a Razor Crest, but she’s got one that’s not too shabby either: an N-1 Starfighter.
This may look familiar to Star Wars fans who, like many of us, rewatch the movies over and over again, because it’s of Naboo origin. The N-1 Starfighter model was most famously seen being piloted by a young Anakin Skywalker during the climax of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. Mando’s not super excited about it, but it’s also pretty darn fast, so he helps Peli fix it up, and then takes a nice joyride with Grogu when it’s all said and done.
Why is The Mandalorian going to Mandalore in Season 3?
When we first meet up with Mando, he’s kind of back to the life he was leading when we first met him—being a badass bounty hunter without any real purpose. He clearly misses Grogu, while fighting with the Darksaber (which he earned in Season 2 of The Mandalorian by besting Moff Gideon in combat). Eventually, he tracks down two fellow Mandalorians that we met before in The Mandalorian: The Armorer and Paz Vizsla.
While at first happy to see them—The Armorer melts down Mando’s Beskar spear, turning it into a chainmail armored vest that he plans to give Grogu as a gift—their encounter makes way for some conflict. Mainly, Paz sees Mando struggling a bit while training with the Darksaber (remember that whoever owns the Darksaber is also the rightful ruler of Mandalore), and challenges him to combat to take it for himself; Paz’s own ancestor crafted the Darksaber and another of his ancestors wielded it during the Clone Wars.
Mando defeats Paz, but they are both then asked, essentially under oath by The Armorer, if they’ve ever removed their helmets. Paz says no, but Mando tells the truth, revealing that he has—usually in a vulnerable situation that he’s been through with Grogu. The Armorer tells him that because of this, a violation of “The Way,” he is a Mandalorian no more—until he bathes in the waters of Mandalore. A little bit of foreshadowing for Season 3 right there, I’d say.
Which episodes of The Book of Boba Fett are The Mandalorian and Grogu in?
If you want to catch up on this yourself but don’t really feel like taking in all of The Book of Boba Fett, you can access it pretty easily. Mando and Grogu appear in Episode 5, “The Return of the Mandalorian,” Episode 6,”From the Desert Comes a Stranger,” and in parts of Episode 7, “In the Name of Honor.”
You can essentially watch the Mando/Grogu parts of the show without any needed knowledge as to what’s going on in the Boba Fett portion of the show. If that’s what you’re interested in doing.
Watch the Mandalorian and Baby Yoda Episodes of The Book of Boba Fett Here
Evan is the culture editor for Men’s Health, with bylines in The New York Times, MTV News, Brooklyn Magazine, and VICE. He loves weird movies, watches too much TV, and listens to music more often than he doesn’t.
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