Despite being "a standalone adventure," Jon Favreau says The Mandalorian and Grogu has "subtle stuff that relates to Ahsoka season 2"

While Ahsoka season 2 isn't coming until next year, The Mandalorian and Grogu might be laying some groundwork for the new show.

Originally, the plan was to continue with The Mandalorian season 4, but the plan shifted during the 2023 WGA writers' strike and the SAG-AFTRA actors' strike.

"I wrote season 4, and then we went into the work stoppage, and as we came out of it, that's when Lucasfilm was like, 'We haven't had a movie in a while. Could you do something with these characters? Is there something there?'" director Jon Favreau told ComicBook.com. "I looked at the scripts, [Dave Filoni] looked at the scripts, it was not a movie. So, we had to start from scratch.

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"And I pitched the new version of what it was, because it also had to be for people who didn't – season 4, people saw the show, they saw Ahsoka, and now this one, it's got to be like, 'No, you should be able to bring somebody who's never seen Star Wars with you,'" he added. "So, it had to be a standalone adventure, but also you want to have enough subtle stuff that relates to Ahsoka season 2."

Now, just what that might mean remains to be seen, but Favreau has previously teased that Ahsoka season 2 is leading Star Wars forward.

"Anybody who saw the sequels knows that there's a First Order coming in, like, 20 years from where we are now in the storyline," he told SFX magazine. "And then Ahsoka season 2 is coming out – which I've seen all of – and that's definitely more dealing with the larger [picture], a higher level. That's about the officers and we're the enlisted men – this is more of a ground-level experience of what's going on. You're seeing the backdrop – which, by the way, is what the first Star Wars started off as."

The Mandalorian and Grogu arrives this May 22. In the meantime, check out our guide to all the upcoming Star Wars movies and shows, or see our roundup of how to watch the Star Wars movies in order.