With The Mandalorian Season 3 starting to stream tomorrow on Disney+, I recently sat down with director and executive producer Rick Famuyiwa to talk about the new season. Famuyiwa discusses why he wanted to direct on top of serving as an executive producer, the importance of helming the season premiere as well as the season finale and teases a “culmination of stories” for Season 3 that he says also plants seeds for the future. Famuyiwa also tells us The Mandalorian Season 3 is the end of a chapter since meeting Din Djarin and Grogu and explains how the use of volume technology changed the “size and ambition” of the show since previous seasons.
COLLIDER VIDEO OF THE DAY

In Season 3 of the Star Wars series, we’re heading for Mandalore. After Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) was cast from his clan for breaking their creed and removing his helmet at the end of Season 2, Mando was informed by The Armorer (Emily Swallow) that he must travel to Mandalore in order to restore his honor. Having reunited with Grogu (aka Baby Yoda) in The Book of Boba Fett, after his adopted child chose to leave his Jedi training, and equipped with the Darksaber and a brand-new N-1 starfighter, The Mandalorian’s next adventure is for redemption. Season 3 also sees the return of Giancarlo Esposito, Katee Sackhoff, Carl Weathers (who also serves as a series director), Amy Sedaris, and welcomes the beloved Christopher Lloyd to the Star Wars universe in an undisclosed role.

For more on The Mandalorian Season 3, check out the interview in the video above, or you can read our full conversation below.

COLLIDER: I’m tremendously excited to see the new season. I have a million questions, and I’m never going to get through them all.

RICK FAMUYIWA: Alright, let’s go for it. Let’s see how many.

Image via Lucasfilm

How was it decided that you would direct episodes one, seven, and eight?

FAMUYIWA: I knew I was going to come in, I wanted to direct episodes this season, but I was also playing this role as an executive producer this year with Jon [Favreau] and Dave [Filoni]. So I really wanted to… As someone who’s been around since Season 1, how how do I best set the tone for what we’re doing this season and express that in a way to the directors that are coming in that might be new to the process? And so, it felt right that the first one happened, and then obviously to conclude the season storytelling with seven and eight.

So to have those bookends both gave me an anchor in the season as a director and into the real details of that work and where we’ve been and where we’re going. I felt like being both the lead-off leg and the anchor of the relay felt like the right place to be, creatively, just because it could give me a context of everything we were doing, and also helped to express that both to the cast, crew, and the directors as they were coming aboard.

Image via Disney+

Will fans, at the end of the season after the season finale, will they be screaming at the television that they have to wait a while for Season 4, or will they be like, “Okay.”?

FAMUYIWA: I mean, it’s interesting because I think what we’ve been doing with the storytelling in the first two seasons, and then with [The Book of Boba Fett], has led us to this point. So I think on one level there is a sense of things coming together, a culmination of stories that have been built for a very long time, but I also think there are seeds that are going to get planted throughout the season, that point the way forward in terms of where the story could continue to go.

So I think if we’re doing what we’re doing well it’s a little bit of both, but I do think there’s something, at least for me, that feels like we’ve reached a kind of a chapter, and we’re ending a chapter in the storytelling by the end of Season 3 that’s been built since we first met these two characters, the first season. So I do think it’s a little bit more of that, even though, yeah, I hope you’re still screaming at the TV about where we’re going next. [laughs]

This is the third season. In the first season, you’re learning how to make the show, second season, you were finding the volume technology, etcetera, etcetera. What have you been able to do in Season 3 that perhaps you couldn’t have done in the previous seasons using the technology and storytelling?

FAMUYIWA: Yeah, I think even though the technology– there hasn’t been a big breakthrough in the way that the volume and stagecraft was that first season. What we have is a group of storytellers, filmmakers, actors that have been involved with the storytelling of Mandalorian in Season 1. So it really feels like a team that’s been together for a few seasons, and now playing well together, sort of understand what they’re doing. We know where everybody is on the court, on the pitch, on the field, you know. It really does feel like we can push things, creatively, in ways that we wouldn’t have attempted to Season 1. We’re doing things now, just in terms of the scale of things we’re doing with the volume, how the process of building and the realistic way that they’re starting to be rendered in this season has been fascinating to me.

Then also, in some ways, when you’re pushing things, you’re breaking it too. [laughs] So I think we’re still breaking the volume and still breaking the technology, but it’s because we’re, I think, in a very confident place about what we’re doing. But I think, Season 3, again, is both in size and in ambition the biggest one yet.

The Mandalorian Season 3 starts streaming on Disney+ tomorrow.