Sweet Tooth Star Nonso Anozie Has A Hidden Role In The Mandalorian Season 3 Premiere

This post contains spoilers for "The Mandalorian" season 3 premiere.

"The Mandalorian" star Pedro Pascal spends the vast majority of his screen time underneath an impenetrable beskar steel helmet, so it's fitting that some of the show's most interesting guest stars are also hidden underneath helmets, prosthetics, or CGI. The season 3 premiere (sort of) brings back IG-11, the bounty hunter turned nanny droid voiced by Taika Waititi. Mando's ugnaught ally, Kuiil, was voiced by Nick Nolte. And season 2's hidden guest stars included John Leguizamo as the cyclopean gangster Gor Koresh.

"Sweet Tooth" lead Nonso Anozie is a particularly apt addition to the "Mandalorian" season 3 cast, however, for reasons I'll get into in a moment. Also known for playing Xaro Xhoan Daxos in "Game of Thrones," Anozie is present in the premiere as the voice of space pirate king Gorian Shard. As you can see above, Gorian Shard bears a strong resemblance to Swamp Thing, and that's what fans will probably end up calling him more often than not. (Grogu still can't seem to shake the name "Baby Yoda.")

By the end of the episode, Gorian Shard/Swamp Thing has decided that Mando is his new nemesis. His complaints probably wouldn't hold much water in court; Mando's "crimes" are defending Greef Karga from an unnecessarily antagonistic gaggle of henchmen, and then later blowing up some of Gorian's ships after they tried to blow him up first. Mando manages to make a quick escape, but we probably haven't seen the last of this space buccaneer and his very large ship.

There's a reason why "The Mandalorian" is so appealing: pairing a rough, tough, loner with a precocious child whom they have to protect and mentor is a proven formula. Kazuo Koike and artist Goseki Kojima's manga series "Lone Wolf and Cub," and its subsequent movie and TV adaptations, is the definitive story of this type, and its apparent influence upon "The Mandalorian" has been widely noted. Other notable examples include "The Mandalorian" star Pedro Pascal's other ongoing TV series, "The Last of Us," films like "Léon: The Professional" and "Road to Perdition," and recent Netflix adaptation of Jeff Lemire's comic book "Sweet Tooth."

In that series, it's Nonso Anozie who plays the "Lone Wolf" role: Tommy "Big Man" Shepperd, a former militiaman who stumbles across adorable little deer-boy Gus (Christian Convery) and reluctantly agrees to help him find his mother. Rather than being set in outer space, "Sweet Tooth" is set in a post-apocalyptic America where a lethal pandemic wiped out much of the population, while simultaneously children began to be born as human-animal hybrids (hence the deer-boy). 

If you need something to watch between installments of "The Mandalorian," "Sweet Tooth" is a sweet and seriously underrated series, with a second season on the way some time this year. Meanwhile, new episodes of "The Mandalorian" season 3 release Wednesdays on Disney+.