The Mandalorian Welcomes Back One Of Star Wars' Most Unfairly Maligned Actors

This article contains spoilers for The Mandalorian season 3, episode 4, "The Foundling."

In the latest chapter of "The Mandalorian," Grogu is left at home while his dad goes off to rescue a foundling from a space pterodactyl (between this and the giant space alligator, the Children of the Watch appear to be have made their home in Jurassic Park). While Din Djarin is battling a real-life monster, Grogu finds himself fighting his own demons: traumatic memories of his narrow escape from the Jedi massacre of Order 66.

It's here that the show introduces Kelleran Beq (Ahmed Best), aka "The Sabered Hand," a Jedi character from the children's game show "Star Wars: Jedi Temple Challenge," which released 10 episodes on the Star Wars Kids website and YouTube. Even the most die-hard "Star Wars" fans may not be familiar with "Jedi Temple Challenge," but they will be familiar with Best, who made first contact with the franchise when he voiced and provided motion capture for Jar Jar Binks in the prequel trilogy.

The disproportionate rage from a certain contingent of the "Star Wars" fandom had a nasty fallout for the cast of the prequels. Jake Lloyd, who played the young Anakin Skywalker in "Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace" retired from acting just a couple of years after the film came out, and later cited bullying over the role that had made his life "a living hell." While Lloyd is unlikely to ever return to acting, let alone in this particular franchise, Best has popped up in many places across "Star Wars" media — and not just as Jar Jar Binks and Kelleran Beq.

Jar Jar Binks has a complicated legacy (to put it mildly). For years, the character was held up as the pinnacle of everything that went wrong with the "Star Wars" prequels, and was the target of both jokes and more serious accusations of racial stereotyping, due to his manner of speech and comic relief klutziness. As Best explained in a video interview for Participant, it was the accusations of racism that hit him the hardest:

"Growing up, being Black, and wanting to be an artist — which is a very challenging and brave thing to do, it's not easy — we're always faced, as Black artists, with this idea of being a sellout. We have our guard up when it comes to being portrayed as an Uncle Tom, a racist stereotype, or anything that makes you, as a Black person, look less than ... It hit me. It came right for me."

In the immediate wake of the backlash, Best said that it felt like his life was over, and in one particularly hopeless moment he even contemplated suicide. When he opened up about this on Twitter, years later, he was taken aback by the supportive response that he got, and from the number of people who reached out to him: 

"It was surprising because I never really thought anybody would care. We talk a lot about things going viral, and usually when things go viral, it's something negative. I didn't feel like what I posted went viral. I feel like it went communal ... because of the support that I got, that I never thought was there."

The negative response to Jar Jar Binks led to the character having a much smaller role in "Attack of the Clones" and "Revenge of the Sith," but in the middle chapter of the prequel trilogy, Best was given an on-screen cameo role as a Jedi called Achk Med-Beq (a play on his real name). In an interview about "Star Wars: Jedi Temple Challenge," Best explained that the cameo had been pretty spontaneous, and was actually thanks to C-3PO actor Anthony Daniels grabbing him and saying, "We're going to be in it, let's go." (Daniels also has a cameo in the scene.)

Best's character in "The Mandalorian" was born out of that last-minute decision to play a live-action Jedi in "Attack of the Clones." Following his brief on-screen appearance, Best explained: 

"People kind of created this lore behind that character. I really love that, and that's one of the things about 'Star Wars' fans that I dig. Like, as soon as a character shows up, all of a sudden people want to know history. People want to know backstory ...So doing Kelleran Beq, this new Jedi, what excited me the most was where the history was going to go. Who was he? How is he going to be a part of the 'Star Wars' universe in a way that created these long-lasting stories?"

The name "Kelleran Beq" was chosen by Best himself, and is an intentional tie to his character in "Attack of the Clones" ("Kelleran and Achk Med are related. I'll leave it at that"), and he even got to design his own lightsaber. Seeing Kelleran brought into the fold of the core "Star Wars" universe via "The Mandalorian" is a surprise, to be sure, but a welcome one. 

New episodes of "The Mandalorian" release Wednesdays on Disney+.