The Mandalorian Season 3 Footage Reaction: Multiple Babu Friks And Many Mandalorians

Everyone's favorite space Western is coming back: "The Mandalorian" season 3 is headed our way, and some new footage just premiered at Star Wars Celebration 2022. While "The Mandalorian" stood alone as the sole live-action "Star Wars" series during its first two seasons, the show returns to an expanded TV universe that now includes "The Book of Boba Fett" and the upcoming spin-off "Ahsoka."

Those other shows are cool and everything, but are any of them about a stoic traveler playing papa to the galaxy's favorite little green guy, Grogu? I didn't think so. 

It's been a year and a half since we last saw our heroes in the context of "The Mandalorian," although both Grogu and Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) appeared in "The Book of Boba Fett" last winter. The season ended with the pair reunited after Grogu left Luke Skywalker's (Mark Hamill) tutelage to join Mando back on Tatooine. Mando ended up fighting the Pyke syndicate alongside Boba Fett (Temuera Morrison) and Fennec Shand (Ming-Na Wen). Also, importantly, Timothy Olyphant's extremely cool gunslinger Cobb Vanth came back.

/Film's Ethan Anderton is on the ground at Celebration, and here's what he saw in the new "The Mandalorian" season 3 trailer.

When Dave Filoni and Jon Favreau showed off footage from "The Mandalorian" season 3, it initially appeared to be the same footage we saw earlier during Celebration. But this had a different ending, with a lot more brand new footage. This new look featured a lot more Mandalorians — many with white helmets, some appeared to be female, and there were shots of them jumping out of a ship and activating their jetpacks. There was tons of laser blasting, Grogu hanging upside down in Mando's ship as it does a barrel roll, and the Armorer using her tools in a fight, strolling into the fray and swinging her hammer as a weapon.

An old, possibly decommissioned Star Destroyed is docked on the ground. Grogu has a new pram (it looks basically the same, but the back folds down completely so it looks more like a floating bowl). The Mandalorian terrorist group Death Watch makes an appearance, including one with an orange helmet. There are space battles galore, and the footage ends with a shot of a ship flying over the ruins of Mandalore, an image which conjures all sorts of feelings for "Star Wars" fans who have been paying close attention to both the animated shows and following along with the live-action ones. 

Grogu watches fireworks from the cockpit of Mando's ship, there's a shot of Bo Katan flying a ship, and also a dogfight over a moon colony or factory of some kind.

And was that "SNL" veteran Tim Meadows in the footage? Tough to say, but the show has a history of hiring comedic actors, so it wouldn't be out of the question.

But perhaps the most important thing to show up in the new trailer (which will only be shown at Celebration and won't make its way online): Multiple Babu Friks! They were all working away, similar to the environment where Babu appeared in "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker." But just how involved will they be in the season? The people must know, Lucasfilm!

With the "Star Wars" TV universe opening up, "The Mandalorian" will no longer be the moody, standalone space Western it started out as. The cast continues to expand, bringing "Back to the Future" star Christopher Lloyd into a galaxy far, far away.

Plenty of familiar faces will likely return this season, with Carl Weathers' Bounty Hunters' Guild leader Greef Karga, Giancarlo Esposito's villainous Moff Gideon, and Katee Sackhoff's Mand'alor Bo-Katan chief among them. Meanwhile, Cara Dune actress Gina Carano was ousted from the show in 2021 after making what a Lucasfilm representative called "abhorrent and unacceptable" social media posts.

Ahead of the trailer premiere, most everything about the new season of "The Mandalorian" has been kept under wraps. The season finished filming just over a month ago, with costumer Amanda Ramirez posting, "That's a wrap from a galaxy far, far away" on Instagram and Weathers confirming the news on his own Twitter account. Though that seems like a short turnaround time for a trailer, the show's production uses an innovative on-set technology called StageCraft to take a lot of the guesswork out of performing on a soundstage. These immersive sets, which function as high-quality digital backdrops, cut down on post-production time as well, meaning we can get footage like this in time for Star Wars Celebration.