Here's the new trailer for The Mandalorian & Grogu
Hitting theaters May 22nd, 2026
With just a couple of months to go before the first Star Wars film in just over six years hits theaters, we have have a full trailer for The Mandalorian & Grogu. It's a long-awaited continuation / spinoff from the Disney+ series that kicked off the franchise's television era, and from the looks of things, it'll have all of the elements that made the show so appealing: lots of action, a plethora of strange aliens, and the titular Baby Yoda, who's living his best life adventuring alongside Mandalorian Din Djarin.
Watch the full trailer here:
The Star Wars television era – and The Mandalorian itself – has been ... something of a mixed bag. The first and second seasons of the show were fantastic expansions of the world, digging into the galaxy's unsavory criminal underworld and ongoing fight against the remnants of the Empire, while the two seasons of Andor represented a high water mark for the franchise. Other parts, like The Mandalorian's third season, The Book of Boba Fett, and Ahsoka suffered from "homework syndrome" and felt like excuses to bring out unnecessary cameos at the expense of storytelling.
Andrew Liptak
When the first teaser for the series came out back in September, I wrote that it looked very much like the film could veer in that direction: a continuation that exists only because Disney's priorities are to get a Star Wars film into theaters, rather than coming about because they had a story that they need to tell; "a standalone episode with a beefier budget, one that ends on the right note that keeps the door open for more adventures down the road, depending on the box office growth?"
I still have those cynical concerns: this is undoubtably a film that partially owes its existence to Disney's marketing department, and that we're in an era where the franchise's future is probably going to be stacked with safer projects that'll be aimed to appease fans, rather than anything that'll be remotely challenging.
On the other hand, there's nothing wrong with a crowd-pleaser, and this latest trailer looks like it'll deliver that in droves. There's a lot packed in here: we've got the overarching story of Din looking after Grogu, and it looks as though he's picking up from where we left him at the end of Season 3, where he offered to help the New Republic with some of their various problems on the Outer Rim.
If I had to guess, they're going to be working to take out some of the supports from the Imperial Remnants, and end up finding some sort of connection between them and the Hutts, which brings them into their crosshairs.
There's some familiar faces that show up – Zeb from Rebels, a bunch of callbacks to the series, and a whole bunch of aliens and designs that I'm guessing have shown up in the background or in concept art, enough for the diehard fans like me to do a Rick Dalton, and enough action and movement to keep the film buzzing along.
Star Wars doesn't have to be profound each and every time: as much as I think Andor's the best that the franchise has ever produced, it's also worth remembering that it's a franchise that contains something for everyone. I'm hoping that it'll hit the bar high enough that it'll be closer to the high point of what the first season of the show brought, rather than the third. If it can do that, it'll be a good day at the movies.
On the movie-marketing front, it's been a it's been perversely fun to watch the chronically-online Star Wars commentariat work themselves into knots of rage over this film over the last couple of months. It's been just over six years since we've seen the franchise in theaters, and there's been an endless stream of doom-and-gloom predictions about how Disney has essentially abandoned the film and that they're not properly hyping it up, recounting anecdotes about how they've spoken with people who aren't aware that a new film is coming out at all.
The first-first trailer for the film hit at last year's Star Wars Celebration in Japan: an extended sequence of Mando taking out the crew of an AT-AT on an icy planet. Then in September, we had the first teaser for the project, and then not much, until earlier this month, when Lucasfilm dropped a goofy ad for it:
Oh man, did Star Wars Twitter light up with rage.
I'll admit, my first reaction was a "huh?" – I, like everyone else, had been expecting a proper TV spot + online trailer for this, and what we got was a parody of one of the classic Budweiser commercials.
This feels like one of those situations that Richard Newby wrote in an article that I still think about quite a bit: "Marvel Disappointed the Rumor Mill at D23", where he wrote about how studios are facing a problem of a fan culture that churns up all sorts of "scoops", rumors, speculation, and wish-fulfillment, only to see few – if any – of those things actually turn out to be true. In the weeks before the Superbowl, there was plenty of speculation about what a trailer might have in it, only to show something that likely won't be in the film at all.
A big part of this is a lack of understanding of how marketing a film like this actually works, or it's a case that demonstrates the principle of Car Talk's Andy Letter perfectly: "Do two people who don't know what they are talking about know more or less than one person who doesn't know what he's talking about?"
Star Wars is one of Disney's biggest properties, and there'll be a lot of work behind the scenes to make sure that everyone in the world knows that there's a new film coming. The people who don't need to be told is that online contingent of hard-core fans. They're already aware, starting with that Celebration scene, something that was perfectly calibrated for the crowd. (You can find leaked versions of it floating around online.)
Trailers for these types of blockbusters generally follow a predictable pattern: a short teaser that stakes out the release date and the general vibe of what to expect, which we got in September. Then you get a full trailer that sketches out a bit more of the vibes, as well as what to expect from the story. We'll probably get a third trailer about a month before the film, timed around when tickets for screenings open up. This is a process that happens with just about every highly-anticipated film, and it's funny how the chronically-online contingent forgets that.
Last year, Disney did something similar with its live-action adaptation of Lilo & Stitch: fans at its D23 convention got a first look at the film, and a teaser dropped in November 2024, followed not too long after by another one. They then released a goofy not-a-trailer at the Superbowl, which was then followed a month later by a proper trailer. The film went on to become the second highest-grossing film of 2025.
I can't say whether or not that The Mandalorian & Grogu will share the same box office success, but Disney's definitely not ignoring the film. A teaser like this at the Superbowl is the starting gun going off: it's unconventional and gets people talking – particularly that much larger part of the population that aren't fans. With the exception of 2018's Sol0, all of Disney's Star Wars films have crossed the coveted billion-dollar mark at the international box office, and I would be surprised if this one didn't do the same.
I'll admit, I've been sort of forgetting that we've got this new film coming in a couple of months. The teaser was fine, but this new trailer feels like it's shaking off some of the cynicism that I've had about the Mandalorian in recent years. It's worth remembering what George Lucas has said his intentions were about his story when he first released it: it's for kids. It's meant to be fun. I know I'm enjoying starting a rewatch of the series with my daughter, who's about at that right age to really start enjoying it, and I imagine that when we go out to see it in theaters, we'll have a good time.