4 hidden details from The Mandalorian season 2 trailer

While story content for the Mandalorian season 2 trailer is relatively sparse, the trailer nevertheless contains threads of interest you can glean from.

Nearly a year ago, Star Wars debuted their first live-action foray into the small screen, attracting particularly sizeable amounts of press, popularity and praise around the world. The Mandalorian followed the tales of a sharpshooting bounty hunter and his attempt to protect a mysterious child from bounty hunters and Imperial remnants alike, known by the audience as Baby Yoda.

However, as the dust cleared and season 1 drew to a close, the titular character (now identified as Din Djarin) was given a new task that made the previous eight episodes feel like nothing more than an extended pilot for the real story: he was now tasked with returning the child to his people, a group of ancient sorcerers known as “Jedi” (wink, wink).

So if you parse season 1 as a mere prologue to what will soon come, it would have made sense for Lucasfilm to begin the major marketing campaign for season 2 months in advance.

So it came as a minor shock that it took this long to get a trailer for the new season. Either way, while The Mandalorian season 2 trailer is pretty light on detail, the detail that is there is definitely worth exploring in a substantive way, as I am about to do.

1. The “alien” is an Abyssin named Gore Koresh

If you were to watch the trailer now with captions on, you would discover that the alien who briefly converses with Djarin is identified as “Alien.” Previously, however, captions identified him as someone named Gore Koresh, as he discusses Baby Child with Mando as they watch Gamorreans duel each other.

2. Ilum is probably in it

See that snow planet the Razor Crest travels to at around 40 seconds into the trailer? Not to put on a tinfoil hat or anything of the sort, but my guess is that planet is probably Ilum, the planet that appeared in The Clone Wars, Jedi: Fallen Order and The Force Awakens (as Starkiller Base).

During the age of the Republic, Jedi younglings would travel all the way to the Unknown Regions and traverse a barren, desolate and freezing environment to find a magic crystal that could power their laser swords. Okay, that’s a bit of a crude description, but it fits the gist of why it was so important… and why the Empire was keen on exploiting it.

Seeing that Djarin’s new task is to bring Baby Yoda to the Jedi and Yoda’s species, it would make sense for them to travel to a planet so important to the Jedi Order.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and its supplemental material would reveal that kyber crystals were used to power the superlaser during the construction of the Death Star, and Jedi: Fallen Order would heavily imply that Ilum was mined and excavated in a way that suggested… other ulterior motives, which also involved destroying planets.

The First Order would then capitalize on this through the construction of Starkiller Base. Now that I think about it, that serves as a pretty neat segue into…

3. The remnants of the Galactic Empire

Remember how season 1 told the story of the rise of the First Order? No? Well, the show will eventually. We get a small hint of it in the first season through the Imperial remnant led by Moff Gideon, who will undoubtedly play a much larger role this season.

As brief as the trailer is, it does give us a fresh set of tantalizing glimpses into how the imperial remnant might tie into the creation of the First Order.

While the official Empire is gone and the New Republic has taken its place, things haven’t automatically become great across the galaxy. Here’s what director Dave Filoni told Entertainment Weekly in an interview last year:

"This doesn’t turn into a good guy universe because you blew up two Death Stars. You get that the Rebels won and they’re trying to establish a Republic, but there’s no way that could have set in for everybody all at once. You have in a Western where you’re out on the frontier and there might be Washington and they might have some marshals, but sometimes good luck finding one."

The new trailer promises us more of the imperial remnant on Nevarro, as we see the scout troopers and folable X-Wings we saw last season.

But wait! At around a minute and 15 seconds into the video, in between the shots of X-Wings and scout troopers, we see ordinary stormtroopers running through a hanger… of a Star Destroyer?

Granted, it could just be an ordinary military installation or something of the sort that the scout troopers are seen leaving in the next shot. One thing is almost certain though: as we learn more about Moff Gideon and the imperial remnant, we’ll find out how this ties into the birth of the First Order.

4. The shadow of Boba Fett?

I’m just going to be direct for this one: Temuera Morrison is rumored to reprise his role as Boba Fett for season 2. Obviously we don’t see Boba Fett directly, but we do get hints as to his presence in the upcoming series.

We see Tatooine (normally I would complain about the overuse of Tatooine, but here it makes sense), full of the banthas and Tusken Raiders we’ve come to know and love.

We last saw adult Boba Fett in Return of the Jedi in Tatooine, when he was anti-climactically offed by a blind man on accident and fell into the sarlacc pit. The canon Aftermath trilogy would heavily imply that the sarlacc found Fett’s armor distasteful, promptly spitting it out and opening the door for Fett’s return.

One shot of the trailer at 1:11 shows a bounty hunter riding through Tatooine in his jetpack. A freeze-frame analysis of this suggests that this jetpack belongs to none other than Boba Fett.

Now that The Mandalorian season 2 trailer has been released, the hype train for the new season has begun. Expect for the marketing campaign to gradually disclose new story information over the next month-and-a-half. But for now, this is all we have, and it’s more than satisfactory for the time being.

The Mandalorian season 2 is set to begin streaming on Oct. 30 on Disney+.