The Mandalorian stunt coordinator reveals the most ‘high-pressure’ battle of season 2
By Mia Johnson
The Mandalorian’s stunt coordinator revealed the one stunt that they felt ultra pressured to get right for the fans.
In season 2 of The Mandalorian, each episode continued last season’s theme of having absolutely awesome, exciting action scenes. Really, that’s a trademark of Star Wars as a whole, and luckily The Mandalorian spared no expense at making these scenes as exciting as possible.
This season even took things to the next level when the Jedi were brought back into the mix. With both Ahsoka Tano and Luke Skywalker wielding lightsabers, we were really in for some great battles. A lot of that action is all thanks to the stunt people and The Mandalorian’s stunt coordinator for making those moments become a reality. And coordinator Ryan Watson spoke to Variety in a recent interview about what it was like to work lightsaber battles into season 2.
The most interesting part about Watson’s interview is that he revealed there was one fight in particular that they really wanted to get right: the lightsaber-beskar staff battle between Ahsoka Tano and the Magistrate. According to Variety, Watson settled on a “clean” and less “flowery” lightsaber/staff battle for the two. He knew how much fans cared about Ahsoka, so he wanted to get it right — even consulting showrunner Jon Favreau and episode 5 director Dave Filoni in “long conversations” about how to pull off the scene just right.
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From the Magistrate actress Diana Lee Inosanto’s martial arts background to the added bit of Filipino martial arts moves that Watson weaved into the scene, all on top of the amazing swordsmanship of both Inosanto and Rosario Dawson (Tano), the scene came together beautifully.
“There’s not a lot of wasted movements — when they start to fight, they explode. It’s from stillness to 100 miles an hour in the blink of an eye,” he said in the interview.
Aside from that stunt, there were a few other interesting bits of information from the interview. For one, it was hilarious to learn that while wielding the “Darksaber” for stunts, Giancarlo Esposito (Moff Gideon) broke not one but several props. That just goes to show that Esposito’s got a lot of strength, and even Watson had to commend the actor on how great he handled each of his fight scenes.
He also revealed that their hardest stunt that season ended up being the Chapter 15 episode where Migs Mayfeld (Bill Burr) drove an Imperial transporter while Mando fended off the endless waves pirates. Variety wrote: “The coordinator cites this as the most difficult stunt of the season, with stuntmen hanging from wires and filming both with the transport moving and with it stationary, for more intricate choreography.”
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The stunt team pulled off some amazing scenes in season 2 of The Mandalorian, and we’re sure there’s many more great ones to come in season 3.