The Mandalorian season 3 may begin filming no later later this summer (updated)

Bill Burr as Migs Mayfeld and Pedro Pascal as The Mandalorian in The Mandalorian season 2. Photo: Disney+.
Bill Burr as Migs Mayfeld and Pedro Pascal as The Mandalorian in The Mandalorian season 2. Photo: Disney+.

Update1/27/21: This story has been updated to include information from the Film and Television Industry Alliance.

In December, season 2 of The Mandalorian came to a close. Before that, it was promised to us that the next chapter of The Mandalorian would be coming around Christmas of this year, 2021. But what we didn’t know afterward was that a brand new series would be coming around that time, too, The Book of Boba Fett.

That has seemingly put the Star Wars TV schedule in a confusing place for those of us on the outside. And technically, the next “chapter” of The Mandalorian is The Book of Boba Fett — as Jon Favreau clarified to Good Morning America (via TechRadar). So what did that mean for The Mandalorian? That there might not even be a season 3 this year at all.

Though, there’s now some sort of silver lining to all this confusion about when The Mandalorian season 3 will come around. The DisInsider reported that Production Weekly is giving us some insight into what’s to come, and it’s good news. From the Production Weekly list for Thursday, Jan. 21, The DisInsider says that The Mandalorian season 3 could begin filming this August. It’s not clarified if this is for sure the date that Production Weekly lists or an estimate from The DisInsider, but it’s encouraging to know that there is a timeline for the project set in place.

Additionally, another source (the Film and Television Industry Alliance) revealed that production is to begin approximately on April 5. As Star Wars News Net reports, this should probably be best held as a rumor for now, as the site had a few inaccuracies as to when and where the Kenobi series would be filming. So for both of these dates, we can only hold them as speculation for now until we get solid confirmation that filming has begun.

Boba Fett rumors confirm The Mandalorian season 3 dates?

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About two months ago, it was reported that filming for the then-rumored Boba Fett series would begin filming sometime in November. The report also said that the series would air before The Mandalorian season 3, and so far that seems to be true.

In the same Star Wars News Net story, they mention “the production-to-air timeframe of the series has been over a year for each of the first two seasons.” So from what we can gather, we may be looking at an early/spring 2022 release date for The Mandalorian season 3.

Tradition would have had it air later in the year, with season 1 beginning in November and season 2 beginning at the end of October — but we’ll take what we can get.

So, all in all, with Disney+ coming up on its second complete year of being out by the time The Book of Boba Fett comes, that still means we’re only getting one live-action Star Wars series per year. (Of course, we’re not counting other series like The Clone Wars or The Bad Batch). But with other live-action series in production like Kenobi and Andor getting ready to go on simultaneously, we may see a year where we get two or three shows at once.

Elsewhere on Disney+, Marvel’s starting to do this with shows like WandaVision, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and Loki all coming out right in 2021. So with everything that Star Wars has planned, we’ll likely see a stacked schedule like the MCU’s in the years to come.