Battlestar Galactica star and Star Wars veteran Katee Sackhoff is joining The Mandalorian season 2. We have exclusively learned that Sackhoff will be playing a live-action version of Bo-Katan Kryze, a Mandalorian warrior she previously voiced in Dave Filoni’s animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars and later Star Wars Rebels.

Although both Lucasfilm and Sackhoff’s reps declined to comment, we have confirmed this story with multiple sources. She filmed her role back in February before Hollywood production shut down due to the global coronavirus pandemic.

Sackhoff has made a career of playing complex sci-fi tough women, recently appearing in Netflix’s sci-fi drama series Another Life. The Mandalorian season 2 completed principal photography in March and the post-production is being done remotely, so the new episodes will still hit Disney+ in October 2020.

Bo-Katan first appeared in season 4 of the Star Wars animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars. The character was a Mandalorian warrior – a lieutenant in the radical splinter group Death Watch, second-in-command to the group’s leader, Pre Vizsla. When Maul took possession of the Darksaber, executed Vizla, and took the throne of Mandalore, Bo-Katan refused to accept the outsider as her new leader. She was instrumental in recruiting the Jedi and the Republic to lay siege to Mandalore and oust Maul. Later in Star Wars Rebels, Sabine Wren chose to pass the infamous weapon to Bo-Katan, believing that she could unite the Mandalorian clans.

If you don’t know the animated series, it all boils down to this: Bo-Katan was an instrumental Mandalorian leader who once wielded the Darksaber, a weapon that the villainous Moff Gideon now controls, as seen in the first season finale of The Mandalorian.

Why Bo-Katan May Be Important To The Mandalorian

How did Bo-Katan lose the Darksaber? How did Moff Gideon get possession of it? Those stories have yet to be told. We don’t know much about the “purge of Mandalore” and the “night of a thousand tears”, but you can easily see why fans have been speculating that Kryze could appear in The Mandalorian. There is a lot of Mandalorian history missing from the current Star Wars canon, and maybe Bo-Katan’s live-action appearance would serve to fill in those gaps.

DiscussingFilm even asked Sackhoff about the possibility earlier this year, to which she responded: “I mean, who wouldn’t! … There are people that are going to jump to conclusions that Bo is going to be in The Mandalorian because on paper, it does make sense. But you know, we’ll just have to wait and see and cross all my fingers and toes. You never know.”

We only know that Bo-Katan appears in this upcoming season, we don’t know how she appears. It’s possible that Bo-Katan’s involvement could be contained to flashbacks. Since Gideon has the Darksaber, that means he would have taken it from her in a battle at some point. Bo-Katan may have died in that battle, and we could see that play out on screen in a flashback in The Mandalorian season 2.

The Filoni Legacy

Dave Filoni loves tying up loose ends from his previous shows, bringing back characters to finish their journeys in his new adventures. We saw this with Ahsoka and Rex in Star Wars Rebels, and we have already confirmed that The Mandalorian season 2 will have the first live-action appearance from Ahsoka (the last Mandalorian scoop we broke), possibly to help launch a spin-off series paying off the tease at the end of Star Wars Rebels.

Last week, it was reported that Temuera Morrison would be playing Boba Fett in the upcoming season, but that also opens the door to him playing the live-action Captain Rex, as they are both clones of Jango Fett. While I haven’t heard anything concrete, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a live-action version of Sabine Wren appear in the series considering her Mandalorian background, her relationship to the Darksaber, and the fact that she teams up with Ahsoka in the quest to find Ezra Bridger, which is speculated to be the driving force of an Ahsoka live-action series.

The creatives at the center of this all have longstanding ties. Series showrunner Jon Favreau was a fan of Battlestar Galactica, notably taking inspiration from the space combat in the Syfy television series when making Iron Man. Favreau also voiced Pre Vizsla in Star Wars: The Clone Wars, the character who led Death Watch and commanded Bo-Katan. That series was created by Dave Filoni, who also serves as a writer, director, and executive producer on The Mandalorian.

The post Exclusive: ‘The Mandalorian’ Season 2 Recruits Katee Sackhoff to Play Bo-Katan in Live-Action appeared first on /Film.