After The Mandalorian and Grogu‘s new trailer, there’s a real risk Lucasfilm has forgotten what made The Mandalorian great. Star Wars will finally return to the big screen next year, with The Mandalorian and Grogu releasing on May 22, 2026. But the new trailer hasn’t really landed with the impact Lucasfilm would have hoped for.
Google Trends data suggests only a muted response to the trailer, while performance varies across different social media channels; it’s done better on TikTok and Facebook, but YouTube views have been surprisingly low. There can be no doubt the marketing has only just begun, but something doesn’t seem to have landed right.
The Mandalorian and Grogu’s Trailer Tries To Return To The Past
The Mandalorian was a hit for Disney+, and Lucasfilm no doubt hope the movie will be even bigger. The goal won’t just be to convert Disney+ viewers to theatergoers; it will also be to appeal to people who’ve heard about Baby Yoda, who’ve bought the cute merch, but who’ve never watched the show or even considered a subscription.
To that end, the new trailer deliberately restores some of the iconic patterns that made seasons 1 and 2 so successful. It’s visible right from the start, with the return of a Razor Crest, a ship that was destroyed in season 2; Din’s pulse rifle is back too, replacing the Darksaber to give him a strong silhouette.
Ludwig Göransson’s incredible music is back, too, trying to evoke the same tone and style. But there’s a problem; these are all surface-level changes, and something else is missing.
The Mandalorian and Grogu Trailer Forgets The Main Archetype
It helps to compare The Mandalorian and Grogu‘s trailer to the unforgettable ones for The Mandalorian season 1. The first was one of the best Star Wars trailers of all time, not least because it concealed far more than it revealed; there’s no hint of the wolf and cub dynamic between Din Djarin and Grogu.
The secret to this trailer’s success, though, lies in its sense of style. Everything about this evokes a Western feel, with camera sH๏τs lovingly created to riff on classic Westerns, countless tropes recreated in live-action, and everything held together by that fantastic theme. The “Western” feel is almost entirely absent from The Mandalorian and Grogu‘s trailer.
There are occasional moments that try to reach for it, such as the sH๏τ of Din and Grogu peering over a sand dune. But even this really feels like more of a homage to The Mandalorian season 1, which featured a similar scene with Din on his own; the new sH๏τ signifies that Din is now training Grogu as his apprentice.
This, fundamentally, is what’s missing from The Mandalorian and Grogu‘s trailer. It lacks the stylistic punch that made people sit up and take note when they saw The Mandalorian‘s back in 2019. The silhouette has been restored, the Razor Crest is back, but it’s all surface level when it needs to be so much more.
The Mandalorian and Grogu Follows A Disturbing Trend
The new trailer is an ominous sign, because The Mandalorian season 3 failed to commit to the same kind of tone and style as well. Thematically, it became concerned with a wider story involving the fate of Mandalore, and the cinematography changed a little to reflect that. We’d hoped The Mandalorian and Grogu would reverse this, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.
The first two seasons of The Mandalorian were released all the way back in 2019 and 2020, long before Lucasfilm committed to an overarching narrative for this era – one featuring the return of Grand Admiral Thrawn in Ahsoka season 1. It’s possible something has unwittingly been lost in the “Star Wars” of it all.
It’s not too late for Lucasfilm to course-correct. If the problem is simply marketing, then future trailers can be stronger on a stylistic level. Even deeper issues can be resolved, because it’s reasonable to ᴀssume Pedro Pascal has yet to record dialogue; that would explain why there are only four spoken words in the whole trailer.
There is still hope for The Mandalorian and Grogu. For now, though, audiences appear to be lukewarm.
