Where does The Mandalorian land on the Star Wars timeline?

The Mandalorian continues its run as the most popular Star Wars television show ever produced. Let’s take a closer look at where it fits in the Star Wars timeline.

The Mandalorian is famously the show that launched the Disney Plus streaming service in November 2019. The mega-conglomerate bet big on the Star Wars series and that wager paid off immensely. It started by exclusively introducing new characters into the established universe, but showrunners Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni compiled some of the best elements from the franchise to tell a new tale.

The setting brought fans to a period that fell several years after Star Wars: Return of the Jedi. This was a departure from so much focus being assigned to the Clone Wars era/post-Clone Wars in recent years. With a scope ranging from the time between the prequel trilogy and the original trilogy, Star Wars developed the animated series Star Wars Rebels, as well as feature films Rogue One and Solo prior to The Mandalorian.

However, The Mandalorian was not the first chronicle to fill the gap between the original trilogy and the sequel trilogy. Star Wars Resistance beat the live-action show by about a year, although the anime-styled series was a direct antecedent of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, even including Poe Dameron and BB-8 as supporting players. Therefore, The Mandalorian singularly explored the Star Wars Universe shortly after the New Republic regained power from the Empire.

The second season of The Mandalorian brought back beloved heroes and anti-heroes, which spawned spin-off series. Ahsoka has not yet been released, yet will likely take place around this era. The Book of Boba Fett followed the events of The Mandalorian at that point in time and even served to tie-in The Mandalorian narrative in the middle of its two-year hiatus.

The Book of Boba Fett set The Mandalorian’s protagonists on their current course, allowing the third season of The Mandalorian to directly succeed that “side story”. That classic bounty hunter may be out of the picture at this point in Din Djarin’s plot, however Bo-Katan is rising in importance in this live-action format. She has been placed in pivotal moments throughout the animated Clone Wars and Rebels and is now an integral Mandalorian in multiple Star Wars time periods.

This tertiary outing for the series also features our first glimpse at the Mandalorian home world of Mandalore. The last time the planet was depicted chronologically in Star Wars was in one of the final episodes of The Clone Wars. A battle against Maul for control of Mandalore was won with the help of Ahsoka and Captain Rex; with Bo-Katan left as the de facto leader. It is not coincidental that she is currently playing a big role in the return of Mandalore.

Not only does the series take from content that precedes it on the timeline, the season opener pleasantly includes a species that has only been spotted in the final movie, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. The Anzellans are tiny droidsmiths that sort of resemble E.T. and after Babu Frik amused fans in The Rise of Skywalker, it was a smart move by Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni to have Grogu interact with the little people in The Mandalorian.

Where The Mandalorian takes place on the Star Wars timeline

Currently, this is how the Star Wars chronology roughly lines up:

• Tales of the Jedi – Life and Death, Justice, and Choices
• The Phantom Menace
• Tales of the Jedi – The Sith Lord
• Attack of the Clones
• The Clone Wars
• Tales of the Jedi – Practice Makes Perfect
• Revenge of the Sith
• Tales of the Jedi – Resolve
• The Bad Batch
• Solo
• Obi-Wan Kenobi
• Rebels
• Andor
• Rogue One
• A New Hope
• The Empire Strikes Back
• Return of the Jedi
• The Mandalorian (Seasons 1-2)
• The Book of Boba Fett
• The Mandalorian (Season 3)
• Resistance (Season 1)
• The Force Awakens
• The Last Jedi
• Resistance (Season 2)
• The Rise of Skywalker

Another character who is missing from the third season (so far) is Ahsoka. She started as an animated fan-favorite in Clone Wars and Rebels and, like Bo-Katan, also made the jump to live-action in The Mandalorian’s sophomore run. Rosario Dawson will now star in Ahsoka’s own television series that is expected to release on Disney Plus this year. The timeline for that show will inevitably land in close proximity to The Mandalorian.

What do you think of The Mandalorian Season 3 so far? Do you want the show to include more legacy Star Wars characters and continue to make connections with previous content? Let us know in the comments below.