When Lucasfilm fired “The Mandalorian” actress Gina Carano in February of this year, it caused some domino effect problems for their projects in development. Two months earlier, at the big Disney Investors Day, Lucasfilm announced a new “Star Wars” series, “Rangers of The New Republic.” And while it was never officially announced, it seemed clear that Carano’s Cara Dune character would be one of those Rangers. In fact, in the wake of Carano’s dismissal, the trades did confirm that Cara Dune would have been featured on her own show but failed to establish which one. Well, all signs now point to ‘Rangers Of The Republic’ being that series, and furthermore, with Carano out of the picture, it sounds like Lucasfilm has scrapped the series entirely.
In an Empire interview with Lucasfilm’s Kathleen Kennedy for their “Book of Boba Fett” issue (via IGN/Imgur), the studio head makes comments about “Rangers Of The Republic” that heavily suggest the series is shelved (“on hold” is Empire’s language, but that doesn’t seem to be the case). According to Kennedy, its storylines and idea will likely be folded over into other unnamed Lucasfilm stories.
“We’d never written any scripts or anything on that…some of that will figure into future episodes, I’m sure, of the next iteration of ‘Mandalorian’,” a screenshot from the interview states concerning the fate of “Rangers” (see below).
The series was sort of first teased when Paul Sun-Hyung Lee’s Captain Carson Teva attempts to recruit Cara Dune into the New Republic, alluding to his possible involvement as well (though the actor recently signed up for Netflix’s live-action “Avatar: The Last Airbender,” perhaps an early sign the show was being shuttered)
This new quote from Kennedy would suggest that Lucasfilm didn’t even attempt to retool “Rangers of The New Republic” after firing Carano earlier in the year. It sounds like those storylines could still be used in the ‘Mandalorian’ series. ‘Rangers’ would seemingly join a multitude of “Star Wars” projects that didn’t make it out of the development stage alongside recent reports that Patty Jenkins’ movie “Star Wars: Rogue Squadron” and Rian Johnson’s original film trilogy is on the chopping block too.
Many fans will groan at yet another Lucasfilm project shelved or scrapped. Still, in an era when movies are rushed into production without much quality control to hit a release date, it’s pretty refreshing actually that Kennedy and co. are willing to shutter a project if it’s not up to snuff, or in this case, a little bit obsolete without its star.