Warning: There are spoilers ahead for The Mandalorian and Grogu.Villain star Jonny Coyne reveals that prior to The Mandalorian and Grogu, he had a major role in season 4 of the Disney+ series.
Coyne plays Lord Janu Coin, who is one of The Mandalorian and Grogu‘s key villains. Before the movie, he was introduced as an unnamed Imperial warlord and member of the Shadow Council in The Mandalorian season 3, episode 7, “The Spies.” While there were plans for a fourth season, with Jon Favreau having completed scripts for it, plans changed at Disney and Lucasfilm, and the story’s next chapter becoming a theatrical movie necessitated a new script being written.
A Long Time Ago in a Galaxy Far, Far Away · Eight Questions How Well Do You Know Star Wars? “The Force will be with you. Always.”
🗡️Jedi OrderLight-side guardians
⚡The SithRule of two
⚙️The RebellionA new hope
🪓Bounty HuntersThis is the way
👑The EmpireOrder 66
01
The original Star Wars film — later retitled Episode IV: A New Hope — opened in just 32 American theatres and proceeded to become the highest-grossing film of its era, redefining what summer blockbusters could be. In which year did it premiere?
✓ Correct! 1977 — specifically May 25. 20th Century Fox had so little faith in the project they only opened it in 32 theatres at first; queues quickly stretched around the block, and the film expanded to over 1,000 screens within months. It earned $307 million in its initial domestic run, won six Academy Awards (with another four nominations) and inverted Hollywood’s economics for the next 50 years.
✗ Wrong. The answer is 1977. 1975 is when the script was being shopped around. 1979 is when Star Trek: The Motion Picture released as a Star Wars-shaped countermove. 1980 is The Empire Strikes Back. The original Star Wars is May 25, 1977.
02
A New Hope’s writer-director was a then-32-year-old American Graffiti veteran who’d struggled to get the project greenlit and famously took back-end profit and merchandising rights in lieu of a higher salary — the deal that would build a billion-dollar company. He returned to direct the prequels but stepped away from the original-trilogy sequels. Name him.
✓ Correct! George Lucas. The merchandising rights he kept (because Fox didn’t value them) became the financial bedrock of Lucasfilm and the basis of the modern toys-and-licensing megabusiness. After A New Hope, Lucas produced but didn’t direct Empire Strikes Back (Irvin Kershner) or Return of the Jedi (Richard Marquand), then directed all three prequels (1999–2005). He sold Lucasfilm to Disney in 2012 and stepped away from creative control of the sequels.
✗ Wrong. The answer is George Lucas. Steven Spielberg was Lucas’s close friend (and the godfather of his post-A-New-Hope career) but never directed a Star Wars film. Coppola was Lucas’s mentor at USC and at American Zoetrope. Irvin Kershner directed Empire Strikes Back. The original is Lucas’s.
03
In 1980’s The Empire Strikes Back, Darth Vader delivers cinema’s most-misquoted line at the climax of his Cloud City duel with Luke Skywalker. Vader severs Luke’s hand and reveals their relationship. The exact line is — for the record — “No, I am your father.” What relationship does it confirm?
✓ Correct! Vader is Anakin Skywalker, Luke’s father. The reveal was so jealously guarded that Mark Hamill was only told the real line on set the day they shot it (the script said “Obi-Wan killed your father”), and even James Earl Jones recorded the dub without knowing the full plot context. The line — commonly misquoted as “Luke, I am your father” — rewrote what trilogies could pull off and is broadly considered cinema’s most famous twist.
✗ Wrong. The answer is that Vader is Luke’s father, Anakin Skywalker. The whole foundation of the Skywalker saga collapses to this single twist: Anakin (the Jedi prodigy of the prequels) becomes Vader after his fall. Luke and Leia are revealed in Return of the Jedi to be his twin children, separated at birth.
04
Yoda — the green, ear-twitching Jedi Master — was puppeted and voiced from his Empire Strikes Back debut through the prequels and the sequels by a single Muppet-show-veteran performer who also voices Miss Piggy and Fozzie Bear. Name him.
✓ Correct! Frank Oz — longtime Jim Henson collaborator and voice/puppet work on Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, Animal, Sam Eagle and Grover. Oz puppeted Yoda directly through The Phantom Menace before CGI took over for Attack of the Clones onward, but he’s continued to voice the character through the sequels and animated series. Yoda’s syntax was developed jointly by Lucas and Oz to feel old, foreign and hard-won.
✗ Wrong. The answer is Frank Oz. Jim Henson was Oz’s mentor and collaborator (he created the Muppets) but didn’t voice Yoda. Steve Whitmire took over Kermit after Henson’s 1990 death. Brian Henson is Jim’s son and runs the Henson company today. Yoda is Frank Oz’s.
05
In a deal that reshaped Hollywood, Disney acquired Lucasfilm Ltd. for $4.05 billion in cash and stock — bringing Star Wars, Indiana Jones, ILM and Skywalker Sound under the Disney umbrella. The deal also kicked off the sequel trilogy production. In what year did Disney close the acquisition?
✓ Correct! 2012 — specifically October 30. The deal was announced with simultaneous reveal that a Star Wars Episode VII was being developed for a 2015 release. Lucas had been quietly preparing his exit from Lucasfilm for years; Kathleen Kennedy had been brought in as co-chair months earlier specifically to take over. The Force Awakens came out three years later, in December 2015, kicking off the modern era.
✗ Wrong. The answer is 2012. 2009 is when Disney acquired Marvel ($4 billion). 2010 is the year before Lucas began signalling exit plans. 2014 is when production proper began on The Force Awakens. Lucasfilm joined Disney on October 30, 2012.
06
The Mandalorian launched as Disney+’s flagship original on November 12, 2019 — the day the streaming service itself launched. Created by Jon Favreau and run by Dave Filoni, the show centres on a helmeted bounty hunter who reluctantly becomes a foster father to “The Child” (Grogu). What is the Mandalorian’s real name?
✓ Correct! Din Djarin — played by Pedro Pascal under the helmet (with body double Brendan Wayne handling much of the physical work). The Mandalorian is widely credited with reviving Star Wars on TV, popularising the StageCraft LED-volume virtual production technology now used across Hollywood, and turning baby Yoda — Grogu — into the meme-economy phenomenon of late 2019. Three seasons have aired with a feature film, The Mandalorian & Grogu, set for May 2026.
✗ Wrong. The answer is Din Djarin. Boba Fett is the famous bounty hunter from the original trilogy, with his own Disney+ spinoff (The Book of Boba Fett, 2021). Cobb Vanth is the Tatooine marshal played by Timothy Olyphant. Bo-Katan Kryze is the Mandalorian princess played by Katee Sackhoff. The Mandalorian himself is Din Djarin.
07
Order 66 — the secret directive that turns the Republic’s clone troopers against their Jedi commanders and effectively ends the Jedi Order — is dramatised in the climactic third act of which prequel film?
✓ Correct! Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (2005). Palpatine’s “Execute Order 66” comm to the clone armies leads to the methodical, planet-by-planet liquidation of the Jedi Order — one of the saga’s most operatic sequences, scored to John Williams’ “Anakin’s Betrayal” cue. The same film features Anakin’s fall to the Dark Side, the Mustafar duel with Obi-Wan, and his rebirth as Darth Vader in the suit. Widely re-evaluated as the best of the prequels.
✗ Wrong. The answer is Revenge of the Sith. Phantom Menace ends with Qui-Gon’s death and the unveiling of Darth Maul. Attack of the Clones ends with the Clone Wars beginning. Rogue One is set just before A New Hope, after Order 66 has long since happened. The Order 66 sequence is the climax of Episode III.
08
Andor (2022–25) is widely regarded as the most adult, politically literate Star Wars project ever made — a slow-burn prequel to Rogue One charting Cassian Andor’s radicalisation against the Empire. The series was created and showrun by a writer/director best known for the original Bourne trilogy and Michael Clayton. Name him.
✓ Correct! Tony Gilroy. He’d previously been brought in for extensive Rogue One reshoots in 2016, and Lucasfilm gave him near-total creative independence on Andor. Season 1 (12 episodes, 2022) is widely regarded as Star Wars’ finest dramatic writing ever; Season 2 (also 12 episodes, in four three-episode jumps across 2025) closes the gap to Rogue One’s opening scene. Gilroy’s prior credits: Bourne Identity / Supremacy / Ultimatum / Legacy, plus directing Michael Clayton (2007).
✗ Wrong. The answer is Tony Gilroy. Rian Johnson directed The Last Jedi (2017). Jon Favreau created The Mandalorian and is Lucasfilm’s Disney+-era animation/live-action lieutenant. Dave Filoni runs the Filoniverse (Clone Wars, Rebels, Ahsoka, the upcoming Heir to the Empire film). Andor is Tony Gilroy’s.
The Force Has Spoken · Final Tally Your Galactic Standing
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Jedi Master — or moisture farmer on Tatooine?
In an interview with GamesRadar+, Coyne shared that he was originally “booked to do a whole load of other episodes in season 4,” although he does not know any specific details as he never received any scripts for it. Between the SAG-AFTRA strike, COVID-19, and the evolving plans at Disney and Lucasfilm, he then thought the show was canceled and his time in Star Wars was over. However, he later learned that he was going to have a significant part in The Mandalorian and Grogu movie. Check out Coyne’s comments below:
There was a time when I was booked to do a whole load of other episodes in season 4. And then that show went away, and then there was an actor strike, and there was COVID, and all sorts of things going on, and it was a difficult time.
Then I heard the show got canceled, and so I just went, “Okay, I’ll pack my bags, and leave LA.” And then I heard I was going to be part of the movie, and then I heard I was going to be seriously part of the movie, you know, significantly. And then, Jon Favreau called me up and interviewed me, and talked to me about what he plans to do with the character, and I thought, “Okay, bring it on.”
Never got the scripts for [season 4]. Literally, though, the only thing I did with Mando was three lines in the Shadow Council. They weren’t particularly significant lines, I don’t think so, but somehow it was all an intro to my character into what became the movie. So, I’m thinking maybe there was something along these lines in the series, but who knows.
With the original plans for The Mandalorian season 4 still under wraps and a new script needing to be written for the movie, the exact similarities and differences between the two stories remain unknown. Coyne being set to play a prominent role in multiple episodes of season 4 and then becoming a central villain in the film does suggest that certain story elements were carried over, though.
One of Coin’s lines in The Mandalorian season 3 involves him talking about the potential fortune to be made from “plundering the hyperspace lanes.” This sets up his interest not just in the Empire’s return, but in acquiring more wealth, which includes the money he makes off of Rotta the Hutt (Jeremy Allen White) in Shakari’s fighting pits. Coyne’s character is also the mysterious Imperial warlord that the New Republic’s Colonel Ward (Sigourney Weaver) sends Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal, Brendan Wayne, and Lateef Crowder) to capture, which he ultimately does with some help.
It has not been announced yet whether The Mandalorian season 4 or a movie sequel will happen, but there is potential for Coin to be in either one since he is still alive and a captive of the New Republic who divulged Imperial Remnant secrets to them. Any unused aspects of his original season 4 narrative could be incorporated if they still work with where the story goes next.
When speaking with ScreenRant about his Star Warscharacter’s name, which is a nod to his real name Jonny Coyne, the actor shared that he would be happy to continue starring in the franchise: “Always happy to make an appearance in Star Wars, but you have to understand, this is as high as any actor could…Every actor’s dream is to do a franchise movie like this. So as far as I’m concerned, I’ve done it. And if there’s any more to be had after that, fantastic.”
Another possible avenue for his return after The Mandalorian and Grogu is Ahsoka season 2, which is premiering on Disney+ in early 2027. In The Mandalorian season 3 scene with the Shadow Council, they speak of Grand Admiral Thrawn (Lars Mikkelsen) potentially returning to the galaxy. Since then, Thrawn has come back, and it’s confirmed that Ahsoka‘s coming episodes will see him battling against the New Republic.
