How ‘The Mandalorian’ Addresses Cara Dune’s Departure

There are many questions about the third season of The Mandalorian. Will we see Luke Skywalker again next? Grogu left him in The Book of Boba Fett? Can Din Djarin find his way back into Mandalorian society afterwards? removing his helmet in the season two finale? And, of course, what would Disney and creator Jon Favreau do with Cara Dune?

We learned the answer to the last question in the first episode of the third season of The Mandalorian, which hit Disney Plus on Wednesday. Cara Dune, the renegade mercenary played by Gina Carano in the show’s first two seasons, is still alive, but she won’t be an active participant in Mando’s story.

When Din Djarin arrives in Navarro in the season premiere, he is met by High Magistrate Greef Karga, aka Carl Weathers. Carga quickly explains that Navarro needs a new marshal. A confused Mando asks what happened to Marshall Dune. “After Moff Gideon was brought in, he was recruited by the Special Forces.”

Gideon was the big villain of season two, defeated by Mando with the help of Dune in that season’s finale. In other words, Cara Dune is still a villain in the Star Wars universe, but we won’t be seeing any of her exploits.

Dune was pulled by Lucasfilm last February after, in a quickly deleted Instagram story, she likened being a Republican to being Jewish in the years before the Holocaust. “Gina Carano is not currently employed by Lucasfilm and there are no plans for her to be in the future.” a Lucasfilm spokesperson said at the time. “Her social media posts demeaning people based on their cultural and religious identity are disgusting and unacceptable.”

Carano has since signed on to the Daily Wire, a conservative media company co-founded by political pundit Ben Shapiro. In 2022, he starred in the Western film Terror on the Prairie, released only to Daily Wire subscribers. Speaking to Shapiro in an interview last year, she said she was bullied by Disney and Lucasfilm.

“I’ve been through so much, and I’ve seen so much now, obviously, of the bullying that takes place, and I’ve seen it before,” Carano said on The Ben Shapiro Show last February. “I’m not the only one who has ever been bullied by this company and I know it so deeply.”

Regarding the Instagram post that led to her release, Carano said she was “inspired by the kind spirit of the Jewish people that was going through that time,” adding, “when I posted it wasn’t something I felt it was. It was something I thought , maybe we should all ask ourselves how this happened.”