Mandalorian spin-off Rangers Of The New Republic no longer in "active development"
Disney’s Star Wars branch has developed a pretty serious “eyes bigger than its Sarlacc pit” problem in recent years, often tossing out into the public ideas for TV shows, films, and even whole trilogies of movies that may or may not ever come to fruition. (We’re looking at you, hypothetical trio of Rian Johnson flicks.) So it’s not wholly surprising to see—in a recent Variety piece about Mandalorian writer Dave Filoni’s promotion within the franchise last year, which people for some reason only noticed this year—confirmation that one of the many current Star Wars TV spin-offs was no longer in active development. Which one? Why, Rangers Of The New Republic, the Mandalorian spin-off that many people had speculated was designed as a vehicle for Gina Carano’s Cara Dune. Who’d a thunk?
Okay, so: This all gets a little nebulous, because Disney has always been very careful not to ever say what Rangers—originally announced in December of 2020—was actually about, or who it might star. (Possibly because it was still trying to figure out if the situation with Carano, who it fired in February of 2021 over her frequently inflammatory social media presence, was salvageable.) That being said, many people have assumed that Cara Dune, who the New Republic tried to recruit in The Mandalorian’s second season, would feature prominently in the show.
But then Carano managed to tweet her way well and truly out of that job, with Disney stating that it has no plans to work with her in the future—and now, wouldn’t you know it, Rangers is on the backburner, frozen in “We’re not putting any money into this potential time bomb right now” carbonite, if not actually dead. Of course, it’s not like there aren’t still a million Star Wars shows extant or in development to distract people from this little PR SNAFU; The Bad Batch is currently running, that Ahsoka Tano series is still on the books, and, of course, the Obi-Wan Kenobi series is still slated to arrive in 2022.