Filming on season three of The Mandalorian is underway, but it will look a little different this time around.
One such way is that Mercedes Varnado, known more widely as Sasha Banks, apparently won’t be in this season. She played the Mandalorian Koska Reeves, accompanying Bo-Katan Kryze in the early-season episode “The Heiress” as well as the season finale “The Rescue.” But in a recent interview with Bleacher Report, she claims she won’t be in the next season. Here’s what she said about her experience on the show:
“First of all, thanks for trying to get that out, but I’m not on the next season,” she said. “But it was incredible being on The Mandalorian on Star Wars. To be on a franchise that is so huge and so loved, just look at the reception from fans outside of the WWE Universe. It was the best feeling of all time. The projection of that show was overwhelming. I legit felt like I was in a galaxy so far, far away. I felt like I was on a different planet.
“It was something I will always take with me and I took so much of what I learned from acting with them and being with so many great stars to WWE. It really helped my confidence as well when I came back from doing The Mandalorian two years ago. It was such a learning curve and something I wasn’t expecting, but now I’m in this whole new Hollywood world and it’s going amazingly. I’m so excited for the fans, and I can’t wait for my fans to see what’s next.”
And it’s not like Banks doesn’t have anything else going on, as she is kept very busy with a successful WWE career, with The Mandalorian being her first official acting job. And she says here that she is not on the next season of the show. Of course, after her debut in the show last year she said that she was only in that episode… which obviously turned out to be a lie. So I guess we’ll kind of have to take a wait and see approach to this.
However, the fact that she appeared to bring it up unprompted here that she’s not in the next season could mean that she really isn’t, since she didn’t have to say it. So supposing that she’s telling the truth (and that’s all we can really go on right now!), it means that Koska Reeves will not be in season three of The Mandalorian. That’s a bit of a surprise, to be honest, since she was accompanying Bo-Katan in both of her episodes and since season three figures to deal more with Mandalore and Mandalorians (that’s speculation, but it’s based on some of the hints given in season two). She seemed to be a prime candidate to return. However, in Star Wars it’s not uncommon for side characters like this to be changed episode-by-episode (or in this case season-by-season), and I think it does have a way of making the galaxy feel bigger while still focusing on the same main characters. In fact, it kinda already happened with the Mandalorians in this show: in “The Heiress,” we saw Bo-Katan, Koska, and Axe Woves together. But in the season finale, Woves was nowhere to be found! The audience was very easily able to assume that he was just off on some mission somewhere – which, like I said, can help the galaxy seem a bit bigger. If Bo-Katan has other Mandalorians accompanying her in season three (assuming Bo-Katan herself is back), it’ll just serve to show all the more how many Mandalorians she has loyal to her. It’s not just these two.
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