Instead of a trailer for The Mandalorian and Grogu during the Super Bowl, Disney and Lucasfilm opted for a commercial paying homage to some classic commercials. Spoofing the Budweiser clydesdale commercials, or the feel of a Ford truck commercial, this one showed Din Djarin and Grogu being pulled in a sleigh by some tauntauns, on a snowy planet.
This commercial, directed by Jon Favreau and created by the puppetry and visual effects teams at Lucasfilm, is not a clip from the movie. It is a separate scene, created just for the Super Bowl. So there is not much we can learn about the movie from it – which is par for the course with The Mandalorian and Grogu, since there hasn’t been much we know about the movie at all to begin with. We’ve got to be careful drawing any kind of conclusion about the movie from this commercial.
However, I do think a piece of it is interesting enough to spark some discussion: is the movie going to visit Hoth? I think it’s becoming more and more likely that the answer is yes.
Footage shown exclusively at Star Wars Celebration and D23 last year, along with the publicly-released trailer later in 2025, all showed a large action sequence happening on a snowy planet with a series of AT-AT walkers. These walkers move along a narrow ledge on a snowy mountain, while Djarin infiltrates one of them and flies away as it explodes and falls over the cliff. Already people had been speculating that the movie could be showing a return to Hoth, for the first time on-screen since The Empire Strikes Back. There are plenty of snow planets in Star Wars, of course, so this is not conclusive by itself. But director Jon Favreau and his close collaborator, new Lucasfilm President Dave Filoni, have shown a particular fondness for nostalgia. With The Mandalorian, it has become common to assume, if something looks familiar, it probably is. That lends more credence to the idea that if there’s a snow planet, it might be the one we’ve seen before. Add to that the fact that AT-ATs are seen on this snow planet, just like they were on Hoth in Empire, and it’s no surprise people have been speculating.
This is why it seems potentially significant that this commercial for The Mandalorian and Grogu is set on a snow planet and features tauntauns, which as far as we know are native to Hoth. It seems very clear that this commercial, at the very least, is intended to be set on Hoth. So why not the movie? What if they already had the backgrounds for Hoth, and already had tauntauns created for the movie? Again, this isn’t like the commercial just went to a snow planet out of nowhere; we’ve already seen that the movie will spend at least some time on a snow planet. This makes me think it’s all the more possible it could be Hoth.
As for why they’d go back to Hoth? Well, that’s a much harder question. Did the Empire take over after they drove the Rebellion away, making this a lingering outpost of Imperial sympathy? Did the Rebellion leave equipment behind that might be useful for the New Republic? We don’t know. But I have to say, I’m starting to think it’s more and more likely we’ll be re-visiting one of the most iconic Star Wars planets.
Star Wars Thoughts 