Rangers Of The New Republic: The Show Is Cancelled, Star Wars Drops It
Rangers of the New Republic will be one of the new Star Wars spinoff shows. Here's what we know.
This article is more than 2 years old
The Star Wars universe is about to expand exponentially. Disney’s 2020 Investor Day was a wealth of information for many reasons but for those ardent Star Wars fans, the news that Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy passed along was almost too much to digest. Disney and Lucasfilms have plans for ten (yes, TEN) new Star Wars series that will be hitting the Disney+ platform in the next few years. One of those series, The Mandalorian, will be continuing with Season 3, but thanks to The Mandalorian, fans will be getting two spin-offs. Rangers of the New Republic will be one of those shows.
Star Wars fans can also thank Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni for breathing new life into the Star Wars universe. Things looked bleak as the final Star Wars trilogy played out, that is until Favreau and Filoni made their presence known with The Mandalorian. The Disney+ series introduced Din Djarin, or Mando to his “friends”, along with a host of other characters, to include Grogu (Baby Yoda) and Gina Carano’s Cara Dune. While official details are few with regards to Rangers of the New Republic, bets were being hedged that Gina Carano may play a big part in the upcoming series.
Now, that all has changed. Rangers of the New Republic has been cancelled without ever being made. The show is officially no longer in active development. What happened? Well originally Gina Carano was supposed to play the show’s lead. When Disney fired her, there may have been an attempt to find someone else to take over, but ultimately the show really needed Cara Dune. It’s likely that was a big factor in Rangers being shut down.
Gina Carano And The Rangers Of The New Republic
So, Cara Dune is played by former MMA beat-down artist Gina Carano and while making a name for herself in the violent, but highly watchable, sport, she has since moved on to try her hand at acting. She’s been in a few, mostly forgettable movies, but has seen time on bigger films such as Fast & Furious 6, Heist, and Deadpool.
Gina Carano was an immediate hit on The Mandalorian, but she came under heavy fire when she began posting certain viewpoints on her social media accounts. These included liking posts that were dismissive of the Black Lives Matter movement, sharing anti-mask beliefs, mocking trans rights by joking about pronoun usage, and spreading conspiracy theories about the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election. After reposting an image that compared the Holocaust to being persecuted for her conservative views, Disney terminated their relationship with the actress.
The Cast That Might Have Been
Two other characters were introduced who could have had a bearing on the direction of the show, those being X-Wing pilots Carson Teva and Trapper Wolf. Teva, played by Paul Sun-Hyung Lee, has been seen a couple of times already and has made his presence as a form of law enforcement as he travels the Outer Rim.
This leads us to believe that Teva understands that even though the Empire has been defeated, there are still remnants that pose a threat. It is possible that his travels could have been central to the plot of Rangers of the New Republic.
Rangers Of The New Republic Plot
As they were with The Mandalorian, both Favreau and Filoni were developing these two series, which is why the crossover will be happening. But what could this climactic story event be that Kennedy has promised? All signs point to the three series building on the rise of the First Order. Now they’ll have to do it with two now that Rangers of the New Republic is cancelled.
Favreau and Filoni might have been taking their cues from the novel Star Wars: Bloodline which tells how the First Order formed and its ensuing struggles. Obviously Gina Carano’s Cara Dune character isn’t in that, so they’ll have to come up with a lot of where the show’s plot heads on their own.
Whichever direction Favreau and Filoni decide to go, they will first need to establish the New Republic as one entity, along with all its hazards and limitations. They need to show this in order to explain why they could do nothing when the First Order came into being.
Star Wars Crossovers Besides Gina Carano And The Mandalorian
Rangers, along with The Mandalorian, were supposed to have a crossover with another of The Mandalorian spinoffs, Ahsoka, a series that is bringing Rosario Dawson back as Ahsoka Tano. Dawson was introduced to fans earlier in season 2’s episode The Jedi and it was such a big hit that Disney was ready to pounce. In fact, Kennedy promised big things for the three interconnected shows. “These interconnected shows, along with future stories, will excite new audiences, embrace our most passionate fans and will culminate in a climactic story event,” she said at the Disney Investors Day. A “climactic story event?” Well that definitely sounded promising.
