Look, Dave Filoni is probably the best thing that’s happened to this franchise in years because the guy actually understands what people loved about Star Wars before everybody started treating it like a sacred text that needs to be dissected frame-by-frame on YouTube for eight straight hours. He understands the vibe. The adventure. The weirdness. Half the magic of Star Wars is just watching strange little creatures wander around filthy space ports while some idiot barely survives another terrible decision.

And Jon Favreau gets it, too. You can feel both of them dragging Star Wars away from sterile franchise sludge and back toward something handmade and scrappy and fun. Not everything has to redefine the mythology or connect to fifteen other shows. Sometimes you just want to hang out in this galaxy for two hours and watch weird space nonsense happen.

And thank god for that.

The Mandalorian & Grogu is easily the best Star Wars flick in a long, long while. I’m dead serious. This is the first time in YEARS I walked out of a Star Wars movie feeling hyped instead of immediately wanting to argue about lore, canon, or why some random scene breaks the established continuity.

Seriously, everything in this movie feels alive. And I mean ALIVE, alive. The second Din and Grogu get tangled up with all these bounties (and then with the Hutts after Jabba’s death), the whole galaxy just explodes with activity. Weird little freaks running through the frame. Broken droids dragging themselves around. Smoke pouring out of pipes. Market stalls overflowing with food (and Martin Scorsese!!!) and junk. Creatures yelling at each other in the background while some shady deal is probably happening ten feet away from the actual scene.

Half the time, I was distracted watching all the chaos behind the plot.

And I mean that as a compliment.

The movie feels messy in the best possible way. Like the camera just wandered into some lawless desert truck stop in space where everybody looks tired, armed, and slightly dangerous. Every location feels like if you turned the camera thirty degrees, there’d be another insane little story happening offscreen somewhere. THAT’S Star Wars to me. Not clean CGI corridors where everything looks polished and empty.

Pedro Pascal is great as Din Djarin, too. At this point, the guy can tilt his helmet slightly and somehow make it funny. And Grogu still works. I genuinely don’t know how they pulled that off because that character should’ve become unbearable years ago. But the puppet work is incredible here. He actually feels present in scenes rather than just being a CGI mascot dropped into the frame afterward.

Sigourney Weaver rules, too, by the way. She slides into this universe so naturally; it’s honestly insane nobody put her in Star Wars sooner.

And man, the effects look GOOD. Not “modern blockbuster good.” I mean tactile good. Stuff has weight. The creatures look physical. The environments actually look dirty. There are multiple sequences where I swear they were sneaking in little stop-motion influences, especially in some of the creature animation. It reminded me of old fantasy movies where everything moved slightly weird and jerky in this really charming way. The whole movie has this feral handmade energy that modern Star Wars usually sands down.

Also, the easter eggs are handled perfectly because they’re not standing there screaming REMEMBER THIS?? every five seconds. The biggest one for me was the electronic chess game from A New Hope finally being fully realized. THAT is the kind of fan service I want. Take some weird little thing sitting in the background of the old movies and expand it into something cool instead of digitally dragging dead characters onscreen for applause.

And the score by Ludwig Göransson absolutely rips. Best Star Wars music in forever. Dude, the second those electronic beats and synth pulses started creeping underneath the orchestral stuff, I was locked in. So much blockbuster music now just sounds like wallpaper. This actually has a pulse. Weird tribal drums. Lonely western themes. Electronic textures. Giant heroic music. Somehow, it all works together without feeling like it’s desperately trying to “modernize” Star Wars.

I don’t know, man. This is the first time in a long time Star Wars actually felt BIG to me. Weird-big. Dangerous-big. Like the galaxy exists outside the plot instead of waiting around for the next cameo. It’s messy and funny and occasionally kind of dumb and honestly? Good. Star Wars SHOULD be a little dumb sometimes.

Praise the Maker indeed.

4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray + Digital 4K Steelbook

Home Video Distributor: Disney/Buena Vista
Available on Blu-ray - August 25, 2026
Screen Formats: 2.39:1
Subtitles: English SDH, French, German, Italian, Spanish
Video: Native 4K; Dolby Vision, HDR10
Audio: English: Dolby Atmos; Dolby TrueHD 7.1
Discs: 4K Ultra HD; Blu-ray Disc; Two-disc set
Region Encoding: 4K region-free; blu-ray locked to Region A

The Empire has fallen, but its most dangerous warlords remain scattered across the galaxy. To protect everything the Rebellion fought for, the fledgling New Republic turns to legendary Mandalorian bounty hunter Din Djarin and his young apprentice, Grogu. Their latest assignment sends them into the criminal underworld, where the Hutts demand a dangerous favor before surrendering the information Din needs. Soon, the unlikely father-and-son team is blasting through hostile worlds, strange creatures, and enough weird space nonsense to remind everyone what made Star Wars fun in the first place.

VIDEO

Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu blasts onto 4K Ultra HD with a native 2160p HEVC presentation sourced from a 4.5K digital production and finished with a 4K intermediate. Both Dolby Vision and HDR10 are included, with the movie shifting between its primary 2.39:1 framing and an expanded 1.78:1 ratio during select IMAX sequences. The transitions can be noticeable, but the expanded image gives the arena battle, aerial pursuit, and climactic action an exhilarating increase in scale.

The image itself is exceptionally clean and loaded with detail. Every scratch, seam, dent, and shifting reflection across Din’s armor is visible, while Grogu’s wrinkles, tiny hairs, robe fibers, and wonderfully tangible puppet construction hold up beautifully in close-up. The icy Imperial facility, dank Hutt chambers, Shakari’s neon-covered streets, and the sun-soaked New Republic base all possess distinctive textures and convincing depth.

Dolby Vision makes the movie’s restrained palette work harder than it did in theaters or through streaming. Black levels remain deep while preserving shadow detail inside the Hutt hideout and nighttime environments, and concentrated bursts of neon, blaster fire, arena lighting, and explosions punch through the darkness. Some of the larger digital creatures appear softer than the practical elements surrounding them, but the transfer generally honors the movie’s grimy, tactile personality. This is the best the film has looked and precisely the sort of disc that keeps physical media from becoming another corpse Disney can quietly bury.

AUDIO

The 4K disc’s English Dolby Atmos soundtrack is an absolute beast when the movie cuts loose. The opening AT-AT assault immediately establishes the track’s reach, with blaster bolts whipping between channels, heavy machinery grinding through the room, and an enormous mechanical leg traveling overhead before landing with a brutal, subwoofer-shaking impact. Spacecraft pass convincingly around and above the listening position, rain and thunder spread throughout the height layer, and the Shakari arena surrounds the audience with chanting spectators, weapon strikes, and roaring creatures.

The mix remains controlled even when all hell breaks loose. Explosions carry substantial low-end force, ships and trains move fluidly through the soundstage, and the caverns beneath the Hutt stronghold echo with convincing height and scale. Dialogue stays clean and centered while Ludwig Göransson’s score expands across the room, shifting effortlessly between western themes, orchestral heroics, tribal percussion, electronic pulses, and the heavier rhythms accompanying Shakari. The included Blu-ray uses a strong DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 mix, but the UHD’s Atmos presentation is the main event.

Supplements:

Commentary:

• See below

Special Features:

The SteelBook includes the movie on 4K UHD and Blu-ray, along with a Movies Anywhere digital copy. More importantly, Disney has provided an actual collection of supplements instead of tossing two ten-minute promotional scraps onto the disc and expecting collectors to say thank you. There are no deleted scenes, which is disappointing, but Jon Favreau’s feature-length commentary and roughly forty minutes of behind-the-scenes material provide a satisfying look at the film’s handmade creatures, environments, miniatures, and other beautifully strange machinery.

• Crafting The Mandalorian and Grogu — 19:49
  The most substantial featurette examines the puppetry, miniatures, sound design, visual effects, creatures, and practical craftsmanship used to bring the film to life. This is the release’s strongest supplement because it confirms what the movie itself suggests: an enormous amount of human work went into making this galaxy feel dirty, crowded, and alive.
• Biomes—From Snow to Swamp — 6:36
  Jon Favreau and the production team explore the construction of two new environments influenced by the landscapes of the original trilogy. The snowbound Imperial installation and living swamp were built by combining physical environments with modern production technology.
• Welcome to Shakari — 8:44
  A tour through the creation of the movie’s bustling metropolis, constructed inside a downtown warehouse and filled with shops, elevated transportation, creatures, signage, clutter, and all the background insanity that makes the location feel like it exists beyond the plot.
• Dejarik for Real — 5:53
  The artists responsible for the movie’s Dejarik sequence explain how the tiny holographic chess creatures introduced in A New Hope were redesigned and brought to life at full scale. It is precisely the right kind of fan service: take a beloved background detail and do something wonderfully ridiculous with it.
• Audio Commentary with Jon Favreau — 2:12:05
  Favreau accompanies the entire movie with production stories and observations about its characters, locations, effects, and place within the larger Star Wars The commentary is easily the most valuable addition and gives collectors a genuine reason to revisit the film beyond the audiovisual upgrade.

The collectible SteelBook houses both discs and complements the physical releases of the three television seasons. A considerably more expensive Beskar Collector’s Edition adds special packaging and two metal posters, but the regular SteelBook contains the same movie, discs, and supplements without requiring collectors to sell a kidney to Jabba’s surviving relatives.

	Movie
	Video
	Audio
	Extras
Composite Blu-ray Grade

MPAA Rating: PG-13.
Runtime: 136 mins
Director: Jon Favreau
Writer: Jon Favreau
Cast: Pedro Pascal; Brendan Wayne; Lateef Crowder
Genre: Action | Adventure
Tagline:
Memorable Movie Quote: "This isn't about revenge. It's about preventing another war."
Distributor: Disney/Buena Vista
Official Site: https://movies.disney.com/star-wars-the-mandalorian-and-grogu
Release Date: May 22, 2026
DVD/Blu-ray Release Date:
Synopsis: Once a lone bounty hunter, Mandalorian Din Djarin and his apprentice Grogu embark on an exciting new Star Wars adventure.