The Mandalorian's Producer Names His Top 10 Star Wars Moments

Dave Filoni spearheaded the Star Wars cartoons—and might be the future of the franchise. Here, he picks the scenes that inspired him as a creator.
Dave Filoni in a hat
Dave Filoni, a supervising director on Clone Wars and executive producer on Rebels, is now an executive producer on The Mandalorian, the Star Wars show that’s launching the streaming service Disney+.Photograph: Jason LaVeris/Getty Images

If the Star Wars universe seems big, that’s because of its side stories. You’ve got the grimdark Rebel spies of the prequel Rogue One, sure, but also names like Ahsoka Tano (Darth Vader’s student when he was still good guy Anakin Skywalker) or Hera Syndulla (leader of the Rebel cell operating from the starship Ghost). If you read all that and think, “Wait, who?” then you didn’t obsess over the animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars or Star Wars Rebels. And you’ll probably have the same wait-who reaction to another name: Dave Filoni.

That’s a bummer. Filoni was a supervising director on Clone Wars and executive producer on Rebels, some of the best Star Warsian content anyone has generated since the 1980s. Now he’s an executive producer on The Mandalorian, the Star Wars show that’s launching the streaming service Disney+. As a recent Vanity Fair profile said, George Lucas handpicked Filoni—they call him the “Chosen One”—to execute Lucas’ particular vision. Until now, Filoni has been a little bit of a fan-favorite secret weapon, the Y-wing to normie Millennia Falcons like George and J. J. and Kathleen.

Consider the Loth-cat out of the bag: Filoni may be emerging as a key player in Disney’s new Star Wars strategy. See, Disney has instituted a “pause” on new movies; David Benioff and D. B. Weiss (late of Game of Thrones) have opted out of a deal to make a new trilogy, and the company hasn’t clarified the fates of a trilogy to come from Last Jedi writer-director Rian Johnson or another feature from Marvel producer Kevin Feige. The emphasis, CEO Bob Iger has said, is shifting to TV like Mandalorian, as well as an Obi-Wan Kenobi show with prequel-player Ewan MacGregor and a prequel-to-the-prequel Rogue One with Diego Luna.

But as Han Solo would have said if we were a television executive, flying through the hyperspace of over-the-top streaming ain’t like dusting crops. Think of all the Xes over the faces of dead or soon-to-die Marvel TV shows. Even Lucas himself tried and failed to make a live-action Star Wars TV show for ABC—For All Mankind and Outlander showrunner Ron Moore wrote for it, to no avail. That makes Filoni technically the only Star Wars creative to ever succeed at television (assuming you don’t think the holiday special or the two Ewok Adventures worked)—four seasons of Rebels and an upcoming seventh season of Clone Wars. So it’s beard-strokingly interesting that Filoni now has a more influential role. “A great many truths we cling to depend largely on our point of view. People come to the stories from their own experiences,” he says. “That feels very Jedi to me. I don’t have mandates. I just have advising. I don’t think I’m a measure or a rule that people have to follow.”

Filoni often talks like a Jedi. “Ultimately, I have a unique point of view on the whole thing because I was fortunate enough to be trained by George,” he says. “I’ve always seen my role as almost more of a caretaker and a shepherd of this galaxy.” Filoni even self-deprecates his job as an EP and director on The Mandalorian, a show about an armored warrior from the same planet as the bounty hunter Boba Fett from the movies (and holiday special). “Working with [EP] Jon Favreau on Mandalorian, I have learned a tremendous amount about not just live action but about storytelling,” Filoni says. It’s a gracious tip of Filoni’s customary cowboy hat, and the show is going to be a must-see for fans. Yes, I’m saying that The Mandalorian is mandatorian.

That’s because Filoni has been behind what, to me, are some of the most iconic moments in all of Star Wars—and if you only watch the movies, you missed them. In Rebels, he turned the final lightsaber fight between Obi-Wan Kenobi and Darth Maul into a fight between two masters straight from Seven Samurai, a long pause for staring and then two or three quick saber strokes, followed by Kenobi caring for his longtime adversary as he dies—because that’s what Jedi do. Or, just to really geek out here for a second, consider the genius of the way Filoni handles Darth Vader, when no one really knows who he is. A young Jedi apprentice wants to take him on; his mentor simply says, “Run.” Eventually Vader shows up standing atop his TIE fighter, descending slowly. It’s all menace, a Vader no one really thought to show until the add-on scenes in Rogue One. “I always used to simplify it for people coming on board: The thing about Vader is, when he enters a room, the heroes run away. The reason a lot of people don’t know about him is he kills everybody,” Filoni says. “I wanted that on screen, that unstoppable force.”

So! All that said, with Mandalorian debuting Tuesday, I asked Filoni to pick his iconic scenes, the moments that defined Star Wars for him as a creator. He grabbed the task in an unbreakable Force-choke … though he declined to choose anything from his own work or the Disney-era films. Make of that what you will. What he did pick comprises a look into the head of one of the most dedicated Star Wars creators working today—and maybe a kind of philosophical preview of Star Wars’ future on the small screen.

Courtesy of ©Lucasfilm Ltd.
Yoda Raises the X-Wing

Luke’s spaceship has crashed and sunk under the swamps of the planet Dagobah, where the Jedi Master Yoda is in hiding. Yoda tells Luke to use the Force to raise it; Luke fails. Yoda does not. “The staging is perfect, the music is perfect, and Mark Hamill, as he so often does, just sells this moment of magic,” Filoni says. “It’s a perfect Jedi lesson, a perfect Jedi moment, something we’re getting for the first time, this knowledge that using the Force, being a Jedi, is not simply about fighting with a lightsaber.”

Courtesy of ©Lucasfilm Ltd.
The Battle of Hoth

“I love the walkers,” Filoni says. “They have my favorite Imperial trooper on board, the AT-AT Driver. Love the helmet, love the red logo.” Also, come on, right? “Giant machines that look like dinosaurs? Who’s not going to love that?”

Courtesy of ©Lucasfilm Ltd. 
Escape from the Death Star/TIE Fighter Dogfight

It’s the scene when Luke and Han Solo operate the gun emplacements on the Millennium Falcon, caught in a space battle but also interacting with each other—Luke blows up an enemy fighter and cheers, and Han says “Great, kid! Don’t get cocky.” Character work in the midst of action is always tough. “It’s a defining moment,” Filoni says. “And for the first time, it’s realistically shot and executed.” The fight looks more a World War II documentary than sci-fi. Except with spaceships.

Photograph: Alamy
Darth Maul vs. Obi-Wan Kenobi and Qui-Gon Jinn

“It was a lightsaber fight the way we’d imagined one but never seen it,” Filoni says. Chorale music, a double-bladed lightsaber, and the death of Qui-Gon—who would’ve been a father figure to Anakin Skywalker rather than the more brotherly Obi-Wan, and might have kept Anakin from becoming Darth Vader.

Courtesy of ©Lucasfilm Ltd.
The Jedi Council

Filoni admits he’s cheating here with multiple scenes, but he likes the politicking of the Jedi because it’s a sense of what the Old Republic might have been like—and because it shows that the Jedi themselves have become corrupted by politics. “You realize the Jedi of that time are more compromised,” he says. “They’re not just these perfect soulful warriors, which I think was tough for some fans.” Plus, Filoni’s favorite Jedi is the fish-like Plo Koon, who’s not much more than background in those scenes … but gets a lot of air time in Filoni’s Clone Wars. Now we know why.

Photograph: ©20thCentFox/Everett Collection
Anakin and Palpatine at the Opera on Coruscant

It’s more of the subtle two-hander scenes that made the prequels controversial among fans, but Filoni likes the moment for its characterization of the manipulations and lies of the evil Sith—Palpatine is machinating to become Emperor and turn Anakin to the Dark Side, using half-truths to sell the con.

Courtesy of ©Lucasfilm Ltd. 
Opening Battle of Revenge of the Sith

It’s a giant space battle, a cold-open for this third prequel movie. But it ends with Anakin essentially murdering a Sith Lord in cold blood, on the orders of the Emperor. “The theater I was in was stone quiet,” Filoni says. “You immediately know he shouldn’t have done that, and so does Anakin.”

Courtesy of ©Lucasfilm Ltd.
Destruction of the Death Star

“It’s an unmatched moment in the film and my life,” Filoni says. Luke uses the Force, fires the shot that destroys the Death Star at the last moment, saving the Rebellion. It’s pretty good. “If you were lucky enough to see it in the theater, the theater just erupts with that shot. It’s so hard to get everything in a story to come down to one moment, one shot, and George did it.”

Courtesy of ©Lucasfilm Ltd.
“I love you.” “I know.”

An improvised moment on set between Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford becomes the iconic romantic exchange between Princess Leia and Han Solo, and all nerds always. “You see the collision between these two strong-minded people,” Filoni says. “It reaches across genre.”

Courtesy of ©Lucasfilm Ltd.
Throne Room Fight with Luke, Vader, and the Emperor

The Emperor almost manages to manipulate Luke into killing Darth Vader in anger, but Luke instead throws away his lightsaber. “I always feel what he’s saying is, I love my father and there’s nothing you can say or do or offer that will change that,” Filoni says. “In that moment of selflessness, Luke is a Jedi and Anakin is saved. It means everything.” Plus, Filoni adds, it takes on added resonance when you go back as a father and watch the movie with your own kids. Which, yes, I also hope my kids will not murder me with a lightsaber. But he’s serious. “That’s why you see a Star Wars Celebration filled with families, and why parents like to watch the saga with kids, and why so many kids grow up to make Star Wars, myself included,” Filoni says. “It’s why we feel this intangible thing that there’s something special at work in the Star Wars galaxy.”


Disney+ launched Nov. 12 and costs $7 per month.

Note: When you buy something using the retail links in our stories, we may earn a small affiliate commission. Read more about how this works.


More Great WIRED Stories