Seven years. Seven years since a Star Wars film lit up a movie screen. Seven years of Disney+ adventures, lore dumping, and fan theories. And now, the Mandalorian and Grogu movie arrives on May 22, 2026, carrying the weight of all those years on its beskar shoulders. I need you to understand something before we go further. Mandalorian and Grogu is not a supersized episode of the show. The movie is not a Disney+ special dressed up in a tuxedo. The early footage shown to audiences at CinemaCon and the May 4 IMAX preview already has people talking about the opening 25 minutes like they belong in the same breath as the Battle of Hoth. The action in this film is intense, layered, and built for the biggest screen you can find. So let's walk through it. Scene by scene. Because if you go in without knowing what's coming, you are going to need a moment to recover.
The Opening: Din Djarin Walks Into Hell
The film begins with a Star Wars crawl. The real McCoy. The one with the golden writing and brass by John Williams. The Galactic Empire is gone, and Din Djarin and Grogu are out there, looking for Imperial prisoners.The crawl carries the same weight as the ones that introduced us to legends like Qui-Gon Jinn and the Jedi Order decades ago . The crawl sets the table quickly, and then the film slams the door behind you. The film begins inside a hidden imperial meeting room, where surviving loyalists gather and declare loyalty to the fallen Empire. Tension builds quickly. One leader responds to opposition with immediate violence, taking out one of his own allies without hesitation. A Star Wars movie has never opened with a villain killing one of his own people this early. It signals right away that the Imperial Remnant in this film is broken and desperate, which makes them ten times more dangerous. Then Din Djarin arrives.
He fights through waves of snowtroopers, using a mix of weapons and strategy. The action moves rapidly, with explosions, flamethrowers, and chaotic combat filling the screen. We are talking about a confirmed sequence where Din Djarin launches his hand-held flamethrower while entering a frozen Imperial base, with Imperial Remnant Stormtroopers positioned on either side of a doorway. The Mandalorian has always fought dirty and smart. This opening confirms the movie is going to honor that completely.
The AT-AT Chase: The Most Iconic Walkers Ever Put to Real Use
After the snowtrooper fight, the film builds into what early reviewers are calling the single most fun use of AT-AT walkers in the entire history of Star Wars. Think about that. After The Empire Strikes Back and after Rogue One's haunting beach landing, this film somehow goes beyond both of them in terms of pure kinetic energy. Grogu uses the Force to stop a rolling droid, lifts it, and pulls it apart before it can get together. He then hides from an AT-ST Imperial walker, climbs onto it, blasts the pilot, and takes control of the machine himself. The walker climbs a snowy mountain with both Mando and Grogu on board, heading straight into three massive AT-AT walkers.
Read that again. Baby Yoda steals an AT-ST. He is fifty years old and roughly the size of a football, and he takes the controls of a walking imperial tank. The crowd at the IMAX preview reportedly lost its mind. Mando and Grogu dodge giant feet and jetpack into the cargo hold of one AT-AT to take out troopers inside, then get behind the controls themselves to shoot the escaping Imperial warlord's escape ship out of the sky just before the entire AT-AT explodes. This AT-AT appearance is arguably the most we've seen the iconic walkers in direct action across all of Star Wars. In Empire, they were terrifying obstacles. Here, they are a playground. Mando and Grogu turn these symbols of imperial dominance into tools, and the sequence reportedly plays like the best roller coaster you've ever been on.
The One-Shot Ship Sequence: Jon Favreau Goes Full John Wick
After the mountain sequence, the film shifts direction into something more personal and brutally efficient. Mando boards a ship and goes into an extended action sequence shot in a style similar to a continuous one-shot, taking out soldiers one by one in a sequence that looks like it was filmed practically, which includes drones, hanging cargo, blaster fire, and debris filling the frame.
This kind of filmmaking is rare in Star Wars. The franchise has always been about glamour and scope. But a single, continuous corridor fight where the camera never cuts away? That is a different kind of confidence. Jon Favreau directed this movie with the eye of someone who has been waiting his entire career for the chance to put the Mandalorian on the biggest screen possible. Whatever early viewers have said, it is going to be the one people rewatch in slow motion.
The Dejarik Board Arena
Now we get into the sequence that made my jaw drop when I first heard about it, and it might be the most Jon Favreau idea that has ever existed in a Star Wars film. Din Djarin battles Rotta the Hutt and a gladiator-style arena full of monsters in an action scene taking place on a literal large Dejarik board. For the newcomers, Dejarik is the holographic chess game R2-D2 and Chewbacca played on the Millennium Falcon back in A New Hope. The creatures on that board? Chewie and 3PO were playing with holographic versions of real species.
And in the Mandalorian and Grogu movie, those creatures show up in the flesh. A Mantellian Savrip, one of the creatures from the original holochess set in the very first Star Wars film, appears as a massive monster that Mando and Grogu fight in the city. Bounty hunter fights do not get more creative than this. Mando, standing on a life-size version of Chewbacca's chessboard, is fighting actual monsters from a game that first appeared 49 years ago. The Mandalorian and Grogu are Star Wars storytelling at its most complex and its most joyous. Rotta the Hutt is apparently a champion gladiator in this timeline, finishing his human opponent by shattering a blade and then killing him. Rotta was last seen as a baby in the 2008 Clone Wars film. The galaxy has been unkind to him, and clearly, he has been hitting the gym.
Embo Comes to Nevarro
Here is where the bounty hunter fights get genuinely frightening. Embo, introduced 16 years ago in Star Wars: The Clone Wars, is a Kyuzo bounty hunter who became one of the most dangerous operatives in the galaxy. In the new footage, he launches a direct attack on Din Djarin's homestead on Nevarro. If you watched The Clone Wars, you know exactly how terrifying this news is. If you did not, here is the summary: Embo once held his own in a fight with Anakin Skywalker. He is incredibly skilled and available to the highest bidder. What makes his return even more surprising is that, in the current timeline, Embo was believed to have retired and taken up farming. Something has pulled him back into the game. The Hutts made him an offer he could not refuse.
He also brings company. Embo's hunting companion is an anooba, a carnivorous creature with sharp jaws and teeth known for lethal instincts. For Grogu, that is a terrifying development. The bounty hunter fights between Embo and the Mandalorian are going to be the action highlight of this film for longtime fans. Din Djarin is considered a legendary operative, one of the best hunters in the galaxy. Embo is the rare figure who operates at the same level. When two predators at the top of the food chain go after the same target and then turn on each other, you do not get a clean, elegant lightsaber duel. You get something messier, faster, and far more brutal.
Grogu's Force Abilities
The Mandalorian and Grogu movie is not just about Din Djarin's weapons and tactics. Grogu has been training. Three seasons of The Mandalorian showed us glimpses of his raw power. Luke Skywalker trained him for a period before Grogu chose the Beskar armor over the Jedi path.Much like Ahsoka before him, Grogu walks a path between Jedi tradition and something entirely his own And now, going into this film, he arrives as something the galaxy has genuinely never seen: a Force-sensitive Mandalorian apprentice. As Grogu uses his Force powers, Mando takes out a snowtrooper on top of an AT-ST and steals it, charging down a mountain with Grogu alongside him. The two of them fight together now, not just as a parent and child, but as an actual combat unit. Grogu uses the Force to create openings. Mando closes them with Beskar and firepower.
Grogu has nine confirmed Force powers, from Force healing to a raw Force choke he performed out of pure instinct. He constructed barriers that could deflect ship explosions. He is one of the most uniquely powerful Force users in Star Wars history, and the movie is set to show us the next stage of what he has become. The lightsaber combat question is the one fans debate most. Grogu chose the armor over the saber when Luke gave him the choice. But the film has placed him in situations where his Force abilities are being pushed to their absolute limit. Whether we get formal lightsaber combat from Grogu in this film remains one of the few genuine unknowns heading into opening weekend. What we do know is that his Force abilities during the bounty hunter fights and Imperial confrontations are going to be central to how Mando survives. We are not watching Baby Yoda any longer, sitting in a floating pram, looking adorable. Instead, he is an apprentice.
The Speeder Chase with Zeb: Action with a Side of Chaos
In a scene revealed on Jimmy Kimmel Live, Din Djarin, Garazeb "Zeb" Orrelios, and Grogu are transporting an Imperial Remnant prisoner to the Razor Crest when a group of stormtroopers captures them in a speeder trying to break the prisoner loose or silence him. Explosive adventures follow as Mando and Grogu engage in a clash where the bounty hunter tells the child which buttons to press, only for the urge of the big red switches to prove too strong.
This scene matters because it shows the film understands what made the show beloved. The bounty hunter fights, and the Imperial battles deliver the spectacle. But Mando telling Grogu not to touch the switches while everything explodes around them? That is the heart of this story. The relationship between a lone hunter who never wanted a son and a Force-sensitive child who never stopped being his kid.
The Shadow Council Threat
Behind every bounty fight, every Imperial clash, every Hutt negotiation gone wrong, there is a larger threat operating in the shadows. The Shadow Council's leader, played by Jonny Coyne, is coordinating events behind the scenes. Part of the plan involves Grogu, and some theories point toward him hoping to revive the cloning experiments that will eventually be used for Emperor Palpatine's return at the end of the sequel trilogy.
The point is where the Mandalorian and Grogu movie stops being a standalone adventure and starts pulling the larger timeline into focus. Every action sequence, every bounty hunter fight, and every Imperial captive Din Djarin passes through is connected to something bigger. The New Republic is fragile. The Imperial Remnant is fractured but not finished. And a small green child with enormous force potential is exactly the kind of asset a dying empire would want to possess.
Why This Film's Action Is Different from Every Other Star Wars Movie
Go back and think about the action in the prequel trilogy. It was a theatrical, choreographed ballet with lightsaber combat at its center. Think about the original trilogy. It was practical, grounded, and emotional. Think about the sequels. These were fast, kinetic, and sometimes overwhelming. The Mandalorian and Grogu movie sits in its own category. The bounty hunter's fights are tactical. The lightsaber combat question hangs over the film without dominating it. The spectacle moments, the AT-AT chase and the Dejarik board fight feel earned because the show spent three seasons building Din Djarin as a specific kind of warrior with a specific set of tools.
Jon Favreau has said his approach to Star Wars storytelling is similar to playing with action figures. This movie is proof of that philosophy. He took the most iconic visual elements of Star Wars, AT-ATs, holochess, Hutt crime lords, and Clone Wars bounty hunters, and he built a playground where the best fighter in the galaxy gets to run. The galaxy far, far away has been waiting seven years for a new film. Based on everything confirmed so far, Din Djarin and Grogu are about to remind every audience in every IMAX theater on the planet exactly why this story captured the world in the first place.And if the action has you ready to hold something in your hand before May 22 — browse our collection of real lightsabers built for fans who fight with intention."
