When is The Mandalorian Star Wars TV series released on Disney+ in the UK?

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The new show from Jon Favreau (the man behind Disney's recent remakes of The Lion King and The Jungle Book) was one of the first properties to be launched on Disney's streaming service, Disney+. The service costs £5.99 a month to subscribe to, or £59.99 for a year.

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Favreau, who serves as writer and executive producer, has called in some big guns to direct the mini-series, including Taika Waititi (Thor: Ragnarok), Deborah Chow (Jessica Jones) and Bryce Dallas Howard (daughter of Solo: A Star Wars Story director Ron Howard) in her directorial debut.

Find out everything you need to know about the new series below.

When is Star Wars: The Mandalorian released on Disney+?

In the US, the series launched on the same day as the new streaming service, Disney+, on Tuesday 12th November 2019.

However, UK fans will have to wait a lot longer to watch the series, with Disney+ released in the UK on 24th March 2020.

UK subscribers will be able to watch two episodes of The Mandalorian on 24th March, but will need to wait until Friday 27th March for episode three. New episodes will then drop weekly on Fridays at 8am.

Will there be a second season of The Mandalorian?

As soon as the first season finished streaming in the United States, all eyes were on Disney to confirm whether The Mandalorian would be returning.

Fortunately, the answer is yes and due to its later release date on these shores (24th March 2020), UK fans will have less of a gap to wait until season two of The Mandalorian debuts in autumn 2020.

The release date was confirmed by writer and executive producer Jon Favreau on Twitter.

Is there a trailer for The Mandalorian?

There is indeed!

Footage of the new series was shown during the Star Wars Celebration panel, and a few months later a trailer bearing close comparison to that footage was released during Disney's D23 event.

The trailer doesn't give much story away, but does show Pedro Pascal's titular bounty hunter in action, and introduces some other key characters.

Disney also released a second trailer, which intriguing features the super battle droids from the prequel movies.

What is The Mandalorian about?

According to an Instagram post from Favreau, the series will be set between the end of the original trilogy and the start of The Force Awakens and will follow a “lone gunfighter in the outer reaches of the galaxy."

“After the stories of Jango and Boba Fett, another warrior emerges in the Star Wars universe,” the post reads. “The Mandalorian is set after the fall of the empire and before the emergence of the First Order. We follow the travails of a lone gunfighter in the outer reaches of the galaxy far from the authority of the New Republic”.

The series is set around five years on from the events of Return of the Jedi, but before the start of The Force Awakens.

“The Mandalorian is a mysterious, lone gunfighter in the outer reaches of the galaxy,” said star Pedro Pascal, who plays the lead character, comparing the character to classic Western anti-heroes.

“He’s got a lot of Clint Eastwood in him,” Pascal added during the Star Wars Celebration panel about the new series.

What is a "Mandalorian"?

Mandalorians are a warrior race indigenous to the planet Mandalore. Bounty Hunters Jango and Boba Fett are the best known Mandalorians to feature in previous Star Wars films. They were not born on Mandalore, but they did sport Mandalorian armour, which explains why the first still from the show (below) has such a Fett-ian vibe to it.

The Mandalorians feature prominently in animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars. According to Wookiepedia, they regularly come into conflict with the Jedi order, and have aligned with Darth Maul's Shadow Collective (seen briefly in Solo: A Star Wars Story).

Will Boba Fett be in The Mandalorian?

Sadly, the most famous Mandalorian (and whose cool armour is essentially the whole reason this series exists in the first place) won't be making an appearance, with Jon Favreau confirming that Boba Fett isn't in the new series.

"Boba Fett is not [in the series], they're all new original characters," Favreau told Good Morning America.

"There's a thirty year stretch of story time that hasn't been explored at all except in the extended universe."

Of course, it would also be tricky for Fett to turn up considering we last saw him perish in Tattooine's Sarlacc pit in Return of the Jedi - but if hints in official sequel novel Star Wars: Aftermath are to be believed, it could be that Boba might have pulled through after all. In which case, maybe The Mandalorian series two would be the perfect moment for his grand return...

Who is in the cast of The Mandalorian?

Narcos and Game of Thrones star Pedro Pascal is set to play the as-yet unnamed lead in the series, while ex-MMA fighter and Deadpool star Gina Carano will play Rebel Shock Trooper-turned- Mercenary Cara Dune, who is struggling to reintegrate herself into society following the war against the Empire.

Cara Dune (Gina Carano) in The Mandalorian (Disney)

Giancarlo Esposito (Breaking Bad) will play Moff Gideon, an Imperial Governer with his own army of Stormtroopers, while Carl Weathers will play Bounty Hunter Guildsmater Greef Carga.

"He’s looking for someone to go after a product that he wants to bring to a client that’s worth a lot and that’s very valuable, and guess who he finds? He finds a bounty hunter named ‘Mandalorian’," Weathers explained during the Star Wars Celebration panel.

Greef (Carl Weathers) in The Mandalorian Star Wars TV series (Disney)

Werner Herzog, Nick Nolte, Emily Swallow and Omid Abtahi will also play roles in the series.

It's also been revealed that Taika Waititi (who will also direct an episode, below) is set to voice a robot bounty hunter in the series, specifically a character called IG-11 (not IG-88, an identical droid from the original trilogy).

Agents of SHIELD and Mulan star Ming-Na Wen had her role kept under wraps for a number of months, but it's now been revealed she'll play Fennec Shand, an assassin who may be one of the Mandalorian's targets in the series.

“We got our inspiration really from the name. The idea of a fennec fox came to mind,” Wen told Vanity Fair. “She’s tricky, and yet she’s able to maneuver and survive, and be stealthy—so very graceful and agile. I just love that whole image with the name.

“She is definitely someone who’s loyal to herself,” Wen added.

Who will direct the Mandalorian?

Favreau has assembled a diverse crew of directors to helm episodes in the series. Check out the list in full below.

• Deborah Chow: Jessica Jones, Mr. Robot, Flowers in the Attic
• Rick Famuyiwa: Dope, Confirmation
• Bryce Dallas Howard: Directorial debut. Has previously starred in Black Mirror season 3 episode Nosedive and the Jurassic World series
• Taika Waititi: Thor: Ragnarok, Hunt for the Wilderpeople, What We Do In the Shadows
• Dave Filoni: Star Wars: Clone Wars, Star Wars: Rebels

What else do we know about The Mandalorian?

Our greatest source of info so far has been Favreau's Instagram account, where he has been sporadically sharing pictures from the set.

The most interesting of these is one of a droid who looks rather like IG-88, one of Darth Vader's bounty hunters from The Empire Strikes Back, suggesting that he was set to make a return to the Star Wars universe – however we now know that this is in fact Taika Waititi's IG-11, who within the show is often mistaken for his more famous bounty hunter doppelganger.

He also released a picture of a weapon, which fans recognised as one that Boba Fett had wielded in the Star Wars Holiday Special from 1978.

And there's also this tease of droid R5-D4, the bot that appeared (albeit very briefly) in A New Hope.

Meanwhile,Taika Waititi has suggested that the show will feel like the classic Star Wars films.

“Star Wars is very different to Marvel style,” he said at a TCA event. “They know that the tone of the first films really should be kind of adhered to. That’s what the fans like and you can’t really disrespect it, I guess is a nicer way of saying, 'Can’t put too many jokes in.' There’s a bit, definitely, my tone is in there, the dialogue and stuff like that.”