How Gina Carano's Firing Was Written Into "The Mandalorian" Season 3

When "The Mandalorian" returned for its third season on March 1, the show made clear that bounty-hunter-turned-marshal Cara Dune, who was played by Gina Carano, won't be returning to the series. The actor was fired from the show and future Lucasfilm productions back in 2021 after a string of controversial social media activity that expressed transphobic views and supported a variety of far-right causes, such as conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election and the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol. Now, the show's executive producers Rick Famuyiwa and Dave Filoni have also addressed where Cara Dune stands in the galaxy. Ahead we're breaking down why Carano was fired, where the show says Cara Dune is now, and the new comments by Famuyiwa and Filoni.

The incident that seems to have directly led to Carano's firing was a social media post she shared on Instagram in February 2021. The since-deleted post featured a TikTok that seemed to suggest that being a conservative Republican today is comparable to being Jewish during the Holocaust. "Because history is edited, most people today don't realize that to get to the point where Nazi soldiers could easily round up thousands of Jews, the government first made their own neighbors hate them simply for being Jews. How is that any different from hating someone for their political views," she wrote in part, as reported by Deadline.

Carano's post caused an overwhelming wave of criticism, with the hashtag #FireGinaCarano trending. On Wednesday night, according to The Hollywood Reporter, Lucasfilm released a statement confirming Carano's firing. "Gina Carano is not currently employed by Lucasfilm and there are no plans for her to be in the future. Nevertheless, her social media posts denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities are abhorrent and unacceptable." THR also reported that UTA, Carano's agency, dropped her as a client.

Although this was the final straw for Carano's stint on "The Mandalorian," her social media posts have raised serious controversy before. One tweet from November 2020 mocked mask wearing as a means to slow the spread of the coronavirus, while another repeated baseless suggestions of voter fraud, among several other controversial, conspiracy-tinged posts. She also appeared to mock those who share their pronouns on social media, writing "beep/bop/boop" in her Twitter bio. "I'm not against trans lives at all. They need to find less abusive representation," she tweeted in September.

Prior to the controversies in 2020, there were rumors that Disney and Lucasfilm planned to spin off Cara Dune into her own series; The Hollywood Reporter noted that there were plans to unveil the series at last December's investors' day presentation. The plans were put on hold after her controversies.

In the first episode of season three of "The Mandalorian," Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) visits Greef Karga (Carl Weathers) in Nevarro. Karga offers Cara's old job to Mando, telling him that after she captured Moff Gideon (Giancarlo Esposito) at the end of season two, she was promoted to the Special Forces of the New Republic and left the town.

"Cara was a big part and continues as a character to be part of the world," Famuyiwa told Deadline on Feb. 27. "It had to be addressed in the creative, and [Jon Favreau] took the time to think about that. It was something that was discussed as we knew it was going to have impact on the show, but at the same time, what has been at the heart of the show are the two characters — Din Djarin and Grogu — so ultimately it felt like a servicing of that, and around the Mandalorians."

Filoni added. "Now Season 3 is mainly dealing with Mandalorians and the Mandalorian saga, the Mandalorian tale. [There are] different characters he's met since Bo-Katan [who] take a lot more prominence, which makes sense where his arc is going, the story of him and Grogu specifically."

Carano seems to have mostly doubled down on her statements since she was let go. In a September 2022 interview with Tucker Carlson, she said, "I was speaking out about lockdowns, mass vaccinations, and pronouns way before anybody was even saying a word about it. And so I was a little bit ahead." Carano added, "I'm sure if I would have done that now, it wouldn't have been a big deal." In 2022, she starred in a movie for the conservative website The Daily Wire titled "Terror on the Prairie." She also starred in a movie for the ultra-conservative Breitbart News about Hunter Biden called "My Son Hunter."

New episodes of "The Mandalorian" stream Wednesdays on Disney+.