Actress Emily Swallow, who plays The Armorer, on The Mandalorian recently provided some insight into how the show is made and it could explain why the show constantly contradicts itself.
In a new interview with Discussing Film, Swallow detailed that the show shoots many of its episodes at the same time and even have two crews going at the same time shooting different scenes.
She explained, “We’re usually shooting more than one episode at a time because we have two crews going at the same time. So we’ll jump back and forth between episodes while filming the whole season, in between different directors.”
“Everyone has to keep track of where they are with their characters and where they are in the story,” Swallow elaborated. “The directors have to also keep track of where they’re fitting into the overall arc of the season.”
She concluded, “I feel like all of the directors are very generous in terms of wanting to serve the overall story, no one is trying to commandeer their particular episode or put a stamp on it in any sort of way that takes away from the rest of the show.”
Swallow also discussed Jon Favreau’s role in the day to day as well as how he manages the various directors.
She detailed, “I think Jon doesn’t shy away from choosing directors who have unique styles, but there is such a concerted effort to make sure that everyone is on the same page in terms of the story that we’re telling and the creative tone of the show.”
“He makes himself so available, just to make sure the heart of the story is consistent and it doesn’t get too crazy, because we don’t shoot episodes one at a time,” she relayed. “A lot of it depends on what set we have up and when because the sets are so expensive, so we’ll shoot a few days of episode three, then a few days of episode six, and then a few days of episode two.”
This appears to explain why Bo-Katan Kryze appears to have just arrived on Mandalore for the first time in the most recent episode and seems to be unaware of the location of major landmarks such as the Great Forge despite previously arriving on Mandalore in the show’s second episode and knowing exactly where other landmarks such as the capital city and the Living Waters are located.
Not only does it explain Bo-Katan’s behavior, it also explains why certain subplots such as locating a memory chip for IG-11 are completely abandoned and replaced with the Anzellans turning the droid into a cheap imitation of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles villain Krang.
Furthermore, it explains why Moff Gideon has no clue that Bo-Katan and Din Djarin have teamed up despite his Tie Interceptors and Tie Bombers fighting both of them on Kalevala in the third episode of the season.
He also seemingly doesn’t know they’ve landed on Mandalore and have previously explored parts of the planet despite having an Imperial base on the planet that would most likely have some way of tracking ships entering the planet’s atmosphere.
Clearly, when they are shooting the episodes it is quite chaotic and despite Swallow’s praise of Favreau trying to manage it, the end results show that just simply is not the case.
What do you make of Swallow’s comments about the chaotic nature of how The Mandalorian episodes are shot? Do you think this is one of the main reasons why the end product is turning out so badly?