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Star Wars Is Officially Wasting One Of Its Best New Republic Heroes

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Star Wars Is Officially Wasting One Of Its Best New Republic Heroes

Warning! This post contains SPOILERS for The Mandalorian & Grogu Since The Mandalorian’s first season, the New Republic Era has become one of the most important corners of the modern Star...

Maria Nushi
June 3, 2026 11 Mins Read
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Warning! This post contains SPOILERS for The Mandalorian & Grogu

Since The Mandalorian’s first season, the New Republic Era has become one of the most important corners of the modern Star Wars franchise. Featuring shows like The Book of Boba Fett, Ahsoka, and Skeleton Crew, and most recently the new Mandalorian & Grogu movie, this period of the timeline set in the years after Return of the Jedi has become incredibly popular, and this includes one of its best heroes.

Star Wars’ various New Republic projects have largely been defined by the nascent New Republic government working to maintain peace and order while various Imperial Remnant factions operate in the shadows, and the Empire’s Grand Admiral Thrawn prepares for a major Imperial Resurgence following his return from exile. As such, the New Republic Rangers are at the forefront of these rising threats. Home to an entire squadron of pilots, Adelphi Base notably includes Captain Carson Teva (Paul Sun-Hyung Lee), a major fan-favorite hero in the New Republic Era.

Introduced as one of several New Republic pilots patrolling the Outer Rim, Carson Teva quickly became one of the primary connective tissues tying all of these various projects together. However, one of the few disappointments I have about The Mandalorian & Grogu movie is just how little Teva was featured in the brand-new Star Wars movie.

Captain Carson Teva Has Been A Recurring Star Wars Character Across the New Republic Era

Mandalorian Season 3 Trailer Carson Teva
Mandalorian Season 3 Trailer Carson Teva

Debuting in The Mandalorian season 2, Captain Carson Teva was featured alongside his wingman Trapper Wolf (played by Dave Filoni), a pilot for the New Republic who also has a history of flying for the Rebel Alliance during the Galactic Civil War. Encountering Din Djarin during a routine patrol and ultimately letting The Mandalorian go, Teva would go on to make a handful of future Star Wars appearances.

In The Book of Boba Fett, Teva crosses paths with Din Djarin once again while patrolling near the classic desert world of Tatooine, only for the Mandalorian to speed off in his brand-new custom N-1 Naboo Starfighter.

However, The Mandalorian season 3 elevates Teva’s character in some pretty cool ways, confirming his status as a pilot who will do the right thing even if it means defying overwhelming bureaucracy and protocol. Smart enough to realize that something big has been happening in the shadows with all of these Imperial Remnant warlords, Teva traveled all the way to Coruscant so he could personally voice his concerns and request aid for Nevarro in the face of invading pirates he believed were aligned with Moff Gideon.

After his concerns were dismissed due to limited resources, Teva found Djarin and his fellow Mandalorians, who did come to Nevarro’s aid. By the end of the third season, Din Djarin came to Adelphi and met with Carson again, offering his services as an off-the-books independent contractor to help the Rangers hunt down Imperial warlords.

Last but not least, Carson Teva’s most recent streaming appearance was in 2023’s Ahsoka, shown joining General Hera Syndulla’s rogue and unsanctioned mission to help Ahsoka Tano prevent the return of Grand Admiral Thrawn. Teva also helped rescue Ahsoka Tano following her confrontation with Baylan Skoll, further connecting him to the overarching New Republic narrative.

All this to say: although Carson Teva’s most recent appearance was on the big screen, his role was unfortunately underwhelming.

The Mandalorian & Grogu Features Carson Teva Only Briefly

Adelphi Rangers Mandalorian Directors

Ahead of The Mandalorian & Grogu’s release, it seemed as though the movie was primed to finally give Carson Teva a larger role. After all, The Mandalorian season 3’s ending established Din Djarin working with the New Republic to hunt Imperial warlords with the deal he cut with Teva, heavily suggesting that Carson himself would become Din’s primary New Republic contact.

















A Long Time Ago in a Galaxy Far, Far Away · Eight Questions
How Well Do You Know Star Wars?
“The Force will be with you. Always.”

🗡️Jedi OrderLight-side guardians

⚡The SithRule of two

⚙️The RebellionA new hope

🪓Bounty HuntersThis is the way

👑The EmpireOrder 66

01

The original Star Wars film — later retitled Episode IV: A New Hope — opened in just 32 American theatres and proceeded to become the highest-grossing film of its era, redefining what summer blockbusters could be. In which year did it premiere?




✓ Correct! 1977 — specifically May 25. 20th Century Fox had so little faith in the project they only opened it in 32 theatres at first; queues quickly stretched around the block, and the film expanded to over 1,000 screens within months. It earned $307 million in its initial domestic run, won six Academy Awards (with another four nominations) and inverted Hollywood’s economics for the next 50 years.

✗ Wrong. The answer is 1977. 1975 is when the script was being shopped around. 1979 is when Star Trek: The Motion Picture released as a Star Wars-shaped countermove. 1980 is The Empire Strikes Back. The original Star Wars is May 25, 1977.

02

A New Hope’s writer-director was a then-32-year-old American Graffiti veteran who’d struggled to get the project greenlit and famously took back-end profit and merchandising rights in lieu of a higher salary — the deal that would build a billion-dollar company. He returned to direct the prequels but stepped away from the original-trilogy sequels. Name him.




✓ Correct! George Lucas. The merchandising rights he kept (because Fox didn’t value them) became the financial bedrock of Lucasfilm and the basis of the modern toys-and-licensing megabusiness. After A New Hope, Lucas produced but didn’t direct Empire Strikes Back (Irvin Kershner) or Return of the Jedi (Richard Marquand), then directed all three prequels (1999–2005). He sold Lucasfilm to Disney in 2012 and stepped away from creative control of the sequels.

✗ Wrong. The answer is George Lucas. Steven Spielberg was Lucas’s close friend (and the godfather of his post-A-New-Hope career) but never directed a Star Wars film. Coppola was Lucas’s mentor at USC and at American Zoetrope. Irvin Kershner directed Empire Strikes Back. The original is Lucas’s.

03

In 1980’s The Empire Strikes Back, Darth Vader delivers cinema’s most-misquoted line at the climax of his Cloud City duel with Luke Skywalker. Vader severs Luke’s hand and reveals their relationship. The exact line is — for the record — “No, I am your father.” What relationship does it confirm?




✓ Correct! Vader is Anakin Skywalker, Luke’s father. The reveal was so jealously guarded that Mark Hamill was only told the real line on set the day they shot it (the script said “Obi-Wan killed your father”), and even James Earl Jones recorded the dub without knowing the full plot context. The line — commonly misquoted as “Luke, I am your father” — rewrote what trilogies could pull off and is broadly considered cinema’s most famous twist.

✗ Wrong. The answer is that Vader is Luke’s father, Anakin Skywalker. The whole foundation of the Skywalker saga collapses to this single twist: Anakin (the Jedi prodigy of the prequels) becomes Vader after his fall. Luke and Leia are revealed in Return of the Jedi to be his twin children, separated at birth.

04

Yoda — the green, ear-twitching Jedi Master — was puppeted and voiced from his Empire Strikes Back debut through the prequels and the sequels by a single Muppet-show-veteran performer who also voices Miss Piggy and Fozzie Bear. Name him.




✓ Correct! Frank Oz — longtime Jim Henson collaborator and voice/puppet work on Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, Animal, Sam Eagle and Grover. Oz puppeted Yoda directly through The Phantom Menace before CGI took over for Attack of the Clones onward, but he’s continued to voice the character through the sequels and animated series. Yoda’s syntax was developed jointly by Lucas and Oz to feel old, foreign and hard-won.

✗ Wrong. The answer is Frank Oz. Jim Henson was Oz’s mentor and collaborator (he created the Muppets) but didn’t voice Yoda. Steve Whitmire took over Kermit after Henson’s 1990 death. Brian Henson is Jim’s son and runs the Henson company today. Yoda is Frank Oz’s.

05

In a deal that reshaped Hollywood, Disney acquired Lucasfilm Ltd. for $4.05 billion in cash and stock — bringing Star Wars, Indiana Jones, ILM and Skywalker Sound under the Disney umbrella. The deal also kicked off the sequel trilogy production. In what year did Disney close the acquisition?




✓ Correct! 2012 — specifically October 30. The deal was announced with simultaneous reveal that a Star Wars Episode VII was being developed for a 2015 release. Lucas had been quietly preparing his exit from Lucasfilm for years; Kathleen Kennedy had been brought in as co-chair months earlier specifically to take over. The Force Awakens came out three years later, in December 2015, kicking off the modern era.

✗ Wrong. The answer is 2012. 2009 is when Disney acquired Marvel ($4 billion). 2010 is the year before Lucas began signalling exit plans. 2014 is when production proper began on The Force Awakens. Lucasfilm joined Disney on October 30, 2012.

06

The Mandalorian launched as Disney+’s flagship original on November 12, 2019 — the day the streaming service itself launched. Created by Jon Favreau and run by Dave Filoni, the show centres on a helmeted bounty hunter who reluctantly becomes a foster father to “The Child” (Grogu). What is the Mandalorian’s real name?




✓ Correct! Din Djarin — played by Pedro Pascal under the helmet (with body double Brendan Wayne handling much of the physical work). The Mandalorian is widely credited with reviving Star Wars on TV, popularising the StageCraft LED-volume virtual production technology now used across Hollywood, and turning baby Yoda — Grogu — into the meme-economy phenomenon of late 2019. Three seasons have aired with a feature film, The Mandalorian & Grogu, set for May 2026.

✗ Wrong. The answer is Din Djarin. Boba Fett is the famous bounty hunter from the original trilogy, with his own Disney+ spinoff (The Book of Boba Fett, 2021). Cobb Vanth is the Tatooine marshal played by Timothy Olyphant. Bo-Katan Kryze is the Mandalorian princess played by Katee Sackhoff. The Mandalorian himself is Din Djarin.

07

Order 66 — the secret directive that turns the Republic’s clone troopers against their Jedi commanders and effectively ends the Jedi Order — is dramatised in the climactic third act of which prequel film?




✓ Correct! Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (2005). Palpatine’s “Execute Order 66” comm to the clone armies leads to the methodical, planet-by-planet liquidation of the Jedi Order — one of the saga’s most operatic sequences, scored to John Williams’ “Anakin’s Betrayal” cue. The same film features Anakin’s fall to the Dark Side, the Mustafar duel with Obi-Wan, and his rebirth as Darth Vader in the suit. Widely re-evaluated as the best of the prequels.

✗ Wrong. The answer is Revenge of the Sith. Phantom Menace ends with Qui-Gon’s death and the unveiling of Darth Maul. Attack of the Clones ends with the Clone Wars beginning. Rogue One is set just before A New Hope, after Order 66 has long since happened. The Order 66 sequence is the climax of Episode III.

08

Andor (2022–25) is widely regarded as the most adult, politically literate Star Wars project ever made — a slow-burn prequel to Rogue One charting Cassian Andor’s radicalisation against the Empire. The series was created and showrun by a writer/director best known for the original Bourne trilogy and Michael Clayton. Name him.




✓ Correct! Tony Gilroy. He’d previously been brought in for extensive Rogue One reshoots in 2016, and Lucasfilm gave him near-total creative independence on Andor. Season 1 (12 episodes, 2022) is widely regarded as Star Wars’ finest dramatic writing ever; Season 2 (also 12 episodes, in four three-episode jumps across 2025) closes the gap to Rogue One’s opening scene. Gilroy’s prior credits: Bourne Identity / Supremacy / Ultimatum / Legacy, plus directing Michael Clayton (2007).

✗ Wrong. The answer is Tony Gilroy. Rian Johnson directed The Last Jedi (2017). Jon Favreau created The Mandalorian and is Lucasfilm’s Disney+-era animation/live-action lieutenant. Dave Filoni runs the Filoniverse (Clone Wars, Rebels, Ahsoka, the upcoming Heir to the Empire film). Andor is Tony Gilroy’s.

The Force Has Spoken · Final Tally
Your Galactic Standing

🗡️

/ 8

Jedi Master — or moisture farmer on Tatooine?

Instead, that role largely belongs to Sigourney Weaver’s Colonel Ward in The Mandalorian & Grogu. In the new Star Wars movie, it’s Ward who assigns Din Djarin and Grogu new missions and intel, overseeing operations on Adelphi Base as the primary face of the New Republic in this new film.

Although Weaver’s new Star Wars character is an excellent addition to the cast and New Republic Era as a whole, it was hard for me not to feel like her role was tailor-made for Carson Teva, given the prior setup in The Mandalorian series. Instead, Teva only briefly appears during the climactic battle on Nal Hutta as part of Adelphi Squadron’s mission to rescue Din Djarin, Grogu, and Rotta the Hutt, as well as commencing a bombing run on the Hutt Syndicate’s stronghold.

Carson Teva Needs The Major Star Wars Spotlight He’s Long Deserved

Carson Teva in The Mandalorian.
Carson Teva in The Mandalorian.

The good news is that there are still plenty more stories to be told in the New Republic Era. Ultimately, Carson Teva is uniquely positioned to connect multiple characters in the New Republic Era, including Din Djarin, Ahsoka Tano, Hera Syndulla, Zeb Orrelios, and more. He’s basically the Star Wars version of Marvel’s “Phil Coulson” for the New Republic Era.

It’s also worth noting that Carson Teva was expected to play a significant role in Rangers of the New Republic before the series was ultimately canceled due to Gina Carson’s firing by Disney, having played Marshal Cara Dune in The Mandalorian, and was set to be a major series lead. As such, the expectation that Teva was going to become a central figure makes his underutilization in The Mandalorian & Grogu even more frustrating.

Fortunately, Dave Filoni’s upcoming New Republic crossover movie will hopefully provide the perfect opportunity for Carson Teva to get the bigger spotlight he’s always deserved. After all, the threat of Grand Admiral Thrawn is expected to only get bigger with Ahsoka season 2 and likely beyond with Filoni’s crossover.

Heroes who know the score and what’s at stake will be needed, and few are as aware of the true dangers facing the galaxy during the New Republic Era as Captain Carson Teva. After years of serving as one of the New Republic era’s most reliable supporting players, it’s time for Teva to finally get a more substantial role.

The Mandalorian & Grogu is now playing in theaters from Lucasfilm.


the-mandalorian-and-grogu-poster.jpg


Release Date

May 20, 2026

Runtime

132 minutes

Writers

Noah Kloor

Producers

Ian Bryce, Kathleen Kennedy, Dave Filoni, Karen Gilchrist, John Bartnicki


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