Gina Carano confirmed today what a lot of people in this space have been waiting to hear. She has already spoken with Dave Filoni and Jon Favreau following her settlement with Disney and Lucasfilm. The conversation happened on Zoom. It was apparently warm.
“I’ve already had a conversation with Dave Filoni and Jon Favreau,” Carano told Ariel Helwani on The Ariel Helwani Show. “Really lovely. After we settled the lawsuit, we got onto a Zoom call. It was really nice. Dave Filoni is taking over CEO of Star Wars. We didn’t even miss a beat. Jon Favreau was really funny. He got onto Zoom and was like, ‘So where did we leave off?’”
She laughed while recounting it. “We hadn’t spoke for a while. He was like, ‘Where did we leave off?’ and I was like, ‘Yeah.’”
That exchange tells you a lot. Favreau’s first move in the conversation was to act as if no time had passed. Not an apology. Not a corporate statement. Just a question about where the story picks up. These are not the words of a man who believed the firing was the right call.
Carano also described what she took away from everything she went through.
“You either, I think you have a decision in life,” she said. “You can go left and you can just completely give up on yourself and wallow in pain and regret and all of that, or you can go right and you can get your [expletive] together and you can say no, I’m going to do everything I can.”
She added: “I’ve chosen to go that direction. And it feels, I feel more alive than I’ve ever felt.”
To understand why this matters, you have to go back to February 2021. Carano had been a standout performer in The Mandalorian Seasons 1 and 2, playing Cara Dune, a former Rebel shock trooper turned New Republic Marshal on Nevarro. The character was popular, tough, and positioned for a major expansion. At Disney Investor Day 2020, Kathleen Kennedy announced Rangers of the New Republic, a Mandalorian spinoff built around exactly the kind of New Republic marshal Cara Dune had become. The show was to be developed by Favreau and Filoni alongside The Mandalorian and Ahsoka, with all three series eventually converging in a crossover event.
Then Disney fired her. A series of social media posts over the preceding months, including a post comparing the treatment of conservatives in America to the persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany, gave the company the opening it needed. Lucasfilm issued a statement calling her posts “abhorrent and unacceptable.” The #FireGinaCarano campaign that had been running on social media for months had won.
Rangers of the New Republic was shelved shortly after. By November 2021, Kennedy confirmed no scripts had ever been written. The show was dead. Cara Dune was written out of The Mandalorian Season 3 with a single line about heading off on New Republic missions. That was it.
Carano filed suit against Disney and Lucasfilm in February 2024, alleging wrongful termination and discrimination, claiming she was fired for voicing political opinions shared by millions of Americans. Elon Musk funded the lawsuit after publicly committing to support employees fired for posts on X. The case settled in August 2025 with confidential terms. The Lucasfilm statement at settlement was notably warmer than expected, saying the company looked forward to “identifying opportunities to work together with Ms. Carano in the near future.” That language was not boilerplate. Settlement statements do not include forward-looking invitations unless both parties agreed to put them there.
Carano responded on X the day the settlement was announced: “...and the truth shall set you free.” Later that day she posted: “Bring the Grogu’s out, I’m ok! I do believe positive change is happening. We will see.”
In August 2025, YouTuber Doomcock reported from multiple Hollywood sources that the settlement included a deal for Carano to star in a revived Rangers of the New Republic. Per the rumor, the show would feature Timothy Olyphant returning as Cobb Vanth, with Favreau holding full creative control, free of Lucasfilm executive interference. The rumor also claimed Favreau stepped back from The Mandalorian & Grogu movie to focus on a secret Star Wars project, which could be the Carano series. This is unconfirmed. Doomcock acknowledged it as rumor and said his sources use a “believe it when we see it” approach. No project has been officially announced.
What has been confirmed, as of today, is that the conversation happened. Favreau and Filoni both got on that Zoom. They talked. Favreau’s opener was “Where did we leave off?”
The firing of Gina Carano was one of the defining moments of the Hollywood cancel culture era in geek entertainment. It was not a termination based on on-set conduct or professional failure. Disney let an online mob pressure them into removing a fan-favorite performer from a thriving show and scrapping a spinoff series that was already announced. The character was killed off by implication, not story. Cara Dune just disappeared.
Dave Filoni built that character. He and Favreau built The Mandalorian as a counter-signal to the Kathleen Kennedy era of Star Wars. The sequel trilogy had alienated the core fanbase. The Mandalorian brought them back. Cara Dune was part of that, a secondary character who earned real affection from audiences who were hungry for heroes that felt like heroes. Losing her, and losing Rangers, was a wound the Mandaloverse has not fully recovered from.
Filoni is now CEO of Star Wars, as Carano noted in her quote. Kennedy is gone. The political climate in Hollywood has shifted. Disney has been retreating from its most aggressive DEI postures across multiple properties. Whether that creates the institutional space to actually bring Carano back is a separate question from whether Filoni and Favreau want to. Today’s interview suggests they do.
What do you think: does Gina Carano come back as Cara Dune, and does Rangers of the New Republic finally get made?
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