How ‘The Mandalorian’ Addresses Cara Dune’s Departure

There are many questions going into season 3 of The Mandalorian. Will we see any more of Luke Skywalker after Grogu left him in The Book of Boba Fett? Can Din Djarin find his way back into Mandalorian society after taking his helmet off in season 2’s finale? And, of course, what would Disney and creator Jon Favreau do about Cara Dune?

We found out the answer to that last question in the first episode of The Mandalorian’s third season, which hit Disney Plus on Wednesday. Cara Dune, the renegade mercenary played by Gina Carano in the show’s first two seasons, still lives but won’t be an active participant in Mando’s story.  

When Din Djarin arrives in Navarro in the season premiere, he’s met by High Magistrate Greef Karga, aka Carl Weathers. Karga quickly explains that Navarro is in need of a new marshal. A confused Mando asks what happened to Marshal Dune. “After they brought in Moff Gideon, she was recruited by Special Forces.” 

Gideon was the big bad guy of season two, who Mando defeated with the help of Dune in that season’s finale. So in other words, Cara Dune is still being a badass in the Star Wars universe, but we won’t be seeing any of her exploits. 

Dune was dropped by Lucasfilm last February after she, in a quickly deleted Instagram Story, likened being a Republican to being Jewish in the years leading up to the Holocaust. “Gina Carano is not currently employed by Lucasfilm and there are no plans for her to be in the future,” a Lucasfilm spokesperson said at the time. “Her social media posts denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities are abhorrent and unacceptable.”

Carano has since signed onto the Daily Wire, a conservative media company co-created by political pundit Ben Shapiro. In 2022 she starred in Western flick Terror on the Prairie, released only to Daily Wire subscribers. Speaking to Shapiro in an interview last year, she said she was bullied by Disney and Lucasfilm. 

“I’ve been through so much, and I’ve seen so much now, clearly, of the bullying that’s been taking place, and I saw it before,” Carano said on The Ben Shapiro Show last February. “I’m not the only one that’s ever been bullied by this company, and I know that so deeply.”

In regards to the Instragram post that led to her being let go, Carano said she was “inspired by the gentle spirit of the Jewish people going through that time,” adding, “when I posted that it wasn’t something that I felt was controversial. It was something that I thought, well, maybe all of us need to ask ourselves how that happened.”