When it was announced this past summer that Taika Waititi would be returning to the Marvel Cinematic Universe to helm Thor: Love and Thunder, it was a major deal. After all, his last outing in the MCU—Thor: Ragnarok, which he directed and voiced the comic relief character Korg—was one of the most universally loved movies in the series. Now, Waititi is bringing that exact same skillset to a project of similar magnitude: Disney+’s new flagship series, The Mandalorian.
In The Mandalorian, Waititi will once again pull double-duty: not only does he direct the show’s first season finale, but he’s a part of the main cast as the familiar-looking bounty hunter droid, IG-11. Part of the reason he’s so familiar looking, well, is because he looks pretty identical to The Empire Strikes Back character IG-88, also a bounty hunter, frequently seen near Boba Fett.
But this is a different generation; if it’s been a while, you might recall that IG-88 doesn’t even move in Empire. Just by having IG-11 move, it’s a change-up. (He was bolted to the ground in the film)
Don’t expect Waititi’s Mandalorian episode to play with form quite as much as Thor: Ragnarok did, though. While part of what made Ragnarok so enjoyable (and successful) was its embracing of the comedy behind Chris Hemsworth’s Thor and the story overall, Waititi recognizes that the Star Wars world tends to be less malleable.
“Star Wars is very different to Marvel style,” Waititi said at a TCA event earlier this year, according to SlashFilm. “They know that the tone of the first films really should be kind of adhered to. That’s what the fans like, and you can’t really disrespect it. I guess it’s a nicer way of saying I can’t put too many jokes in. There’s a bit—definitely my tone is in there, in the dialogue, and stuff like that.”
Disney
One place that he’ll probably get to get some of those jokes in is through his own character, a bounty-hunting droid called IG-11. In voicing a new generation Star Wars droid, Waititi joins a group that includes Alan Tudyk (Rogue One) and Phoebe Waller-Bridge (Solo) as probably comic relief-centered droids. In an Entertainment Weekly story, the voice of IG-11 is described as being somewhere between 2001: A Space Odyssey‘s HAL 9000, and Siri. “He’s very innocent and naive and direct and doesn’t know about sarcasm and doesn’t know how to lie,” Waititi told EW. “It’s like a child with a gun.”
When showrunner Jon Favreau first shared a photo of IG-11 on his Instagram, many fans thought the character was actually IG-88 from The Empire Strikes Back, and it’s hard to blame them. The characters look identical.
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That being said, though, they are very much different characters. As executive producer and director of two episodes, Dave Filoni said, in an interview with IGN, they found it easier to work with a character who has a blank slate, rather than one with an entire lore and history already written.
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It was probably hard for Waititi not to notice the similarity to IG-88, so he started creating his own backstory. “I like to think he’s made in the same factory as IG-88,” the director told The Star Wars Show.
The droids in some of these recent movies—Rogue One, Solo—and of course C-3PO, BB8, and R2-D2, have consistently been among the most enjoyable parts of the new generation of Star Wars. With a big voice and big personality like Waititi behind him, it seems like IG-11 could be one of the best ones yet.
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