Will 'The Mandalorian' Have an Elon Musk Cameo? This Photo Makes You Wonder
Jon Favreau, the writer and executive producer for the live-action Star Wars series The Mandalorian, apparently met with SpaceX founder Elon Musk on set to discuss the hyperdrive space travel technology featured in the upcoming show, but given Musk’s previous cameos, is more in store?
On Thursday, Favreau posted a photo to his Instagram account, which has been dotted with references to the series in recent months, of him standing alongside Musk with this caption: “Discussing hyperdrive technology on set.” It’s not clear if Musk was offering script supervision — seems doubtful, given how TV like this is produced — on scientific plausibility. Musk, whose affinity for science fiction is all over his enterprises, claims the “original Star Wars” as his favorite science fiction movie.
The Mandalorian will appear on Disney+ the entertainment giant’s coming attempt to compete with Netflix and Hulu. The service will launch in late 2019, and one of the first series will be The Mandalorian (along with a show about Loki from Marvel’s Thor comics). *The Mandalorian plot summary released in October by Favreau is only three sentences, but sticks to the “Space Western” premise that partly made the original Star Wars movies such a resounding success. (Mandalorians are the fictional race from the planet Mandalore, of which bounty hunter Boba Fett is a member.)
After the stories of Jango and Boba Fett, another warrior emerges in the Star Wars universe. The Mandalorian is set after the fall of the Empire and before the emergence of the First Order. We follow the travails of a lone gunfighter in the outer reaches of the galaxy far from the authority of the New Republic…
There’s some reason to believe Musk may have a cameo in The Mandalorian. Favreau and Musk have worked together before; the SpaceX CEO played himself in 2010’s Iron Man 2 in a cameo appearance you can see below:
Musk, who started SpaceX in 2002 with a handful of employees, has led the company to become the top private aerospace firm in the world, sending up payloads for private telecommunications firms around the world, NASA, and US Air Force. It looks to test its human-carrying Crew Dragon capsule later this year. The next few months also hold promise as SpaceX will launch its Falcon Heavy rocket for a second time in February, and conduct a test launch for the massive Starship on March 7.
On Monday, Favreau also shared a photo of a cute droid prop from the set of the show. The R5-D4 droid was seen in the very first Star Wars movie, A New Hope. “R5 was the one Luke and Uncle Owen purchase instead of R2-D2, but fate — or maybe it was the Force — intervened. Before they got more than a few steps away, ‘Red’ blew a gasket,” writes Anthony Breznican in a Monday blurb about Favreaur’s Instagram.
Musk’s appearance on the set of The Mandalorian begs one question, given his past cameo in Iron Man 2. Will Elon Musk appear in the Mandalorian? We know one thing for sure, he (probably) won’t be playing himself, as he did in Iron Man 2. If there’s one thing that can make new Star Wars programming even more divisive, it might be that.
The Mandalorian is expected to premiere in 2020 on Disney’s upcoming Disney+ streaming service.
