Mandalorian Season 2 trailers are hiding a secret bigger than Baby Yoda

Remember before we knew about Baby Yoda? It's hard to believe, but the cultural memory of Baby Yoda is less than a year old. Before the debut of The Mandalorian Season 1, even dot-connecting Star Wars journalists did not know Baby Yoda even existed. True, there was one rumor that Yaddle was returning from The Phantom Menace and that a family of Yoda-aliens would be featured in one episode, but we didn't actually know anything about Baby Yoda. In other words, we knew very little about Season 1 going in.

How was the secret of Baby Yoda kept so well? The trailers were vague as hell. Now, we've got two trailers for Season 2. And guess how much we know based on those trailers? That's right, very little. So, the question isn't what the new Mando trailers have revealed, but instead, what they're hiding.

Here are three reasons why the sparse approach to Mando trailers could mean there are even bigger twists coming than we can imagine. Speculation ahead.

3. Most of the Season 2 rumors seem incongruous with the trailers — For months and months, various respectable entertainment publications like the Hollywood Reporter and Variety have claimed that amazing cast members and characters have been added to the world of Mandalorian Season 2. These "confirmed" characters and actors include:

• Rosario Dawson as Ahsoka Tano (previously only seen in the animated series Clone Wars and Rebels)
• Katee Sackhoff as the Mandalorian named Bo-Katan (again, previously only animated in Clone Wars and Rebels)
• Temuera Morrison as Boba Fett, or another clone of Jango Fett

To date, Lucasfilm and Disney have stopped short of confirming any of this. This isn't to say it all of this won't happen in Mandalorian Season 2, it's just that all of these rumors and reports aren't really reflective of what's in the trailers. To give a parallel example, this would be a little like if Star Trek: Discovery Season 2 had never confirmed Ethan Peck as a younger Spock, and hadn't put him in any of the trailers. (Which, of course, they did.)

2. Could the casting chatter be the tip of the iceberg? Part of the reason why it's tough to speculate about Mandalorian Season 2 isn't just because we don't have any confirmations on these legacy characters showing up, but also because the roll-out for Mandalorian Season 1 was similarly cloaked in secrecy. In other words, even though there was a rumor about a family of Yoda-like creatures floating around, there was literally no way even the smartest fan could have predicted that the series was actually going to revolve around the titular Mandalorian protecting a tiny creature called "The Child." So, combine that knowledge with what we think we know about casting rumors. All you can come up with is a big question mark, and that question mark could lead to even wilder speculation. Sure, we've heard about maybe Ahsoka and maybe Boba Fett, but why really stop there?

Among all of this, there are also rumors of a Lando series with Donald Glover and a "sequel" to Solo starring Alden Ehrenreich. Well, Ehrenreich is canonically Han Solo, and while he might look a little young to play Han in the 9 ABY timeframe, it could work. Ditto for Glover. Why can't Donald Glover play Lando on The Mandalorian? That's right, there's nothing saying he can't. On top of that, there's also totally a way for The Mandalorian to recast Luke Skywalker and have it fit right in with the time frame.

1. What about the Emperor and Grand Admiral Thrawn? You can get even deeper down the random prediction gravity well when you consider how much we just don't know about this season of The Mandalorian. Sure, we know a tiny bit more than we did last time around, but that's only because we know who the central players are. If Mando is on a search to find both more Jedi and more Mandalorians, there has to be some kind of pay-off with that search. That isn't to say he'll find what he's looking for, but that he'll find other things we didn't really see coming. Baby Yoda might have seemed like a big reveal and a huge spoiler when Mando first appeared, but we've had a year to get used to it. This means Season 2 of The Mandalorian could give us all sorts of things we didn't expect. Saying, Emperor Palpatine or fan-favorite Grand Admiral Thrawn could appear may have sounded like unrealistic dreams a few years back, but when you consider the unlikely developments Star Wars has taken over the past five or years or so since The Force Awakens, this kind of predictions seem just as likely as anything else. I mean, Darth Maul was in the Han Solo origin movie, and if you'd told me to bet on that back in 2015, I would not have taken that bet.

Right now, the Force is moving in mysterious ways. And just like Season 1, Season 2 of The Mandalorian will probably teach us to unlearn what we have learned.

The Mandalorian Season 2 hits Disney+ on October 30, 2020.