Sigourney Weaver's New Mandalorian Pilot Is a Star Wars Game-Changer
But did she fly for the Rebellion before?
We don’t know the name of Sigourney Weaver’s new character in The Mandalorian & Grogu, but we do know that she will join a long tradition of very specific Star Wars occupations: star pilots. During Star Wars Celebration 2025 in Tokyo, Japan, details were finally revealed about Weaver’s character in the next Star Wars movie, and it all sounds both incredible and intriguing.
Incredible, because getting to see Weaver pilot any famous Star Wars craft is the realization of a dream many sci-fi fans never knew they had. But this development is intriguing because it will be interesting to see how this character fits into the retroactive continuity of this specific moment of the Star Wars timeline.
Although the full trailer for The Mandalorian & Grogu has yet to be released officially, reports from Star Wars Celebration 2025 have revealed images of Weaver wearing a full Rebel pilot flight suit. Well, technically, this is a New Republic flight suit, since the Rebel Alliance has morphed into the New Republic following the events of Return of the Jedi. While it’s easy to forget the exact timeline of The Mandalorian, the series began roughly 9 ABY, which puts it about five years after Return of the Jedi, which means the new film, The Mandalorian & Grogu, will be about 10 ABY.
So, it follows that if Weaver’s character—whose name has not been revealed — is a veteran star pilot for the Republic, and flew for the Alliance during the struggle against the Empire. Speaking with The Mandalorian & Grogu’s director Jon Favreau at Star Wars Celebration, Weaver was coy with details but did say: “She’s a fighter pilot. She’s still a pilot.”
She also noted that the character will be flying in various Star Wars spaceships, but she didn’t specify which ones. “She came up in the Rebellion, and now she’s trying to protect the New Republic, and I believe is completely committed to what she does.”
Presumably, Weaver’s character will not only be leading her own squadron of pilots, but also was a pretty big deal in the Rebellion. But because we’ve never known about a character that looked like Weaver in Star Wars canon before, one has to wonder why her character’s name is being withheld. Is it possible that Weaver might be playing someone with a connection to a legacy character? Or might she be rebooting a character from legends, like say, Jan Ors from Dark Forces? Or maybe a member of Rogue Squadron like Erisi Dlarit or Elscol Loro? Could Weaver even play a version of Winter, Princess Leia’s faithful aide?
Right now, we don’t know, but the good money is probably on Weaver playing an entirely new character with a background that hasn’t yet been disclosed. But because these details are being kept a secret, there’s bound to be some kind of surprise with this new, exciting star pilot. And that surprise just may or may not redefine what we thought we knew about the Rebel Alliance.
