Lit Chronology of the Mandoverse

I wanted to make a dedicated thread for this topic, because it's been coming up more and more frequently. The chronology of the Mandoverse (The Mandalorian and its spin-off series) has been in flux since basically the show's launch. Here's all of the different placements that have been offered up.

Pre-Release: seven years ABE

In early 2018, Jon Favreau dated his upcoming show (title not yet revealed) to seven years after Return of the Jedi, or 11ABY. Here is a Polygon article corroborating this, but I believe he actually said this while promoting Solo. This date for the first season of The Mandalorian has basically never come back into circulation.

First Season: 9ABY

When The Mandalorian actually released, Jon Favreau confirmed that the series dated to 5ABE and 25BSI, which comes out to 9ABY. Time article from the show's release. This date for the first season has never moved. It's what happens after the first season that enters into question...

Grogu's Age in Season 3: 12ABY

In this 2022 interview with Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni, Grogu will be 53 years old in The Mandalorian's third season. His age is explicitly 50 in Mando S1, so this math would track with each season taking place over a year, right?

• 9ABY: Mando S1
• 10ABY: Mando S2
• 11ABY: BOBF S1
• 12ABY: Mando S3

Everything up to this point tracks, until...

Favreau: Grogu and Luke

How long did Grogu and Luke Skywalker spend together? First we have a hard two years from Favreau, corroborated by this comicbook.com article. In my opinion, that doesn't actually change very much. It would put Mando's first two seasons in the same year (9ABY), and BOBF would take place two years later (11ABY). The Timelines book seemingly corroborates the idea that Mando S1 and S2 take place in 9ABY. Fans took issue with this claim mostly because of how it impacted the time between the stinger at the end of Mando S2 and the beginning of BOBF. Why did Boba Fett's crime operation take two years for anything of note to happen?

But then Favreau later clarified that Grogu and Luke spent somewhere between 0 and 2 years together in this clip with Variety (actually, he waffles a little bit). I think there might be fan confusion here with the passage of a year. Favreau's most solid claim in this clip is that Grogu's time spent with Luke roughly follows the passage of time in real life.

Filoni: Not Quite 10ABY

And then in March 2023 Filoni stated to TVLine that in his opinion, Mando S3 has not yet passed into 10ABY. This feels wrong based on the passage of time actually shown in the two shows; even if we were to assume that Mando S1 begins on the first day of the first month of 9ABY, the reconstruction of Navarro, the rehabilitation of Dr. Pershing, the creation of Boba Fett's criminal empire... in only 12 months? Feels truncated to me.

Personally, I believe that Filoni wants to keep the timeline in 9ABY up through to his film, so as to strengthen the Heir to the Empire connection. This is just my own reading of his intentions, though.

Gideon's Clones

When did Gideon begin growing his clones on Mandalore? Without the reintroduction of Spaarti cylinders into Canon, his clones are probably being made with Kaminoan technology, which would take ten years to safely produce a 20-year old adult human being. We are told in Mando S3 that Bo-Katan ruled Mandalore for only a year until the Purge, so that probably puts her rule in 0ABY (or whatever the canon calendar calls the year of ANH) and the Purge in 1ABY. If Gideon set up his facility on Mandalore in 1 or 2ABY and his clones were almost ready in Mando S3, that would date Mando S3 to 11 or 12ABY.

Overall, my assumption is that the passage of time out-of-universe roughly coincides with the passage of time in-universe. I can accept a timeline of:

• 9ABY: Mando S1+S2
• 11ABY: BOBF
• 12ABY: Mando S3, Ahsoka

I know that others prefer to keep everything in 9ABY (this is seemingly the scheme that Wookieepedia is working with as well), and others accept even earlier comments from Favreau that Mando S1 and S2 take place "over many years," which could mean a lot of things. More sources for more comments on this subject are very welcome! Trying to collect as much as I can.

 

I know lots of people quibble with the Timelines book due to the number of errors, but it is an official source, and as such I think we've got to go with 9 ABY as the "official" date for S1, S2, and BOBF. And honestly, that's what makes sense to me as well; F&F's comments aside, I really don't see much on-screen evidence for more than a few months passing between seasons. Mando S3 could stay in 9 ABY or slide into 10 ABY; either works for me.

Meanwhile, the point about when Gideon's cloning project had to have started if he's using Kaminoan technology is interesting. I hadn't thought of that...

 

Yep. Honestly there isn’t any indication that a great amount of time passes during or between seasons. So keeping it all to 9-10 ABY makes the most sense to me

 

Why does Grogu need to spend much time with Luke? Trainingwise there is no need, he got previous Jedi training and Luke did not add much, rather learn from Grogu I bet lol. And I can see Grogu choosing Mando rather happening fast after arrival because Luke took his gifts away. That seems not to be something after a longer period of training and the droids building Lukes Jedi site seem to be pretty fast anyway.

But I think the crux here is Book of Boba Fett and ity disconnect between ROTJ Fett, his escape, his Tusken time and then his return to the public as Major of Sernpi... ahem Mos Tatatown whatsoever.

Aside Timelines book and director blabla to appease interviewers, WHY does Mando S1 have to be 9ABY? So far they danced around when the show is set, gave vague contradictory amounts and finally with the larger plan emerging settled for 9ABY being the prime spot to focus all around (note, not in, but around!). If the HotE Movie caps off 9ABY, we can have all seasons of Mando before that in 9ABY or push them out into 7-8ABY even easily.

Ahsoka will cover her OT time up to Mando and then go beyond Mando I guess to lead into Skeleton Crews timeline spot as that one will also have Thrawn as per rumors. And most non-Mando shows run paralell to Mando seasons, so only any cameos of Mando charas are relevant.

Reagrding Gideons clones, those could have been begun by Palpatine and he just collected them after the Empires fall to use them for himself when looting Mount Tantiss. Thus Palpatine may have started testcloning good soliders early on even before Gideon was a Moff.

I'd not take any dates, Timelines book or otherwise as final say just yet. But they are good and interesting indicators nevertheless and this is a great topic!!!


PS: To think that Grogu and Bo Katan are almost the same age...

41BBY Grogu is born as per Wook. That makes him 50 in Mando S1 whereas I recall S1 claiming he is around 60 actually, shouldn't it be 51BBY then?
Obi Wan is born 57BBY, his girlfriend Satine should be around his agerange then, and if say younger than Kenobi, that'd make Bo Katan even way younger than him. It is a stretch but Bo Katan thus is probably less than 10 years older than Grogu only (and does not look that part at all, we know! 60 is the new 40 canonised on D+!!!)

So the Mando show got a big baby and someone not looking his age. Both as almost age peers! Lol

 

I believed that the Mandoverse Era occurs in 9 ABY and that all the Shows are released in the Correct Chronological Order

 

"Now, many of you don't know Greef Karga. And those that do fought against him when you rescued me from his ambush many cycles ago on the streets of Nevarro."

The show, and Favreau himself, suggest time has passed; certainly more than a year. Other sources have either tried to be vague (Filoni) or outright condensed the timeframe despite what the show seems to indicate (Timelines).

I think we'll get clarification in the future, especially once any of Filoni's Thrawn-related material starts coming out. It might even be a case of pushing the earlier seasons back in order to keep Thrawn in his traditional 9 ABY (which I wouldn't mind; a start date closer to ROTJ would help Boba's story, for example).

 

They specifically say that Grogu (or "the asset" as he was initially known) is fifty years old in the very first episode. That's how the Wook derives the "41 BBY" date (50 years before 9 ABY).

 

I tend to go with authorial intent over official licensed sources. I can roll with 9ABY for S1 and S2, but while Favreau's numbers haven't always been consistent he's maintained that Luke and Grogu spent more than a year together, so at the very least that puts BOBF at some point in 10ABY for me. @Coherent Axe also raises the point that the dialog informs us that by the middle of Season 3, significant time has passed since Din Djarin was rescued in Chapter III. When Din talks about cycles, does he mean a month (procession of Concordia around Mandalore) or a year (procession of Mandalore around its sun)? Is there other dialog in another source where a Mandalorian talks about cycles and gives us a clearer idea of its definition? Googling "mandalorian cycle" did not help answer this question, it just came up with pictures of bikes.

Regarding Gideon: without knowing the timeline on his promotion from ISB officer to Moff (or indeed if he was promoted and didn't just claim the title after Endor), it's hard to pinpoint a) when the facility on Mandalore was constructed and b) when he would have started his cloning project. I do think I make an unfair assumption in the OP though; we can't say for certain that his clones were made using Kaminoan technology, because Kaminoans appear to gestate clones for cycles normal for their species and then raise them from childhood to adulthood. Unless those were cryostasis pods and not artificial wombs, it looks like Gideon's clones were still being grown.

Even if this is the reintroduction of Spaarti cylinders, however, I would still say that Mando S3 has to take place at least a year since Grogu was last sampled for Midichlorians (the presumed source for the force-sensitivity of the clones).

 

Favreau also said that Grogu and the Mandalorian were together for “many years,” though, and that the time between seasons was about the same as in real life, so we must be in at least 12 or 13 ABY by now.

 

An issue with BOBF flashbacks timeline is that it doesn't seem that Boba Fett was with the Tusken Raiders for nearly five years. Maybe a few months at best. That's why Timelines falls over. Instead of "oh, let's just do year dates and not months or days and let the fans pull their hair out for lols", they could've set actual dates and perhaps move things up. We only really knew prior to Timelines the dates for Mandalorian was 9 ABY through interviews.

I think that by setting year/month/day dates for already released stories would help future writing. And the chronology to avoid needing to retcon further down the line. That would be of big help if I was writing for Star Wars.

 

That's precisely it. "Cycles" is specifically meant to obscure the amount of time that has passed, rather than clarify it. Otherwise, why not say "years"?

And Season 3 is still officially undated, so there's nothing preventing us from dropping a time jump between BoBF and S3. That's really where bouncing the timeline forward a year or two makes sense, so that there's time for Nevarro's continued improvement, Kane and Pershing to go through the rehabilitation program, etc.

This isn't a hill I'm ready to die on or anything, but for me, if we pretend for a moment that a "standard year" contains twelve "standard months," a scenario where S1 happens in the GFFA equivalent of "January," S2 in "June," and the season 2 epilogue and BoBF in "December" of 9 ABY works really well. Then throw S3 into, say, late 10 or 11 ABY and let future Mandoverse productions go forward from there. It doesn't preserve the authorial intent exactly, but in true Lucasian fashion the authorial intent does seem a little... difficult to firmly nail down at times.

 

So was Boba Fett in the Sarlacc all those years, or with the Tuskens?

Didn't seem like that long in the show.

 

When the sandcrawler rolls up to him after he's crawled out of the Sarlacc, you can see smoke still rising from the sail barge wreckage. So Fett had to have spent days in the Sarlacc at most. I can't recall if Timelines has anything to say about it (didn't get much quality time with that book before I had to pack it up for my move), but my assumption was that he spent part of those five years with the Tuskens and part of it roaming the Dune Sea after the rest of the tribe was murdered.

 

Freetown's celebrating the Death Star's destruction when Vanth leaves. He wanders the desert for days, and finds the Jawas and Boba's armour. So that armour has to be with the Jawas a matter of days post-ROTJ, meaning Boba isn't in the sarlacc for a particularly huge amount of time.

Timelines dates most of the Tusken stuff to circa 4/5 ABY, and implies he wanders the desert for the rest of the gap until 9 ABY.

 

OneCanon may not be everyones fav but helps. Enough sarlacc falls and interim stuff to add.
I cant see Mando ignore DE though as if nothing happened. And Lukes Ossus academy building does happen when then… compared to post DE Yavin IV. Should be around DE2 still in 10aby…we just need a jem ysannacameo lol

@Sinrebirth

 

That's surprising to me. From what is shown on screen, I was under the impression that Fett was with the Tuskens for the majority of time between ROTJ and Mando, long enough for word of his "Tusken family" to get back to rivals. I thought his wandering began shortly before finding Fennec Shand left for dead.

There also remains the unsatisfied question for why Fett never reclaimed his armor from Cobb Vanth during all that time. If he was with the Tuskens then he probably wouldn't have been worried about the armor or his old life and getting revenge on Jabba's people, but did he have an excuse while wandering in the desert? Maybe he liked Vanth's style and was okay with Vanth being the steward for a while, until that nosey cultish Mando showed up and decided that all beskar on Tatooine was his birthright?

In any case I think the longer Fett spent among the Tuskens, the better, and I'm fine if that means that Bib Fortuna was reaping the rewards of Jabba's criminal empire for even longer as well, without the other Desilijics checking up on him because they have other affairs elsewhere and he's nominally loyal.