One of the best parts of the past season of Star Wars: The Mandalorian, was seeing the return of Ahmed Best to the Star Wars Universe. Best played Jedi Master Kelleran Beq, who saved Grogu from Anakin’s purge of the Jedi temple on Coruscant. His appearance had Star Wars fans talking, and of course wondering, if we would see him again.
Star Wars: The Mandalorian executive producers Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni stopped by the EW’s Dagobah Dispatch podcast, to talk about this past season, and of course were asked about the possibility of a return of the Jedi.
“It’s always a possibility,” Filoni says. “We love Ahmed, and he did such a great job. It was a real thrill for us to get him involved.”
And it seems Best was involved from pretty early on in the process. “We talked with him about it,” Filoni says. “We come up with these ideas and we think: Who might work with it? We make sure before we get too far to bring them into the process, so it’s not just like, ‘Here’s who you’re going to play.’ It’s like, ‘What do you think of this? We want you to be this person. What are your thoughts on it?’ [We try to] make it a real collaboration and think it’s really key to the success of it.”
Just as surprising to fans as the reemergence of Best was the fact that The Mandalorian was bringing in a character that had started on an online game show for kids. “He had done a lot of work on that character of Kelleran Beq for Jedi Temple Challenge,” Favreau says. “So he’s been involved with Star Warsall the way through and definitely had formulated this character. And we love to draw from all of Star Wars, and even things that aren’t canon. If they feel right, we’ll pull ’em in. And now that character exists squarely in Star Warscanon.”
Favreau then tips his hand a bit in terms of whether we will see Best as Beq again: “I think people dig seeing that character. I want to learn more about that character.”
Filoni notes that Best’s time on The Mandalorian may have induced a case of déjà vu. “It was fun watching him on set, because we had clones and we had Naboo guards,” he says. “And I think for him it was a real flashback. There wouldn’t have been any clones on set [during the prequels] because they were all digital, but we actually had people in armor. I think he really paused and took it in.”
Sounds like there is a good chance we will see him again. What are your thoughts? Want to see him again? Let us know in the comment section below!
