The second season of Disney+ smash hit The Mandalorian will arrive on the streaming service just as many initial subscribers may be evaluating whether to renew their annual subscriptions.
Season 2 of The Mandalorian—the first live-action series in the Star Wars universe—will debut on Oct. 30, nearly a year after the first season premiered on Disney+’s launch date, Nov. 12, 2019. Episodes will stream on a weekly basis through November and December.
The Jon Favreau series follows lone bounty hunter Din Djarin, played by Pedro Pascal, and the consequences of his choice to protect The Child (known affectionately by series fans as Baby Yoda), who Din was originally hired to track down for a bounty. Baby Yoda, in particular, helped the series become a cultural phenomenon when the show first premiered last fall, and its first season brought in 15 Emmy nominations, including outstanding drama series.
The space western, which also stars Gina Carano, Carl Weathers and Giancarlo Esposito, finished filming its second season prior to Covid-19-related production shutdowns earlier this year.
The original series will arrive on Disney+ at a crucial time for the service, which offered generous discounts for customers willing to pay upfront for annual and three-year subscriptions, plus an enormous free year giveaway with telco giant Verizon. Those deals helped buoy early sign-ups and subscribers.
More than 5 million people took advantage of the Verizon deal and got a free year of the streaming service, the company said earlier this year, and while Disney+ most recently reported that the streamer had 60.5 million subscribers as of Aug. 3, it is now tasked with retaining those customers while continuing on its growth trajectory.
That task has been made more difficult as production shutdowns have hamstrung the release of other originals, including several planned Marvel original series that had been set to debut on the service in 2020.
To keep the content pipeline flowing, Disney+ has opted to move several theatrical releases, including Mulan, Frozen 2 and Artemis Fowl, to the streamer, either to watch with a subscription or, in the case of Mulan, after paying a premium. The streamer also brought the Broadway production of Hamilton directly to Disney+ more than a year earlier than its previously planned theatrical release.