The Mandalorian season 2 featured its fair share of surprises, but there could have been at least one more. Concept artist Brian Matyas has shared some of his work from the Disney+ series (via SFFGazette.com), revealing that he created a bounty hunter whose design borrowed heavily from the legendary Ralph McQuarrie's original take on Chewbacca for Star Wars: A New Hope.
"We entertained the idea of some bounty hunters that worked for the magistrate accompanying Din on his hunt for Ahsoka," the artist said of this scrapped character and plot point. "One had to be a burly Alien, so I decided to suggest a live-action version of Ralph McQuarrie's original Chewbacca concept, which was also the inspiration for Zeb in Rebels."
It's easy enough to understand why Lucasfilm might be saving a design like this for a future project, though we have seen a lot of McQuarrie's work used in recent Star Wars TV shows and movies.
Matyas would also go on to share a scene that was cut from "Chapter 15: The Believer." While it doesn't look like anything too significant, it would have clearly been a light-hearted moment in an otherwise very serious episode. Hopefully, it can be re-used somewhere down the line.
"Just Din...having a mud bath...in full armor," the artist says. "Idea here is this was the impact crater from a jetpack malfunction in the episode 'The Believer' before some script changes."
Check out both pieces of concept art from The Mandalorian below: