A couple of months ago, The Mandalorian star Katee Sackhoff confirmed that early plans called for Axe Woves to die during the show's second season. That explained his absence from the finale, but allowed the warrior to return during season 3 to play a crucial role in Din Djarin, Grogu, and Bo-Katan Kryze's story.
In a new interview with The Holo Files (via SFFGazette.com), Simon Kassianides revealed Axe was to be killed in "Chapter 11: The Heiress," only for Jon Favreau to remove the scene - much to the actor's surprise - in post-production.
"The way I look at it is that it’s really the storytellers’ story to tell, so Jon and Dave and all the guys that create the show," he says. "They’re such experts in deciding everything, and they see how they want to shape things."
"I can’t really speak to [deciding to make Axe Woves live], because I think I was just mostly excited that it didn’t go that way. I do remember them calling me saying, 'Would you like to come back and film?' And I said, 'Yeah, cool.'"
"It was beyond the season [2] finale having been locked, so it was too late to be inserted into a finale," Kassianides continues. "So, there was a lot of the 'Where was he? What were you doing? Why weren’t you in it?' Now the cat’s out the bag."
Axe also managed to survive the events of season 3, despite it looking like the Mandalorian might make a heroic sacrifice. Instead, he received a triumphant moment in the finale's closing scenes when he was featured among those on Mandalore pledging allegiance to their new leader, Bo-Katan.
"Jon and I sat down and he said, 'How do you feel about this arc and how would you feel about saying something?' And he said to try 'For Mandalore!' And well, you know the rest is history, but it was an amazing moment, thinking about them all returning, especially the back story that I built into that moment in terms of what it meant for that character."
It's unclear how much we'll see of Mandalore following season 3, but Kassianides will likely return to this Galaxy Far, Far Away sooner rather than later. Whether that's in The Mandalorian or another of the Star Wars TV shows (or even Dave Filoni's planned movie) remains to be seen.
The Mandalorian season 3 is now streaming on Disney+.