After the Season 2 finale of The Mandalorian aired, we got an inside look at how it all came together thanks to Disney Gallery: The Mandalorian. One of the highlights is the iconic final scene on Moff Gideon’s ship, where Luke Skywalker swoops in to save Din Djarin, Grogu, and the rest of the crew.
The funny part is how the team kept Luke’s cameo top-secret during filming, they replaced him with Jedi Master Plo Koon, complete with official concept art and even script pages.
Here’s an excerpt from the decoy script:
“The Jedi steps through the smoking entrance.
He lowers his hood, revealing that he is…
PLO KOON. He is not dead after all.
He looks to the group.”
Plo Koon even gets a line:
“Which one of you is Grogu?”
They even went a step further by creating full-blown concept art of Plo Koon taking on the Dark Troopers in that scene.
They took secrecy to a whole new level by creating a “CG head” of Plo Koon, printing it out like a mask, and physically placing it on the actor.
The episode’s director, Peyton Reed, was one of the few people let in on the big secret. Executive producer and writer Jon Favreau pulled him aside to reveal that the mysterious Jedi was actually Luke Skywalker—but since Reed knows Favreau so well, he had to make sure it wasn’t just a prank. It wasn’t. Luke Skywalker would indeed appear, yet the set was under strict orders never to use the words “Luke” or “Skywalker.” Instead, everyone—from the cast to the special effects team—kept referring to him as “Plo Koon.”
I love how they explained why Plo Koon was chosen as the decoy instead of another Jedi like Mace Windu or Ki-Adi-Mundi. In the Disney Gallery episode, Dave Filoni points out that he’s famously a “Plo-Bro”—meaning Plo Koon is one of his absolute favorites. As Filoni himself says, “It’s fairly well-known by deep-core fans that Plo Koon is my favorite Jedi,” so if word got out that Plo Koon was in the script, everyone would assume it was just because Dave likes him so much.