Ming-Na Wen. Badass. Interchangeable descriptions, really.
Vanity Fair has just dropped a sneaky new teaser for The Mandalorian (you’ll have to click through to see for yourself). It’s got some new footage compared to even last week’s trailer, one that, shock of shocks, actually features a lot more than just Werner Herzog Werner-Herzogging all over the show.
Actual dialogue, albeit brief! We get to hear a little more from Kuuil the ugnaught, who’s been glimpsed in both merchandise and briefly in the trailers as one of the many associates of Pedro Pascal’s masked Mandalorian—although here he’s telling us he’s never actually met a Mandalorian before, so they’re perhaps not quite really associates just yet.
But we also get to hear from a character we’ve not seen at all: Ming-Na Wen’s mysterious mercenary (is there anyone in this show who isn’t one of those?), Fennec Shand.
Although Shand doesn’t have much to say in the footage, just an ominous line to Pascal’s Mando that his name will be “legendary,” Wen did tell Vanity Fair a little more about her approach to Shand. It’s essentially what you’d expect upon first thought when told the sentence “Ming-Na Wen is playing a character in that Star Wars bounty hunter show”—strong, independent, agile, and loyal to no side but her own. Or, more simply? Melinda May in spaaaaaaaaaace.
“She’s tricky, and yet she’s able to manoeuvre and survive, and be stealthy—so very graceful and agile. I just love that whole image with the name,” Wen told Vanity Fair. “She has quite a few weapons because she’s a very skilled fighter. Just her body is a weapon in and of itself. And she does carry…a big, big gun. A big boy.”
Hopefully, Fennec’s kickassery is enough to let her stick around for a good while. If Kuuil’s line is anything to go by, it seems like the Mandalorian’s allies might only be so plentiful because not many get to live long enough to know him. We’ll meet Fennec and more when The Mandalorian hits Disney+ next week, starting November 19.