The Super Bowl is where movies go to make their biggest, loudest first impression, thirty seconds of prime real estate in front of a hundred million people. So when “The Mandalorian and Grogu” claimed its slot at Super Bowl LX on February 8, fans braced for a bombastic first look at “Star Wars'” big-screen return. What they got instead was a beer-commercial parody. And the internet has not stopped arguing about it since.
Here’s the setup fans have been waiting on. “The Mandalorian and Grogu” is the movie that finally brings the small-screen sensation to theaters — Jon Favreau directing, Pedro Pascal back under the helmet as Din Djarin, and the most merchandised little green creature in the galaxy along for the ride. It’s the film meant to prove the Mandoverse can carry a theatrical event, the culmination of everything “The Mandalorian” built on Disney+. Expectations for its first real footage were sky-high. Warning beyond this point there are spoilers for The Mandalorian and Grogu and the unconventional Super Bowl teaser Lucasfilm just aired.
What they got instead was a beer-commercial parody. And the internet has not stopped arguing about it since.”
Instead, Lucasfilm zagged. The 36-second spot is a straight-faced homage to the classic Budweiser Clydesdale ads — Mando and Grogu riding through a snowy landscape on a wagon, except the horses are tauntauns, the whole thing narrated in that unmistakable gravel by Sam Elliott. It’s gentle, it’s cozy, it’s borderline a greeting card, and it reveals almost nothing about the actual plot of the movie. As a piece of advertising it’s clever and charming. As the big first look at a “Star Wars” film, it left a large chunk of the audience blinking at their screens.
The split was immediate. One camp found it delightful — a warm, funny, disarming little teaser that leaned into Grogu’s cuteness and trusted the audience to smile rather than gasp. The other camp was furious, arguing that a franchise returning to theaters after years away had one shot to make a statement and instead ran a whimsical beer-ad riff that showed no real footage. Both reactions are, honestly, fair. It depends entirely on what you wanted the teaser to be.
I’ll give Lucasfilm this: it was a bold call, and boring wasn’t on the menu. In a Super Bowl ad block where every studio blasts the same rapid-fire montage of explosions and hero shots, a quiet tauntaun-drawn wagon narrated by Sam Elliott actually stood out. It got people talking, which is the entire point of spending Super Bowl money, and it doubled down on the thing that made “The Mandalorian” a phenomenon in the first place — the oddly tender bond between a stoic bounty hunter and the baby he can’t stop protecting.
The counterargument has teeth, though. There’s a difference between a teaser that’s confident and one that’s coy, and when your movie is the standard-bearer for “Star Wars” reclaiming the multiplex, some fans wanted proof of scale — a sense that this is a movie, not an extended episode. A cute commercial doesn’t answer the question hanging over the whole project: is there a big-screen story here worth the ticket, or just a beloved TV show in a nicer frame? The Super Bowl spot charmed people without reassuring them.
Either way, the strategy worked in the most cynical sense — we’re all still talking about it. “The Mandalorian and Grogu” hits theaters in May, and Lucasfilm clearly has plenty of actual footage held in reserve for the marketing push to come. This was the appetizer, deliberately light, designed to make you grin rather than gasp. Whether the main course delivers the spectacle the skeptics are demanding is the question that actually matters, and we don’t have long to wait for the answer.
What Do You Think? Was the Budweiser-style Super Bowl teaser a charming, confident swing, or a wasted opportunity to prove “The Mandalorian and Grogu” belongs on the big screen? Does leaning this hard into Grogu’s cuteness set the right tone for the movie, or is Lucasfilm banking too much on the baby to sell a theatrical event? After years of “Star Wars” living on Disney+, does “The Mandalorian and Grogu” actually feel like a movie to you — and what does its first real trailer need to show to win over the doubters?
See you on the next binge!
