Where Was The Mandalorian Seasons 1, 2, And 3 Filmed?

Following The Rise of Skywalker, Disney looked to retain fan interest in Star Wars. This prompted a spin-off set five years following Return of the Jedi – a television show entitled The Mandalorian.

The show features a plethora of desert-like and mountainous landscapes and rock formations. Given the breathtaking scenery in the show, you may wonder where they filmed The Mandalorian.

The Mandalorian was primarily filmed in Los Angeles at Manhattan Beach Studios. However, there were many locations worldwide that inspired The Mandalorian’s sets. And many of the landscapes you see in each season were filmed elsewhere, such as Death Valley National Park. 

The Mandalorian Film Locations

Like many TV shows and movies, The Mandalorian was filmed in multiple locations. While the bulk of the filming took place in Manhattan Beach Studios, this wasn’t the only location bringing The Mandalorian to life.

Thanks to a new technology called Stagecraft, you didn’t see The Mandalorian’s cast pack up and head to film on-location. Instead, the location came to them. There was some photography involved for the filmmaking, but only so they could bring specific landscapes to the set.

Below, we will reveal the locations that were used for The Mandalorian’s set in all three seasons before diving into what makes Stagecraft so convenient for everyone involved in the project.

Season 1

In the first episode of The Mandalorian, we see the landscape of a planet called Arvala-7. The landscape was actually the Manly Beacon and Zabriskie Point in Death Valley. This was near one of the locations they filmed A New Hope; it served as Tatooine’s landscape.

Other locations used for The Mandalorian included landscapes from Iceland and Chile.

Further, when you look at the lava field in the season’s final episode, it could have come from any volcano thanks to the advancements of Stagecraft technology. Some speculate it was from Kilauea, located in Hawaii.

Season 2

When you watch Episode 2: The Passenger, look closely at the travertine terraces. These look a lot like the ones you would find in Pamukkale, Turkey.

In Episode 14: The Tragedy, you will come across a landscape surrounding a ruined Jedi Temple. The landscape for the scene is believed to have been in either Arizona’s Texas Canyon or California’s Alabama Hills.

You did see one aspect of on-location filming for this episode, which occurred in Simi Valley’s Rocky Peak Park.

Fast-forward to the next episode, entitled The Believer. This episode features Morak, a jungle-filled planet. Speculation has it that the jungles serving as the planet’s landscape came from Hawaii.

Season 3

Little has been revealed regarding whether Season 3 of The Mandalorian will see multiple filming locations or if it was exclusively filmed at Manhattan Beach Studios.

However, once Season 3 premieres in March 2023, we may see which locations the production team brought to the stage.

How The Mandalorian Was Filmed

Filming technology called Stagecraft kept The Mandalorian’s actual scenes from being physically filmed in places like Death Valley.

For example, if you watch behind the scenes videos from The Phantom Menace, you saw many instances of them filming the movie on location. This wasn’t the case regarding The Mandalorian.

For The Phantom Menace, there were times when the entire cast went to places like Tunisia to film. Stagecraft technology gave The Mandalorian cast and crew more convenience to perform in front of Stagecraft’s LED screens.

These backgrounds, when turned on, rendered digital versions of locations throughout the world that served as a setting for The Mandalorian. It allowed the production team access to many places in the world, filmed in real time.

This gave The Mandalorian’s cast a few added benefits. For one, they weren’t performing in the studios in front of green screens. With Stagecraft’s landscapes filling the scenery in the background, it made it feel as though the actors were immersed in the landscape itself.

Production Team Can Add Some Tweaking

The production team also needed to make everything unique. So while the landscapes we described earlier came from other parts of the world, the production team tweaked the lighting, shadow, and other visual features.

This further gave the actors an authentic background to work with, placing them right in the middle of the scene’s near-finished product. What you saw when you watched The Mandalorian is close to what the actors saw when they were filming it.

The Mandalorian and the Future of Filmmaking

Stagecraft is a revolutionary technology that will most likely forever change the film industry, and The Mandalorian is part of it.

In the past, we often saw the cast performing in front of green screens, which forced them to imagine themselves in the midst of the scene they were filming.

Or as mentioned, in some cases, the crew would film on-location. But this would cost millions in moving equipment, building additional sets, and staying on location. It also required more time and energy to produce the film or television show.

So when you watch Season 3 of The Mandalorian, remember that most of what you see was filmed in a studio. But keep an eye out for those landscapes in the background, and see if you can guess where in the world those landscapes are located.