Warning: This post contains spoilers for The Mandalorian.
Jason Sudeikis made a cameo in the season finale of The Mandalorian on Friday, though you might have missed it since he was hiding under a Stormtrooper helmet. In the penultimate episode of the season, two Stormtroopers picked up the child at the center of the series (known on the internet as Baby Yoda) to carry to villain Moff Gideon (Giancarlo Esposito). But at the beginning of the final episode, the troopers are stalled, receiving a dispatch that Gideon is in a mood and killed his own Stormtrooper just for disagreeing with him. The two Stormtroopers, played by Sudeikis (Saturday Night Live, 30 Rock) and Adam Pally (Happy Endings, The Mindy Project), shoot the breeze as they wait for their orders.
They argue and try to shoot at a can and repeatedly miss. (Stormtroopers have never been particularly good shots, as our hero Mando joked in a previous episode.) The exchange is funny until it isn’t. Appallingly, the Stormtroopers try to quiet the small child by punching him. Fans were not happy with their behavior.
The troopers both get their comeuppance, however, when droid IG-11 (Taika Waititi) takes them out in order to fulfill his nursing protocol for The Child.
Sudeikis and Pally join a long line of actors who have made secret cameos in Star Wars movies and shows. Simon Pegg was hidden under an alien costume in The Force Awakens as the junk dealer Unkar Plutt on Jaku. Daniel Craig even donned a Stormtrooper uniform to play the hapless guard that Rey convinces to let her go, testing her Jedi mind trick abilities for the first time, in that same movie.
Joseph Gordon Levitt hid behind an alien mask to play a gambler named Slowen Lo upset that Finn and Rose parked their ship on the beach in The Rise of Skywalker. Tom Hardy played a stormtrooper in that film, but his scene—in which he congratulates an undercover Finn on his apparent promotion, not realizing that Finn defected to the Resistance—was sadly cut. And Bill Hader and Ben Schwartz have been voicing droid BB-8 in the latest trilogy of films.
Jon Favreau, the creator of The Mandalorian, has covertly appeared in several Star Wars projects as Pre Vizsla in Star Wars: The Clone Wars, the Ardennian pilot Rio Durant in Solo: A Star Wars Story and the Mandalorian Paz Vizla in The Mandalorian—but never once has Favreau shown his face.
