Is Disney rethinking its hasty decision to fire Mandalorian actress Gina Carano?
Sometimes firing a person just isn’t the right move. Disney/Lucasfilm parted ways with The Mandalorian’s Gina Carano, who played the part of former rebel commando Cara Dune, over some social media posts that the entertainment behemoth described as “reprehensible” at the time.
The firing, if anything, proved the point Carano was making in those posts, which was that intolerance directed at groups and fostered can worsen to the point that you get otherwise civilized people allowing and engaging in horrors such as the holocaust. Carano wasn’t promoting that. She was very obviously opposing that. She was accused of being anti-Semitic, but her post was obviously the opposite of that. She was targeted and booted from Disney, and on social media, loving and tolerant leftists continue calling her a “Nazi” to this very day.
Fellow Mandalorian star Pedro Pascal used a Nazi analogy in his own social media posts, but his point was from the political left (and he had his facts wrong).
He wasn’t fired. She was.
Several other Disney figures behaved appallingly on social media, but kept their jobs too.
That looks an awful lot like disparate treatment to anyone who can think.
Since that time, Disney/Lucasfilm has made two moves that hint the Mouse House no longer wants to look like it’s Mao’s House.
First, it is airing an episode of Running Wild with Bear Grylls on National Geographic (which Disney owns) on May 10. That episode had been pulled from the lineup after Carano was let go.
Second, Lucasfilm has included Carano in its Emmy suggestions according to the NY Post.
The 39-year-old’s name is listed under the Supporting Actress category in a “for your consideration” poster promoting various Season 2 stars of the Disney+ show, CNET reported. The poster also advocates for lead actor nominations for Pedro Pascal, supporting actor noms for Giancarlo Esposito and Temuera Morrison, and guest actor nods for 18 actors, including Rosario Dawson, John Leguizamo, Mark Hamill and Amy Sedaris.
Being honest, every one of those actors deserves a nomination. The show is just that good.
The show’s success in everything from fixing Riann Johnson’s mistakes in the Star Wars sequel trilogy to satisfying even the series’ deepest fans has been significantly tarnished by Disney’s mistreatment of Carano, who did nothing wrong.
Does Carano deserve to win the Emmy? Maybe or not, depending on the competition but Disney can’t control that. She does deserve to get her job back, and Disney does control whether that happens.
Ever since her firing, rumors have swirled of a civil war within Lucasfilm between the woke empire helmed by Kathleen Kennedy and the apolitical upstarts who’ve made the animated Clone Wars and Rebels series, and The Mandalorian, such successes. That’s all led by Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni. Carano was cast as a casualty of that civil war. If that’s the case, and it could be given the fact that she did nothing wrong but was mistreated anyway, the evidence of detente may be evidence that the woke empire is losing ground.
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