A little over a year later, Carano’s travels to galaxies far, far away came to an end. The unraveling began as Carano, a heavy social media communicator with right-libertarian-leaning views (though she resists labeling her politics), bumped up against the corporate culture at Disney with an endless string of controversies involving tweets and Instagram posts on highly sensitive and divisive topics like COVID-19 vaccines and masking (she was against both and remains stridently anti-vax); her views on Black Lives Matter and the transgender rights movement (she says she would not bend to pressure to announce her pronouns or tweet activist hashtags); and the results of the 2020 presidential elections (amid Donald Trump’s disproven claims of election-rigging, she tweeted “make voter fraud end in 2020”). 

For a while, things had appeared to settle down. Carano even fielded a call from Favreau, who said her “life is about to change” with the launch of her own Mandalorian spinoff, Rangers of the New Republic. Citing the pending lawsuit, Favreau declined to comment for this story. Still, she remained on thin ice at a company that placed an emphasis on liberal values and inclusivity, at a time when tensions over identity politics were at an all-time high. Carano felt unfairly targeted and bullied both by the public and her work peers, and her instinct was to continue to fight for herself — just as she’d always done in the ring.