When Lucasfilm fired Gina Carano from the Disney+ show “The Mandalorian,” cancel culture was still in full swing. But with last week’s settlement, it seems like a fever dream from which America is slowly awakening.
Announcing the settlement on X, Carano thanked Elon Musk, whose company paid for her legal fees, and said the agreement was “the best outcome for all parties involved.” She also said she was “humbled and grateful to God for His love and grace in this outcome.”
The terms of the settlement were not disclosed, but they were clearly favorable to Carano, who wrote on X, “Yes, I’m smiling.”
As many Americans are.
For those who didn’t follow the story, Carano’s social media posts had been warily eyed by her employer as she wrote skeptically about masks and vaccines during the first year of COVID, wondered about election integrity and wrote in her social-media bio that her pronouns were “beep, bop, boop.”
But the firing came after she reposted a meme on Instagram that said, in part, “Because history is edited, most people today don’t realize that to get to the point where Nazi soldiers could easily round up thousands of Jews, the government first made their own neighbors hate them simply for being Jews. How is that any different from hating someone for their political views?”
The #FireGinaCarano hashtag immediately circulated, with people accusing Carano of being antisemitic. Lucasfilm called the post “abhorrent.” But others, like Ben Shapiro of The Daily Wire, defended Carano, saying that she was fired because of her libertarian and right-leaning beliefs.
Carano’s lawsuit charged discrimination, wrongful firing and reputational harm.
Bob Chapek, then Disney’s CEO, had said that Carano’s values didn’t align with the company’s. And that didn’t play well with conservatives, who rallied around the star as the company made headlines for things unrelated to entertainment: for example, Disney’s battle with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, the off-brand pairing with Hulu that brought mature content to its streaming service, and the 2025 Super Bowl ad in which Disney used a word that was quite unDisney-like.
Ever since the company became part of the culture war, conservatives have been struggling with a kind of cognitive dissonance — trying to maintain their love of Disney and what it used to represent while feeling disappointment and anger about what Disney was doing and where it seemed to be headed. Many couldn’t do it and started boycotting Disney instead. Conservatives on social media cheered when a reimagined “Snow White” struggled at the box office in the U.S.
But there are signs that Disney could recover.
Last year, Axios, while still calling the company “polarizing,” noted that Disney’s “reputation score” was slightly improving, even among Republicans; it was the company’s first reputational gain since 2017.
“Disney’s reputation score among Republicans jumped from 61.03 in 2023 to 67.8 in 2024,” Axios reported.
It could rise even more this year, if the company employs Carano again, as Lucasfilm hinted it might.
What did Gina Carano say about Disney+?
Carano clearly was happy to put the matter behind her, a month before the case was scheduled to go to court. In a jubilant post on X, Carano said she was celebrating “what feels like 1,000 lbs off my shoulders.”
She also expressed relief that her friends and loved ones could move beyond being upset with Disney, saying that people close to her had been putting away their “Mandalorian”-related toys, like the “Grogu,” better known to “Star Wars” fans as a “baby Yoda.”
“The Baby Grogus all my families’ kids got Christmas’s ago silently put away, along with Star Wars shirts and toys, broke my heart to watch. Everyone apologizing to me for going to Disneyland, or refusing to go, I didn’t ask or want that for anyone, but people were properly upset, it has been so sad,“ she wrote on X.
She added: “Healing is definitely happening now. No need to apologize to me for having Disney+ anymore PLEASE. I need to move on. Bring the Grogus out, I’m ok! I do believe positive change is happening.”
For its part, Lucasfilm — which in February 2021 said “Gina Carano is not currently employed by Lucasfilm and there are no plans for her to be in the future” — said in a statement, “With this lawsuit concluded, we look forward to identifying opportunities to work together with Ms. Carano in the near future.”
To say that’s a turnaround is an understatement. But it’s part of a sea change in the culture since President Donald Trump returned to the White House, with companies rolling back diversity, equity and inclusion programs like “Reimagine Tomorrow,” the initiative that got Disney in trouble with conservatives and was discontinued earlier this year.
In the statement, Lucasfilm also praised Carano, saying she “was always well respected by her directors, co-stars and staff, and she worked hard to perfect her craft while treating her colleagues with kindness and respect.”
That wording is significant, given that Chapek said in 2021 that Carano didn’t share Disney’s values. In an earnings call in March 2021, per The Hollywood Reporter, Chapek told shareholders that Disney stands “for values that are universal: Values of respect, values of decency, values of integrity and values of inclusion.”
What’s next for Gina Carano?
In a lengthy post on X, Carano said she was not giving interviews right now but was looking forward to getting back to work. What that work entails, she did not say, although she said she’d lost 50 pounds and was engaging in a “healthy kind of suffering” to restore her physical health.
“And don’t worry about me, the hate doesn’t even make me blink anymore, it doesn’t even come close. I already went through that fire. I’m immune to that heat now. Refined by fire, maybe not for everyone but I consider myself blessed, God knew what I could handle,“ she said.
As for future projects, it’s unclear what they may be. Before she was fired, Carano had been told she would star in a spinoff. But “The Mandalorian” is thought to have concluded its Disney+ run after three seasons. A film, “The Mandalorian and Grogu,” is scheduled for theatrical release in 2026.
Could she have a cameo in that? Or will that canceled spinoff actually happen? While those scenarios may be unlikely given the past four years, with Carano’s permission to “bring the Grogus out,” look for the film to do better than “Snow White.”