A special look at Season 2 of The Mandalorian shows the titular bounty hunter visiting all sorts of different locales as he tries to return the Child to his rightful home. He travels to a frozen Hoth-like planet, a desert landscape and a seedy-looking boxing ring. That last one is especially odd as Star Wars hasn’t traditionally featured boxing and generally doesn’t highlight unarmed combat. Fights between single combatants in the series tend to take two forms: shootouts or lightsaber duels.
Of course, given how deep and varied the franchise’s extended universe is, there is an exception to this. Teräs Käsi is a martial art created for the Star Wars universe by Steve Perry, author of Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire. The term is derived from Finnish, and simply means "steel hands." The fighting style itself was developed in-universe by The Followers of Palawa, a group of refugees from the planet Palawa, which was destroyed in a battle involving the Jedi Order. The boxing ring in The Mandalorian's trailer could mean Season 2 will feature a Teräs Käsi tournament, something previously depicted in the video game, Star Wars: Masters of Teräs Käsi.
Teräs Käsi was developed as a means of combating Jedi, but was a martial art that could be practiced by any who sought to learn it. An entry in HoloNet News from 2002 details the results of a Teräs Käsi "title fight," implying bouts using the fighting style took place throughout the Outer Rim. This particular fight was between a Jedi Knight and a Palawan, which means Jedi can learn the martial art. The Jedi Knight in question also notes the martial art does not require use of The Force, and goes so far as to say using The Force during his bout would "violate the purity of Teräs Käsi." The fighting form's also mentioned in one of the big-screen Star Wars films; Qi'ra uses it in Solo: A Star Wars Story to take out some guards on Kessel.
Then there's the fighting game Star Wars: Masters of Teräs Käsi, which was released in 1997 for the PlayStation by Lucasarts. The game is a fairly simple arcade-style fighting game. It lets players pick from 13 different characters, each with their own moveset. The game was generally panned, primarily due to its derivative nature and unresponsive controls. Another puzzling fact was that despite the game's title, only four of the characters make use of Teräs Käsi.
Arden Lyn is a character created for the game, a master of the martial art with a literal "steel hand" in the form of a prosthetic arm. Her other students include the Gamorrean guard Thok, the Tusken Raider Hoar and the stormtrooper 17786. Even then, it’s hard to tell that any characters but Lyn use Teräs Käsi; details on Hoar, 17786 and Thok were only provided in supplementary material like the Star Wars Insider magazine. While those details are extensive, it's likely that only a small fraction of players would have happened to stumble across the backstories of what otherwise look like generic goons.
If The Mandalorian's writers choose to have the title character encounter Teräs Käsi in Season 2, they’ll have a pretty free hand in terms of how they choose to depict it. It could be an ancient martial art venerated by the enemies of Jedi, but it could also be a seedy fighting style used in knockdown tournaments. Like most of the Star Wars extended universe, the martial art may simply serve as a scaffold for whatever the show's writers want to project onto it. Teräs Käsi fans will simply have to wait and see if it bears more than a passing mention this time.
Created by Jon Favreau, The Mandalorian stars Pedro Pascal, Gina Carano, Carl Weathers, Giancarlo Esposito, Taika Waititi and Emily Swallow. Season 1 is available now on Disney+, with Season 2 premiering Oct. 30.