Shortly after the pandemic began, I created the viral character “The Maskalorian.” What started as an idea for a fun and light-hearted video in Graz, Austria, where The Maskalorian’s ship first landed, blew up on TikTok and Facebook. It gained close to 60,000 fans and more than 10 million video views across these social media platforms, as well as an extensive feature article in The Washington Post, among other press coverage. Improvising in the streets in a custom-made outfit as the Maskalorian and with the help of my little green apprentice “Masku”, I appeared at many iconic sites in New York City, the Star Wars Convention in London, various locations in Vienna and Graz, Austria, and even on an airplane.

The message of The Maskalorian was simple: He was sent to planet earth from a galaxy far away on a mission to keep the public safe. Unlike his more famous counterpart The Mandalorian, who is a bounty hunter, The Maskalorian’s “number one function” was to hand out masks and to give people a smile. The masks were always free and did not “cost any credits” for those who took them. I got the idea because I saw on the news at the time how upset people were getting when they were required to wear masks and I wondered if I could encourage people to wear masks in a humorous way, making them see that – at least for the time being – “this is the way”.

As an improviser and a filmmaker, I had a ton of experience with making viral videos for the NYC-based prank collective Improv Everywhere (including making a feature film about the group) , so it was kind of natural for me to don a helmet with a mask over it and have conversations with strangers on the streets. As the project evolved, I even had my wife Simone join me as “Mona, Maker of Masks”, a parody version of “The Armorer”, who “forged” the stronger masks that offered better protection. 

The Maskalorian videos document these encounters, and the reactions were often priceless. Wherever my film crew and I went, we hoped that people would connect with the character, but I never could have imagined that they would welcome the character with so much love. Even die-hard Star Wars fans at the 2023 Star Wars Convention in London, where I took off my mask to “walk between both worlds,” as the pandemic was no longer the threat it once was, welcomed the character with open arms. People all over the world came to love the character via the videos I put online. Hospital staff and many others wrote to me during that time, which shows the power that pop culture has to unite people, often transcending cultures and languages.