After years of cinematic uncertainty, announced projects that never came to fruition, and a franchise increasingly focused on the Disney+ platform, Star Wars returns this Thursday to the big screen with ‘The Mandalorian & Grogu,’ the film set to open a new chapter for the saga beyond the Skywalker universe. The film also marks the return of two of the most popular characters to emerge in the last decade within the franchise: Din Djarin (the human Mandalorian warrior) and Grogu (the alien Baby Yoda).

If there is something that writers habitually do, more or less consciously, it is to be aware of what is happening around them. It doesn’t matter if they write historical or contemporary fiction: what they see and experience in the present ends up permeating their texts. That is why it is not surprising that in recent times several books have been published in which aesthetic pressure and terms like botox, skincare, preventive aging, or wellness permeate their pages.