Dear Autumn: Do you have any hcs or ideas for what Paz looks like?
Got a few actually!
Up front, I have to admit: Paz is one of those characters I have had the hardest time visualizing beyond the helmet. The first time I watched Mandalorian, I could picture something quite clear for the Armorer and Din (even before we saw his face on screen (and I didn’t know the actor before the show)). But Paz… he is the boxy blue helmet.
The first fanfic I read that described Paz’s looks had him as fair-skinned and blond. Seen a few go this route, most likely based on Pre Vizsla from the Clone Wars (I only saw Clone Wars way after watching Mandalorian). I could never really get that image to stick in my mind, and I didn’t want him to be related to Pre Vizsla at all so I kinda leaned away from it.
When I learned who played him (Tait Fletcher, who wore the armour and took over voicing him in the third season), I defaulted to picturing him as Paz.
Then, one random day, I saw some art for the Coral Island game (I haven’t played it but my sister has), and when I saw the blacksmith Rafael Sanchez, my first reaction was “Hey! He could be Paz!”
Subsequently, I saw some fan-cast Winston Duke as Paz (and there’s some stellar fanart of it— this piece and this piece ) and I really dig that too.
When I have so many references, instead of just picking one and sticking with it, my brain has a tendency to merge them (like how I did with Din’s buir. When I learned one of the body doubles for Din played the Mandalorian who saved him as a child, I merged the main two who play Din—Wayne and Crowder—and that’s pretty much how I picture his buir looking). So for Paz I picture a merge between the actor who actually plays him, a 2D character from a game I don’t play, and a fan-casting.
As for headcanons…
Paz has a beard. I keep seeing people think that because Mandalorians wear helmets nearly constantly, they wouldn’t want to/wouldn’t bother to keep beards, but it makes more sense to me that the ones who can have beards, would have beards. Did you know beards offer some natural shock absorption? For that alone I can imagine Paz keeping one.
He keeps his hair short but never completely shaves it off (again. Padding.) He does not, however, bother with any kind of fancy designs like shaving in the beskar heart or anything like that—he’s far too practical and no one would see it anyway.
The yellow pieces of his armour aren’t his, they belonged to his riduur who died in the Purge.
He’s quite conflicted about wearing the Vizsla crests because of the tendency for other clans and houses to associate them with Pre and Death Watch, so hence why he rather paints the Mythosaur on his pauldron (though, eventually, I imagine him reclaiming his clan’s crests and wearing both the blossoming branch and the shriek-hawk).
He’s got sooooo many scars. Most are where he’s not covered by the armour, but on his face, he has scars from the helmet—scars along his cheekbones, temples and jawline from where the hard edges of the padding dig in when he takes a hit to the head.
