We haven’t been here since 2020! (Well, we kinda hung out last year in Book of Boba Fett, but you know what I mean). Time to check in with Mando and the kid again.
Recap
The Watch cult are inducing a child into their ranks beside the water when a giant beast breaks up the event. The group try to fight it off and are being decimated when Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) and Grogu show up in his new fighter to blow the thing away. Din comes back to talk to the Armorer (Emily Swallow) about being reinstated as a Mandalorian after telling her that he removed his helmet in front of others. She insists that the only way he can accomplish this is by purifying himself in the living waters below the Mines of Mandalore, and that this cannot be done because the planet was destroyed and poisoned by the Empire. Din shows her a fragment from the surface that a contact brought back. He believes this is proof that the surface isn’t totally destroyed and that he can complete the task. She agrees.
Din goes back to Navarro, which is prospering more than ever of late. He meets up with his old friend Greef Karga (Carl Weathers) who is High Magistrate now, and they both face down a crew of pirates led by a fellow named Vane (Marti Matilus) who is a crony of pirate king Gorian Shard; the group want to drink at a building that used to be a saloon and is now a school. Din picks off the surrounding pirates when they try to kill Karga after he wins the showdown with Vane. Karga tells Vane to warn criminals in the area that the planet is respectable now. Then he tries to recruit Din to be his Marshall—Cara Dune was recruited by the New Republic soon after their last adventures, and he needs someone to take the spot.
Buy the Book
Dead Country
Din turns the offer down and tells Karga that he needs his old buddy IG-11 (Taika Waititi) back in order to complete his quest on Mandalore. Karga points out that the statue they have raised to the droid is just a statue, but Din knows that some of the droid’s original parts make it up. They take those parts down and try to reactivate him, but it makes IG-11 default to his old programming and he tries to kill Grogu. After his. Head is crushed by a bust of Karga, they take him to a shop for repairs run by Babu Frick and company. They tell Din that they can’t fix IG-11 without a new memory circuit, which is nearly impossible to find. Din insists that he will and departs.
On their way out, Din and Grogu come under attack from Vane and a squad who lead them to Shard’s (Nonso Anozie) flagship. Din powers up the boosters on his fighter and speeds away. He takes them to Kalevala, a planet in the Mandalore system, to a castle where Bo-Katan Kryze (Katee Sackhoff) is holed up alone. He asks her where her army is, and she tells him that they left once she no longer possessed the dark saber, and that if he wants their help so much, he should tell them he has it and lead them. Din insists he just wants to atone in the mines, which she thinks is ridiculous. She won’t assist him him, but he vows to go and find out if the Mandalore is truly poisoned. She bids him goodbye.
Commentary
Okay, you know, I’ve let this one slide for two whole seasons, but it’s getting ridiculous: how many giant wild animals does Din Djarin need to murder senselessly for other folks, and why do we think that’s okay?
That space crocodile ostensibly lives on the planet where the Watch have set up, and there’s no reason why they need to do their cult baptisms right there. But they had to do this setup in order to give us a heroic action sequence where Din defends his people against certain death, and honestly? This is their own fault and that crocodile did nothing wrong. There’s nothing noble about showing up in your starfighter to kill a local apex predator who’s picking off your shitty friends.
Again, your Western tropes are bad, y’all. Nature isn’t a thing to be tamed or destroyed, it’s a thing you could be working with. Make Mandalorians more than the sum of their parts. At least indicate that they’ve thought about any of these issues. Even if the Watch wouldn’t, I find it hard to believe Din wouldn’t—he adopted a baby Yoda.
They really did say, “if you didn’t watch The Book of Boba Fett, we do not care that you have no idea how we got here,” which I’m not loving as a choice. Don’t comic book our Star Wars, unless you were just gonna make that show The Mandalorian season three. (Which is what you should have done.)
Anywho, there’s another thing going on here that I’m hoping that show will get around to addressing in depth (though depth is not its strong suit) about how Mandalorians are a people bound by so many arbitrary rules, and everyone has different opinions on which should be enforced or matter, and how they really need to let go of a lot of theses issues in order to revive their people in any meaningful sense. Bo-Katan should be the leader, but she’s all up in her head about the darksaber and so is everyone else. The Watch won’t let anyone take their helmets off on pain of being cast out.
That palace, though. That she’s just sitting in all alone. That’s a mood.
Also, uh, they built a statue to IG-11 knowing that they could potentially revive him from the parts they had left? Clearly Karga doesn’t think it’s possible, but Din does and just left him to be a statue? That’s not cool, guys. And also incredibly annoying from a narrative convenience perspective, particularly since we’ve never seen this statue before, like, could you even try seeding things effectively? Ever? If you’re going to rely on this bare bones chapters in a serial structure, that’s one thing you should be attempting to do so well that it’s unassailable.
I’m guessing Shard is going to be problem going forward, but I do like his Swamp Thing vibe. Though I’m rolling my eyes forever at calling one of this pirate pals Vane, both for the double meaning and the Charles Vane reference.
Grogu continues to be cute as an effective form of distraction, at least. If the entire episode had been him messing around with Karga’s office furniture and eating his fiery chocolates, I would have been far more entertained. I’m guessing the next side quest is memory circuit time? He said he needed IG-11 to navigate the planet (still not sure why that’s a thing, apparently he won’t be able to scan it effectively on his own?), so it’s probable that’s where we’re headed next.
Bits and Beskar
- Got some questions about how Grogu can just crawl from his little pod into Din’s lap in the cockpit. Obviously Peli Motto did some weird conversions, but that used to be a droid alcove, and it seems to me you’d have to gut some pretty significant things to let the kid just slide around inside, but I digress.
- Babu Frick was obviously one of the best things about The Rise of Skywalker (don’t @ me, tiny alien gremlins who fix droids are exactly what I want from Star Wars all the time), and the fact that Grogu thinks he’s a life-sized plushie is so cute I could die probably.
- Also, I love that Karga gets more swag every time Din shows up, and those cape-holding droids are excellent.
- Still pointing out that a starfighter is not a home the way the Razor Crest was, and wondering where they sleep and shower. Get your child a cottage, Din.
See you next week!
So far season 3 seems to have the same problem as Book of Boba Fett — it’s just meandering around the Star Wars galaxy stopping in to focus on random things like an open-world computer game rather than having a clear story focus or direction. Okay, so he wants to go back to Mandalore to cleanse his sins, but all we get is a random monster fight and then a seemingly pointless sidetrack about his failed attempts to resurrect a dead droid, followed by a random pirate encounter complete with obligatory Empire Strikes Back asteroid-chase ripoff, and then a token scene with Bo-Katan that pretty much just erases her story arc from season 2 in a single conversation.
After they told a major part of this show’s story in a completely different show, I hoped at least they’d do a long recap filling things in for people who didn’t watch BOBF. But they barely touched on it, so that people coming in without watching the other show will be completely lost. That’s just bad storytelling structure. Continuity between different works in a shared universe should be an optional bonus for those who are interested in following more than one of its installments, not an obstacle to understanding any single installment. The ideal should always be to make each part comprehensible on its own as well as fitting into something larger, rather than choosing one over the other. Any development that’s crucial to one series should be included within that series.
A basic rule of good series writing is to keep in mind that any installment may be someone’s first — or that any single series in a shared universe may be the only one that a viewer or reader cares about following. So it should be able to stand on its own, to be complete and understandable for someone without prior knowledge. You should always strive to make your work accessible to newcomers, rather than penalizing people for not already being experts.
This seems to be a Star Wars-wide problem, because the High Republic series had the same issue. It was supposedly broken down into several different lines — adult novels, young-adult novels, children’s books, comics, young-readers comics — which were supposed to run in parallel and be aimed at different audiences. The promotion claimed explicitly that you could follow any given set of books or comics without needing the others. But there were characters and storylines that began in one of those tracks and then continued in another, so if you went from the first adult novel to the second, you’d find yourself suddenly in the middle of a story that began in the first YA novel and picked up in the comics. And the cliffhanger of the second adult novel was picked up in a comics miniseries instead of the third novel, and the third YA novel was a direct sequel to the first children’s book and the children’s comics, and basically you had to read everything to get the individual story or character arcs in their complete form rather than just bits and pieces. Which was just obnoxious as well as blatant false advertising, and it killed my interest in continuing with the series.
@1 / CLB:
Good point about The High Republic.That’s one of the reasons I got frustrated with it too and have pretty much given up.
The template it really should have been emulating was the Clone Wars multimedia campaign — or even Shadows of the Empire.
I was entertained for the most part, but I would be lying if I said this particular stick of gum still has all its flavor. That’s mostly due to their falling back on elements we’ve already seen, or ‘already been chewed’ to continue the metaphor.
Old Bucket Head really couldn’t find another droid to team up with? It has to be the same one everyone loves, huh? Kind of undercuts his noble sacrifice, I think, and we all know there’s no shortage of droids in the galaxy. How cool might’ve it been to see him buy one at a dealership, or even try to build a new and original design? Oh well.
But I did enjoy the space pirates. King Swamp Thing is a fun design. (Psst, one reason for that is because I’ve never seen him before. He’s new to me. Nudge, nudge.)
@3/Dingo: “Old Bucket Head really couldn’t find another droid to team up with?”
That, at least, is in character for Din. He has a history of hating and mistrusting droids, so he wanted to work with the one droid who’d earned his trust. It’s an irrational attitude, but so is his desire to atone for breaking the nonsense rules of his cult.
#4. I know. I’m just thinking it would be nice for him to move beyond that distrust. Star Wars has been creatively spinning its wheels of late, and I would like to see some progress forward.
Building a new droid, in essence giving birth to one, would be an interesting way to push past whatever still remained of his prejudice.
@5/Dingo: I’m hoping we’re just seeing the start of an arc here. His attempts to revive IG-11 fail, and he’s forced to grow beyond his narrow comfort zone and open his mind to a new droid. And maybe that will help him realize his quest to win back the Armorer’s approval is misguided too, that the Mandalorians need to let go of all these old rules and rituals if they want to unite and survive.
#6. That sounds good. I’ll keep my fingers crossed for something along those lines.
Bad writing from BOBF is back :( The Droid statue has been in the show a couple times before…maybe when he went back to get Cara Dune and breaking into the mining base in S2? The whole droid part screamed Disney interference from the little mechanic people to the completely taking away the meaning of life/death by bring back a dead popular character. Also, given that the droid’s memory was destroyed it makes no sense for him to need -this- droid. It going to be a different droid whatever you do. I also hated the Bo Katan scene. Playing Princess in an empty castle isnt in character with the Bo Katan who fought against aristos like Satine and has been a mercenary for like forever. I get she’s defeated but side saddling a throne? Is she suppose to be sexy? There is no Bo Katan only Zuul? Is she going to burn down Kings Landing next? Or is she the new big bad and this is evoking Vadar’s throne? Whatever all the pouting made me dislike her character and maybe that was the point.
Does anyone else think it’s really messed up to build a statue to a dead hero out of the dead hero’s actual body parts?
Nobody’s mentioned the bit where Grogu saw space whales in hyperspace. Those are the same critters that took Ezra and Thrawn at the end of Rebels. I guess that’s a tease for Ahsoka, maybe?
The io9 review pointed out something I missed: The main cast credits now list Brendan Wayne and Lateef Crowder, the suit performers who are actually playing Mando onscreen most of the time, with Pascal just dubbing his voice over their performance.
While I’m happy to see Space Dad and Baby Yoda back, I’m not sure why this is being stretched out (and that’s what it felt like. “Oh, we have to fill an entire season. Let’s make everything unnecessarily complicated!”)
Go to his weird cult to find the main season quest? Sure. But why does he need a droid at all? And he goes all the way to the Mandalore system, but did I miss an explanation as to why he can’t just go to the planet Mandalore itself, like, right now?
We had the entire side visit to explain why Cara isn’t coming back plus a gratuitous Babu Frick cameo (went to get a droid. Turned on droid. Immediately broke droid. Got another fetch quest for the memory module. But look! It’s that guy you hopefully liked from that film you definitely didn’t), plus, as mentioned, another side visit to explain why nothing Bo Katan did last season mattered.
I’ll keep watching. I’m invested. And damn, but baby Yoda in a swivel chair is adorable.
But this isn’t great television. I hope they step up their game.
@10/TheMongoose: It sounded like he needed Bo-Katan to tell him where to find the sacred waters he was looking for. Also, given that the surface is said to be uninhabitable and poisoned, maybe he needs supplies and equipment for the expedition. There’s no room in that little fighter for a spacesuit or hazard gear or drilling equipment or whatever he might need.
This was a very meandering opening. It didn’t have any sense of urgency to it. The whole opening with the giant crocodile monster was gratuitous, basically just an excuse to shoot stuff and then recap Mando’s dilemma. Then there was the side trip to get the droid, which took forever to get to the point, only to be sidetracked by space pirates. Then there was the scene with Katie Sackoff, which was just a big downer for that character.
Definitely the weakest season opener so far. Here’s hoping things pick up in episode 2.
In that opening scene, I was so looking forward to that kid with the new helmet turning out to be the young Din saving the day somehow by doing something improbably successful but badass just the same…but, alas, it was not a flashback, which was a disappointment. (I guess I forgot what the original young flashback actor looked like)
Also, I am really having a hard time understanding why Bo Katan hasn’t challenged Din for the darksaber. Din would certainly have plenty of motivation to allow her to win, and in return she could be a useful ally for whatever small or large quest he is on.
And seriously, why would anyone hang out in an abandoned castle like that? So much doesn’t make sense. Has the Mandalorian jumped the Zillo beast?
I thought the opening sequence was a flashback to Din’s youth until the Naboo fighter showed up.
Well this was an underwhelming start. Especially after Andor was so well crafted and thoughtful. That single episode we got in Book of Boba should have been the start of the new season. And this feel so much like we are back in the Book of Boba. This makes me really worried for Ahsoka. Tired of how Feloni and Favreau are using references without actually using it as part of the story they are currently telling. And we know from Clone Wars and Rebels that Feloni should know better. At least Bad Batch are doing some interesting stuff every now and again.
@13 & 14: I also thought it was a flashback, and I guess that’s what we were meant to think. Like that scene in the Tim Burton Batman (IIRC) where we see a couple and their child go into a dark alley and we think it’s the Waynes about to be murdered, but then Batman swoops down and saves them.
I assume Bo Katan hasn’t challenged Din for the Darksaber because the other Mandalorians wouldn’t consider it a “real” fight unless one or the other of them ended up dead. Otherwise, there would be reason to suspect that Din threw the fight — and Bo Katan can’t afford that suspicion if her entire bid for leadership went up in smoke the second Din got the saber instead of her.
Honestly, I like that she’s sitting around a castle moping right now. She’s always been a rather moody character, and now she’s stuck — just like Karga, who’s turned Navarro into a glorious trade hub but isn’t quite able to deal with the pirates that helped it get to that point. Neither of them are capable of moving forward on their own, giving Din and Grogu plenty of room to jostle them into motion again. Bad old western trope or not, it’s an internally consistent setup.
I also like the arbitrary rules. Cultures are full of rules that don’t necessarily make sense, or look funny from outside perspectives. It provides an illusion of depth, which helps make up for Star Wars’ lack of worldbuilding depth in general.
The poor mega-crocodile probably didn’t deserve to go out like that, however.
Before watching the episode I was wondering how I’d react to the Mandalorian in a post-Andor world. I think Andor might have broken Star Wars. It was such a step into high quality television drama that shortcomings in another show become glaring.
I think the first two seasons of Mando work for a couple reasons. They had high concept season arcs that were easy for the audience to understand and invest in. It never felt to me like a bunch of random scripts duct taped together with a fix-it-in-post plot. Anyone could go in with minimal knowledge of the franchise and enjoy the show. It didn’t rely on continuity snarl or gimmick callbacks.
Based on the first episode of season three I’m seeing some problems. “Save Grogu from the bad guys” is a goal I can invest in, as is “return Grogu to their people”. But I don’t find the Deathwatch sympathetic and I’m not really sure what their philosophy or goals are outside the helmet rule. So a fairly silly quest to rejoin the club doesn’t hook me at all. I can’t empathize with it.
And going into season three I feel like the show has built up its own continuity snarl. I can’t see someone coming into this week’s episode as a first time viewer and understanding any of it. And as a returning viewer the callbacks didn’t make narrative sense to me (though as gimmicks they were pretty transparent).
Why did Mando need to interrupt the ceremony to get information he already had from BoBF? (So he could get a big action entrance). Why did Mando go to Navarro? It couldn’t be for IG-11 as Mando would have no idea that anything survived after being both blown up and sinking into lava. (It’s because the audience likes Taika Waititi, right? Let’s bring him back.) Why did he need to talk to Bo Katan? It’s not like the whole planet is missing, or that you couldn’t find the mines on a map. And while “find the mines” is okay as a plot goal if the resolution is “ask somebody” you could just look it up on a map, or argh, ask the person who sent you on the quest at the start of the episode. (Gee, we set up Bo Katan’s arc to be restore Mandalore last season, but now we need it to be Mordor so…reset button).
As an aside, I really didn’t like what they did to Bo Katan. She was a hero in her own story going on off screen and, boy, if there is something Star Wars needs it’s a sense that a universe exists outside the current hero narrative. So now she’s a princess in a castle that the knight with the sword is going to redeem/save/return agency to?
So this episode felt to me like a mix of retcon and fan service that kinda spun in place.
I thought Bad Batch got a good episode this week. I’m glad the shows are overlapping seasons by more than one or two episodes. Hopefully Mando will come together like BoBF most definitely did not.
#18. Right, I too am struggling to find interest in Mando’s quest. Dipping himself in purifying waters for the sin of taking off his helmet [gasp!] doesn’t exactly get me excited, I gotta say. Maybe if there’s a series of challenges or obstacles he has to pass in order to get to the waters, or if the waters are used to save someone’s life, they might have something. I’m thinking of The Last Crusade with Indy having to figure out puzzles and death traps in order to save his father. That was fun, and it had a ticking clock to move things along swiftly.
This, so far, doesn’t have that immediacy, and it shows.
@18/kurtzwald: “So a fairly silly quest to rejoin the club doesn’t hook me at all. I can’t empathize with it.”
I still think that’s not what the season arc will really be about, that it will be about Din reassessing his priorities and realizing there are better goals to strive for.
After all, Star Wars is all about the Campbellian Hero’s Journey, and that formula starts out with the protagonist resisting the call to their heroic journey before eventually being convinced to embrace it. And what’s the call Mando was offered and rejected in the first episode? Becoming the marshal of Nevarro. Fighting for justice instead of bounties or personal atonement. It’s interesting that his confrontation with the pirates was outside a school. Over the past two seasons, we’ve seen Mando grow beyond his pursuit of bounties alone because he came to care for a child. Now, just after Greef offers him a job protecting the peace on Nevarro, he stops some pirates from endangering other children. We don’t really see those children, so it’s implicit, but maybe this is foreshadowing how he can grow into wanting to protect people in general, not just Grogu.
On one hand, I understand the issue with advancing the Mando storyline in a complete different show, and not recapping those threads in your actual show. It would certainly be confusing for people who didn’t catch Book of Boba Fett.
But on the other hand, I ask: is there someone out there who watched Mandalorian but didn’t follow Book of Boba Fett? I mean, they advertised that show with a full teaser trailer at the very end of Mando season 2, even before the credits rolled. Both shows are western themed and involve bounty hunters. Who wouldn’t watch both? I don’t agree with the comic book argument. Comics have decades of interwining history. So far, we’ve had 25 episodes across both shows? Almost none of them over 30 minutes, I might add? Easier to digest.
Overall, I liked everything involving Mando and Grogu. One thing that I think puts this show in a higher pedestal than Fett is the overall consistency of Din Djarin and his personal code. Fett’s motivations were a little all over the place on his show. Mando more or less, we know what we’re in for. It’s more or less keeping with the same episodic approach from the first two seasons, deliberately slow-paced, light on plot, but strong on visuals and flavor. We’ll see where we are in the next few weeks, depending on how the scavenger plot unfolds.
At least we have a clear goal with his desire to restore his place in his clan, though I assume this will go in a different direction in the long term. It wouldn’t feel right having Din just earn back his place with a group like Death Watch and act as if everything is right in the world.
@1/Christopher: Interesting. I never read the High Republic novels myself. I had no idea their continuity had become as messy as the old 1990s Expanded Universe era, especially given how Disney/Lucasfilm made endless promises about building a coherent universe both audiovisual and literary while shedding the old EU material in order to avoid contradictions. I still remember reading plot developments in those novels that referenced events from SW comic books that I hadn’t read.
THANK YOU FOR MENTIONING THE COMPLETE LACK OF ANIMAL RIGHTS IN STAR WARS! I get that they are trying to pull on old monster movie tropes, but I’m getting sick of it! At least with the rancor, there is this little subversion as it is not played as a straight up heroic moment, but you’ve got the Attack of The Clones gladiator fight, the space squid getting sucked into the Maw in Solo, blowing up the krayt dragon in the previous season, in Fallen Order you kill some Dathomir bat thing (even though they make a point to commune/bond with the animal on Kashyyk and I have huge opinions that it’s basically about how we view ugly things as monstrous)…there are lots of examples.
I’m still not over Boba Fett dropping a seismic charge into the Sarlacc just to be effing petty. I am not even what would be considered an animal rights activist in any sense (I don’t generally hold animals up to equal dignity) BUT I am kind of a hippie nature lover and believe in creation stewardship and a former biologist (microbiologist, but still) and in a lot of these there is no reason to actually kill the animals as opposed to escaping (although, yes, in some of those scenarios it was either incidental or justified, but I can still blame the NARRATIVE for that). Or, making like Rey/Ezra and BONDING with the animals. (I actually think it’s interesting that of all people, Anakin is the one who, in the gladiator fight, shows the ability to bond with/calm the Reek – he is not the one who ends up killing it).
Okay now that I got that huge thing out of the way!
I agree this opener was a bit slow and the pacing was off, and it looks to be setting up a bunch of quests that require some other quest, etc. I am not actually thrilled with the whole plot to put IG-11 back together as I feel it kind of cheapens the narrative of his sacrifice and while I get that the concept of droid life is different, and which programming is his ‘true self’…if his memory chip is blown and they get him a new one…is that even really him? Then again, maybe that is part of what they would be exploring here.
I actually called that when they turned him on he was going to go back to factory settings but the Terminator reference was fantastic, haha.
Regarding Din’s main quest I totally agree with above that this is likely going to end with him being the Marshal and protecting the children. But I am actually really into this quest in general – I am religious so I maybe have a little more sympathy and understanding for how important things like ritual and creed can be, nor do I automatically disdain concepts of atonement, redemption, or what can look like arbitrary rules.
(THAT SAID yes, Death Watch is a rigid/fundamentalist cult and honestly I don’t find Bo-Katan much better because the only reason she left Death Watch was when she got mad that Darth Maul used the rules to his advantage. All that said she does strike me as a realistic character, especially as somebody who now disdains something they were a part of.)
But – and I’ve been saying this since the BoBF which I think actually had some excellent things to say about creed, family, identity, tribe and all that – Din, Boba and even Grogu (and his relationship to the Jedi) to an extent are all on parallel journeys – my prediction for how this is all going to go is based on the fact that the whole ‘you have to atone for your transgressions in a temple that no longer exists’ coming from a people in diaspora to me seems like a really obvious reference to the general mythic arc of Judeo-Christianity. Especially the constant references to the Living Water and The Way which are both commonly used terms in Scripture that Christ uses to refer to himself.
Sooooo I have a feeling a lot of this quest is going to result in some type of personal catharsis that involves freeing oneself for a more legalistic view of what it means to be a Mandalorian to one that is more ‘open’ (although still connected) or maybe even will end with some type of sacrifice play. I’ve gotten that vibe multiple times in BoBF but wondered if it was my own perspective that was causing me to make this connection but this episode did nothing to disabuse me of that (especially given that it starts out with literal baptisms).
(And to be clear I’m not trying to make any statements here about Judaism or Christianity in the real world or the personal practice of it, but talking about the more mythic tropes in the story that to me seem to have a strong parallel.)
Still pointing out that a starfighter is not a home the way the Razor Crest was, and wondering where they sleep and shower.
Not to mention taking care of certain other….bodily functions? (Remember, the Razor Crest had a commode!) Although the increasing impression given in the Star Wars universe is that jumping in hyperspace, time-wise, is the equivalent of driving the car a few miles.
Yeah, this episode definitely had a spinning-its-wheels aspect to it. I hope it picks up next week.
@CLB 9: Nobody’s mentioned the bit where Grogu saw space whales in hyperspace.
Thank you. Somehow I didn’t recognize the whales, so I *wondered* what was happening there!
@19 “Only the penitent man shall pass”
@20 You bring up a reasonable point but I’m conflicted about it.
On one level I feel like the process of revaluation has already happened. The Mando of series one episode one was a killer living without any close connections to others. While the kernel of who he’s become had to have been there, he’s developed in some profound ways. So as a viewer I feel the character has changed in ways that make him a more appealing hero. That he was part of Deathwatch did not seem to me to be the critical part that needed changing. It’s a nice to have but not a must have.
On the other hand, for Mando as a character in the story, I can see his personal identity as part of Deathwatch being far more important to him than it is to me as a viewer. The changes an outside observer sees are often not the changes an individual sees in themselves. I think that can be a solid part of good storytelling.
It’s something we’ll have to see play out.
@21
I think it’s a safe bet that many people watched BoBF who also watched Mando, but I’m not sure the Venn diagram has as much overlap as, say, people who watched both Mando and Star Wars. Someone would have to both start BoBF and watch through to the later episodes. I didn’t think the show was terrible but I never found it must-watch TV, even as a franchise fan.
—
On the topic of space whales: I’m a huge fan of the animated Star Wars but boy I do not envy the writers who need to bridge the gap between “I watched the Mandalorian and the movies” and (avoiding all spoilers) “space whales are important”.
@21/Eduardo: “But on the other hand, I ask: is there someone out there who watched Mandalorian but didn’t follow Book of Boba Fett?”
Even if most viewers watched BOBF, it would be naive to assume that 100 percent of them did, and inconsiderate to deliberately make the story inaccessible to that minority that didn’t. Penalizing people for not being in the majority is a terrible way to behave. It’s about accessibility. It doesn’t matter that most people who come into a building can walk or can see — you still design it with wheelchair-accessible entrances and Braille signage for the few people who need them. Because it’s just basic decency to make it accessible for everyone, not just the people who conform to “normal” expectations.
I can think of several reasons of the top of my head why someone wouldn’t have watched BOBF. Maybe they just weren’t interested in Boba Fett. Maybe they heard the show was kind of crap and didn’t bother. Maybe they hated the prequels and didn’t want to see a show revolving around Temuera Morrison. Maybe they cancelled their Disney+ subscription after Mando season 2 to save money, and only now resubscribed. Maybe they missed the post-credit scene announcing BOBF — even these days, there are plenty of people who don’t know to stick around for them — and don’t make a habit of following online entertainment news and thus didn’t know how connected the two shows were. There are always people who are more out of the loop than those of us in the loop realize is possible. There were fans of Smallville in its early seasons who had no idea it was connected to Superman. I was once talking to a cousin about Star Trek: TNG, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager, and it was a while before I realized he didn’t even know they were all Star Trek shows. You should never assume people know things that are obvious to you.
Which is why it’s a basic rule of good writing to always make your work comprehensible to those without prior knowledge. Whatever they need to know to understand the story needs to be mentioned within the story, even if it’s a sequel. Anything from previous tales that they need to know, you restate. To change metaphors, it’s like including all the necessary tools in a furniture assembly kit. Maybe the buyers already have an Allen wrench, but maybe they don’t, and you want everyone to get full use out of the product.
“I never read the High Republic novels myself. I had no idea their continuity had become as messy as the old 1990s Expanded Universe era, especially given how Disney/Lucasfilm made endless promises about building a coherent universe both audiovisual and literary while shedding the old EU material in order to avoid contradictions.”
I wouldn’t say their continuity is messy. It’s pretty cohesive, if you read the whole thing. All the various tracks were developed simultaneously and tell parts of a fairly unified narrative. The problem is that they claimed that each individual track of it would be complete without requiring you to read the others, which is very much not true.
@22/Lisamarie: “Sooooo I have a feeling a lot of this quest is going to result in some type of personal catharsis that involves freeing oneself for a more legalistic view of what it means to be a Mandalorian to one that is more ‘open’ (although still connected)”
I wonder if Sabine Wren might play a part in that, given that she’s appearing in live action in Ahsoka. When Mando arrived at the Mandalorian castle at the end, I was wracking my brain trying to remember if it might be where the Wrens lived and if Sabine might make a surprise live-action debut here.
I just had a thought (no, I don’t think I hurt myself).
I wonder if Din will ultimately redefine what it means to be a Mandalorian by not placing importance in either a saber or a helmet. What if he reaches those magical waters and casts away both items into the deep? Also, what if he begins to realize his violent culture is taking Grogu, this spiritual being with the power to heal others, to a bad and violent place? (I recall when he tried to choke Cara Dune for example.)
What if he chooses to use the water as a way to begin a new, less violent way of life, therefore becoming a better father to Grogu and a better example to the other Mandalorians? The first of their kind to use the stun setting, perhaps.
@27/Dingo: I can see him throwing away the Darksaber, but I doubt he’d throw away the helmet, because I doubt Pedro Pascal has room in his schedule to commit to appearing in this show full-time instead of doing it mostly as a voiceover role.
@27 – that would be fascinating and might also play into the Mandalorian culture surrounding valuing children/foundlings. Given that I do see that the Jedi path should ideally be one more of healing (even Grogu’s big heroic feat in BoBF is taming the rancor and sleeping along side it – truly a lion and a lamb moment – instead of defeating it, to add onto my rant of monster slaying) and using your power for others, I think that would also fit Grogu’s arc in multiple ways.
#28. Probably so. Sorry, I was thinking more in terms of how this series might end. But, silly me, how could Disney ever let anything end? I imagine Pascal’s voice has already been downloaded into the supercomputer to use for the next thousand years. :)
#29. Good point. I forgot all about the rancor and Grogu’s ability to tame the wild beast. Pity they didn’t use that here with the mega-croc.
I gotta say, as someone painfully excommunicated from the cult that raised me, the Mandalorian’s excommunication was the first time I’ve ever seen that portrayed. I cried so hard and was so proud that this was this first rep- we’re freaking Mandalorians!! He’ll yeah, we survived.
If he’s going back… well damn. Please don’t ruin that for us, Din.
The episode had a lot of good action sequences, although the overall story arc has yet to be revealed. I am sure things will come together as we move forward. Bo Katan may be at a low point, but I don’t think for a minute that they wrote her out of the story. I find it more enjoyable to let the creators tell their story than to start second-guessing them right out of the gate.
I watched Boba Fett but don’t think the episodes that were essentially chapters of this show belonged there in the least. Just so weird. Maybe if it had officially been an anthology under another name, interweaving the stuff on Tatooine with the Mandalorian detour and setup for the Ahsoka series.
Not once in this episode when the prohibition against removing one’s helmet was mentioned did it get qualified as “in front of a living being”. Yet we saw Djarin in Season 1 eating in privacy without his on and got that moment with IG-11 and, like, understand basic hygiene.
Those giant shadowy figures Grogu saw in hyperspace were strange. I haven’t seen more than a blip of the animated series since the original 2D Clone Wars because I can’t stand the CGI animation style (no big loss to me prior to the Disney+ shows because I didn’t care much about the prequel era they covered either) so I was unaware they were anything previously known.
I get Djarin insisting on reviving this one particular droid because he generally hates droids and he’s set in his ways and IG-11 actually became his friend, which is touching, but it’s kind-of ghoulish nonetheless. Plus, to echo other comments, either it would’ve been possible to revive him before and nobody tried or whatever comes back will necessarily be lacking the unique nature of the original/previous version’s self.
While Bo-Katan moping alone in a castle needn’t be inherently ridiculous, her sprawled out on the throne in a way that can’t even be comfortable just to establish her rakish, rebel demeanor in case anyone comes ’round, yeesh.
Besides the issues others have brought up story-structure-wise, my biggest issue is the entire idea that somehow IG-11 wasn’t completey destroyed when it self-destructed. Presumably the whole point of the mandatory self-destruct-if-possibility-of-capture protocol is so its memory banks, hardrives, and advanced tech don’t fall into enemy hands. Accordingly, the explosion was pretty big, big enough to take out troops standing ~10 feet away. But not only has its head and torso survived, but the hardrive is intact enough to (with a small amount of fixing) run the orriginal programing, with enough memory to know the last target and goal? I’d say its time to get in the market for a better destruct mechanism. And Din’s goal now is to recover IG-11’s reprogrammed personality (which again, should have been destroyed completely when the bomb went off) by…getting a brand new memory core? It all seems like a convoluted, unbelievable, and unnecesary way to get Taika Waititi back.
Also, I’m surprised no one has mentioned how the pirate king’s appearance is almost certainly a reference to Davy Jones from Dead Man’s Chest.
A fun Easter Egg I recently heard of, which kind of plays into my ramblings on the Mandalorians as an analog to the diaspora, but somebody translated the Mando’a on the inscription Din gives to the Armorer and…it’s basically from the book of Exodus.
Anyway, now I have a Mel Brooks song in my head…