And this is it. The showdown at… the Sanctuary? For some reason.
Recap
Fett, Shand, and Djarin stand in the ruins of the Sanctuary, trying to figure out their next move. Drash (Sophie Thatcher) and Skad (Jordan Bolger) insist that they defend the territory from here because it’s their home. Cad Bane shows up to tell them that their reinforcements from Freetown won’t be showing up. He tries to goad Fett into a showdown, but Fennec talks him down from it because he’s too emotional over the new knowledge the the Pykes are the ones who killed the Sand People he lived amongst, not the Nikto bikers.
They come up with a plan to have different groups watching different areas of Tatooine; the Mos Espa kids watch the Worker’s District, Santo watches the Trandoshan District, the Gamoreans watch the ships coming in, and so on, while they wait to see how the Pykes will make their move. Only problem is, all the families they thought they had alliances with turn on them. Din suggests they could leave, but agrees to stay and fight until they die if that’s what Fett wants. Shaiz’s former majordomo suggests that they could give their terms of surrender to the Pykes, so Fett gives him a tablet with terms and sends him out before he can read them. The terms are nothing at all, a distraction before the battle begins. Meanwhile, Grogu lands at Peli Motto’s in Luke’s X-Wing; he’s made his choice, and has his beskar shirt on under his clothes.
The Pykes have brought large shielded droids to do their dirty work for them. Fett asks Din to distract them so he can bring his own reinforcements. The Freetown group arrives in an armored speeder and lends a hand. Everyone starts showing up to the fight, including Grogu and Peli. Finally, Fett shows up on his rancor and they begin tearing one of the droids apart. It takes some time, but they eventually stop both droids and have taken out so many of the Pykes that they retreat. Cad Bane shows up again and tries to agitate Fett into a showdown. He gets what he asks for, and Fett ultimately kills him. The rancor is too upset to calm down, however. In order to stop it without hurting it, Grogu uses his Force abilities to ease the beast, and they both curl up for a nap together.
The Tatooine family heads are meeting with the Pyke’s Tatooine leader and Mok Shaiz to demand that they offer more protection, since they went against Fett in siding with them. They are all quickly picked off by Fennec in a stealth operation.
Fett is now formally instated as Daimyo and has the respect of the people. He and Fennec decide this is going to be a tough job, but it’s what’s best for Tatooine. As the city-dwellers work to repair their town, Din and Grogu leave on their new starfighter; Grogu demands another speed burst from dad. Back at the palace, Cobb Vanth is in the bacta tank healing from his wounds. The mod artist who helped Fett with Fennec’s repairs (Stephen “Thundercat” Bruner) prepares to get to work on him.
Commentary
It was criminal to give us Danny Trejo: Rancor Trainer, and never bring him back to us, is all I’m saying.
This episode did all the things it needed to do, even if it did them in the most baffling way possible. The plan to handle the syndicate makes negative sense. They keep telling us it makes lots of sense, which makes it more embarrassing. Let’s separate our forces, so we know what angle our attackers are coming in from! Or… where we have to go? Wait no, we decided we’re defending this point, so we’ve just split up our forces to have them keep an eye out for no real reason. Now everyone’s really far away when we need them to converge on the spot we said we were defending in the first place.
Look, I get it, they wanted everyone to show up dramatically in the fight. They already had it set with the Freetown locals, but there was no reason for everyone else to be so far away. So they made up a bad one, which is not better for the purposes of drama. Setting the fight in Mos Espa is another example of this: Drash and Skad say no, we’re not leaving, this is our home. We defend from here, not your lofty palace. The problem is, by insisting on staying, you’ve also guaranteed maximum destruction for the city you claim to want to protect. I get that it’s more dynamic doing the battle in the streets, but if you can’t think of legitimate reasons for any of this then sit down in a room with some more writers and figure it out. There are better solutions to the problems you’ve created for yourself.
There’s a weird “war on drugs” sidebar here, being that everyone keeps talking about how they want the spice off the planet, but they don’t wanna talk about why. Spice as a drug in the Star Wars universe is a thing that’s existed on the periphery from the very first film—stolen wholesale from Dune and then altered to fit a different sort of universe—but it’s never been fleshed out anywhere but the Legends canon. In fact, Solo tried to make spice into something else entirely, suggesting that the spice mines of Kessel were about mining fuel rather than drugs. (It’s still funny and awful.) We’re back to the drug aspect, but it’s being discussed without any indication of what that means in-universe: How does drug trade work in the Star Wars galaxy? Who’s getting high, and how are they getting high? Are the Tatooine locals worried because they don’t want their own people on spice, and if so, why? Fett agrees to rid the planet of it because the people of Freetown want it, but Fennec thinks it’s a bad call because you make tons of money in the spice trade. There’s no detail on what people’s stances are, they just have them.
But it’s family entertainment! someone cries. Well, they made the choice to center their family entertainment around crime syndicates and drug running, so now they’ve gotta make sense of what they built.
Grogu shows up because of course he shows up. R2 delivers him because we don’t need more Luke Skywalker CGI—which, having read the pieces that have explained exactly what’s going on here, has made me even more against this process than I used to be, and I was against it from Tarkin’s use in Rogue One. (The point is that they’re cobbling together Luke’s dialogue via computers by synthesizing older stuff. The same is true of the CGI. What we’re running into here is a situation where you cannibalize former performances to make new ones. That’s part of the reason why Luke is busy regurgitating bad Jedi dogma he’s already learned instead of saying something new; he can’t. That’s part of the reason his character seems off; this isn’t a real performance by a living, breathing actor. It’s a stand-in with altered existing footage composited over him.)
The same lack of reasoning in the setup permeates this entire script, which is why no one seems to remember that the Clone Wars saw lots of shielded droids like this in combat, and the Jedi were great at fighting them by moving slowly to get inside the shields and blow up and/or slice them to pieces. Santo tries and is promptly stopped, but this stuff is a known quantity in this universe, and it doesn’t make sense that no one on this battlefield has any idea how to fight them. (Or that the shields go red when they’re weakened, which is a video game conceit if I ever saw one—you wouldn’t want people to see the shield was weak.) Then there’s how Boba manages to stay fixed to this rancor’s back while it’s being attacked by the droid, but then Cad Bane shoots some fire at him and he’s tossed off instantly.
What’s upsetting is that the scenes between Bane and Fett are what this whole show should’ve been. This entire series kept forgetting that Boba Fett is an infamous bounty hunter—arguably the most well-known in the galaxy—who’s just come back from the dead several years after the fact and made this wild bid for Jabba’s territory. People know him. They’ve fought him, lost bounties to him, had to deal with him professionally for decades. They knew him as a grieving, messy teenager. They watched him get tangled up in things that were too big for him to handle as a kid, then make a name for himself as years went by and show them all up. This is personal for Bane. He does not believe in creating something better than the shitty system they all abide by, and he never has. Certainly not if Jango’s annoying kid is going to be the one running things.
He keeps making it personal for Boba, too—bringing up the Sand People, bringing up his father. And it’s not enough because this should’ve been happening every damn week. Having stock footage of li’l Boba watching his dad fly away from Kamino tells us exactly nothing about how the man feels, but the script sure wants us to infer everything. Bane calls Jango a murderer, and we don’t know how Boba feels about that either. We can guess, sure. But that’s not why we’re watching a whole television show about Boba Fett. We came here to be shown.
And then Fett kills Bane, which is fair, really. Bane wants us to believe that this will weigh heavily on Boba’s conscience, but the truth is that the Fetts are alike in this—they’re pragmatists. Bane isn’t the kind of guy you lose sleep over. (And moreover, sure, he’s dead forever. We all buy that, of course. As much as we bought Vanth’s death.)
There are some great visuals to enjoy in this episode, and I do appreciate that Din tries to lasso the rancor, only to have the rancor (probably) roar YOU’RE NOT MY REAL DAD and promptly fling him away. It was also great to see Din and Boba fighting side-by-side for a while, and get proper use out of both of their arsenals for a change. (I also have a deep, inescapable love for Fett being like “You really buy all that weird Death Watch crap? Well, it’s good for me in this moment, so I accept. Weirdo.”) The reunion with Grogu is predictably endearing, and it’s amazing to watch Din go from his certainty of dying to help a friend due to his cult code to a sudden and fierce determination to keep everything alive because his reason to live has returned to him. *sniff*
But you know what else we could’ve been doing this whole time? Fennec’s excellent assassination sequence. Ugh, so good. So many places where that could have been useful. We deserved much more of that, and of a relationship between her and Fett that involved him sending her to free his street gang, then telling her to just lay low for the whole battle so she could off these guys when the time was right and they were all running scared. This is what I wanted, show.
The second-to-last scene of the series is another aspect I was looking for this whole time: Skad giving Boba a hard time for handing his meiloorun fruit to Santo instead of him. The Tatooine kids are alright, see?
But of course, because this is actually The Mandalorian’s third season—I will never stop grousing about this because it’s true and they should have owned it instead of making me think I was going to get a solid season of Boba Fett in my life—we end on Din and Grogu in their new starfighter, ready to take on the galaxy together. Nevermind the fact that there’s nowhere to put bounties anymore, or the fact that anyone who comes into Mando’s actual third season without watching this is going to be confused. (Because that’s the point really, just making sure you have to watch every Star War whether you want to or not.)
Bits and Beskar:
- I’m not saying that no one from the Sanctuary could ever pop up again, but we didn’t get nearly enough of that place to use it as a Now-You-Know-It’s-Serious tipping point. We barely got to know Garsa Fwip, and I know you’re not telling me that Max Rebo survived Jabba’s sail barge only to die here.
- Justice for the Gamorean guards, who did nothing wrong this whole time, and were dispatched because someone had to die and the script didn’t care about them.
- Really, with the rancor King Kong reference? Could we not do that? It’s just kinda lazy and adds nothing to the experience. Clone Wars already did that homage one (way) better with the Zillo beast anyhow.
- But is Peli gonna date the Twi’lek majordomo, because I want that for her. (Her comment about Grogu being a terrible name solidifies my claim that she is all of us.) Also, is Drash gonna date the cute sniper lady from Freetown, because I want that too.
- Cad Bane is taunting Fett for being the slower draw, and I’m like WELL YEAH, HE’S LIFTING A WHOLE-ASS RIFLE, CAD. (Also, how many times have you been shot already today because it’s at least two dozen times fewer.) There goes Bane, trying to be cool and coming off laughable, as always.
- Does Vanth get a new lung from this, maybe? I think Bane shot him on the right side, so a heart replacement isn’t in order. Now Freetown has a cyborg Marshal, which means you can count on the current story arcs coming up with all sorts of excuses to bring him into things. I told you, you don’t waste Olyphant.
And that’s all they wrote! See you at the next Star War, which is probably Obi-Wan Kenobi?
Buy the Book
Goliath
A couple of SW youtubers have reported insider info that the showrunners wanted a Fett who was tired of doing jobs for other bosses and being treated like bantha poodoo, and deciding he wanted to be a boss instead (and a decent boss), but acknowledging they did a bad job of showing it in the show itself.
“I know you’re not telling me that Max Rebo survived Jabba’s sail barge only to die here.”
Various people have pored over the footage to confirm he wasn’t in the room when he went up. It looks like they had a Kloo horn player instead.
R.I.P. pig bois. *sniff*
As for the rest of the episode, a few nice scenes surrounded by noise. I also would have enjoyed more Boba Fett stories in this Boba Fett show. Oh well. With this much Star Wars content, I guess we can’t expect them all to be winners (see Rise of Skywalker). I just hope the Favreau/Filloniverse has better in store for us. We know they’re capable of it.
Still can’t believe we live in a time when techno necromancy is thing. Nevermind that it comes from storytellers who should know better. If we can get over Asokha being recast for live action, so can the Luke stans for a younger actor.
In anycase this has been a joy to read over last weeks. Thanks!
An entertaining enough hour, though not very deep, and somewhat predictable. I knew the Rancor would come to the rescue at some point, and Grogu would come to the rescue at some point, though both happened differently than I expected. At least they brought everything together in one episode, rather than spending a whole episode on one piece and another whole episode on a different piece. And the actors got to have fun playing Star Wars in the backyard.
Cad Bane worked better this week — a pretty good facial performance, with some nice expressions conveying personality. I wonder, was that an actor in makeup or a convincing digital animation?
At the end of the showdown, when Bane was taunting Boba about how his friends and allies made him weak, I was hoping that was a cue for his found-family gang to show up and save him. But I guess the message still came across, because even though he won single-handedly, he did it using the weapon and skills he learned from the Tusken.
I, too, am sad at the fate of the Gamorrean twins. They were unfailingly loyal, and this is the thanks they get? Here’s hoping there were some very large awnings at the bottom of that cliff. At the very least, I wanted to see them in the bacta tank at the end instead of Vanth.
As for Drash, she was pretty clearly crushing on Fennec after the latter complimented her on her manners.
@4/Andre: With Luke, I wish they’d done what Marvel does with older actors — have Mark Hamill do the performance, superimpose his digitally de-aged face on his double, and process his voice to sound younger (which allegedly is something they can do now).
But I’d be okay with recasting too. When I saw the behind-the-scenes special about the Mando season 2 finale, I was struck by how much Luke’s performance double, who was reputedly cast for his resemblance to Hamill, looked like Matt Lanter, Anakin’s voice in The Clone Wars. It would’ve been wild to see Lanter cast as Luke.
Does that make Vanth… Robo Cobb?
Sorry, I had to…
I wrote this out this morning, but I’ll come back and read the review/comments later. Apologies that it’s disjointed, I had to also get to work!
I drank my Luke/Grogu tea again joking that I might manifest them. Well, it almost worked!
Thoughts – First, I will say that I have genuninely enjoyed almost every minute of the show and I think it was perfectly fun. It’s not perfect, but it’s also not the worst thing ever. I do think that the overall organization and structure/pacing of the story didn’t quite work. The first few episodes feel totally different from the middle and ending episodes were, and so there are a few things that didn’t quite pay off. For example, I really wanted more about the Tuskens and the way the reveal happened just felt really forced; the Pykes just kinda gloating about it and then Cad mentioning it to Boba for…reasons. It was just a very transparent plot string pulling. I mean, I get that in the story he was basically just trying to goad him into a duel, but it still felt really blatant.
I also think the ending battle went on a little bit too long, and I also really hate both car chases and urban warfare. I don’t know if others are able to just tune this out and enjoy it but I keep thinking…that’s somebody’s HOUSE! That’s somebody’s BUSINESS and entire livelihood! You just spilled a bunch of water! That’s some potentially culturally or historically singificant piece of archictecture! STOP WRECKING SHIT!
(After the Mos Espa battle Joe quoted the scene in Team America: World Police after they destroy the Louvre and stop the terrorists. Don’t worry, everything will be bon!)
I appreciate that they did at least go to efforts to minize collateral human damage as well as show some droid assisted clean up, but come onnn. I definitely thought the battle against the mega-droidekas (which I DO think were cool) went on a bit too long once it was obvious blasters couldn’t get through – it just felt like they were trying that for way too long.
There were some aspects that did feel like some kids were just playing with their action figures and like ‘Wouldn’t it be so cool of Boba Fett was riding a rancor!?!?!?!’ but I also find it really fun so I don’t mind too much. I was seriously worried for the rancor and I’m glad he came out okay! I was a bit worred for Black Krrsantan as well but I had a feeling that they weren’t going to kill him off as he is a pretty popular comic character.
I was a bit surprised about Cad Bane – that said, at this point in the timeline he’s pretty old so I think him dying in a duel with Boba (which actually did happen in a deleted scene of TCW ) is somewhat fittnig. I actually thought maybe he’d end up in the bacta tank to disprove what he said about being a killer, but I also think Boba doesn’t really need to prove anything to him, and in a way, Boba IS a killer. I DO love that it was the gaffi stick that did him in (which is symbolic of him finding a tribe and Cad’s sneering about it), and I also loved that Cad DID win the draw. He IS the best sharpshooter; I hate when protragonists win things or just happen to be the best at X because they have to be. That said I do also think there was room for him still being alive as he may have had armor or a different physiology that let him survive that blow; his armor was beeping at the end, so there’s all sorts of speculation it had life support or that his droid companion is coming. This IS the guy that has breathing tubes as a contingency for Jedi Force chokes, after all.
That said I do really wish – as much as I loved other aspects of the show – that they had done more with Boba’s journey on this front, as well as reconciling his past, his grief for his father, recognizing he’s on a different path from his father (Cad’s comment about Jango was kind of interesting, actually), etc. I still am not sure, exactly, how Bib Fortuna ‘betrayed’ him.
I am really glad Fennec got her bit at the end because she’s been a bit underused and in some ways is smarter than Fett. I was actually kind of worried she was going to throw in with the Pykes at the end and that would be the big twist, as she seems to be a bit more ruthless. But she definitely showed why she is a master assassin.
I liked (even if I’m not totally sure why Boba cares so much about this) how Boba is basically cleaning up the town and the various residents of Mos Espa/Mos Pelgo (Freetown) came together in their own ways. The Mods and the sand farmers working together, and even Boba bringing in the mod-artist to help Cobb Vanth was just kind of a cool combination of things. I also really liked that even Peli got in on the action – hah, remember when episode 5 of the original season of the Mandalorian was derided as filler? The one that introduced Fennec, Peli, the concept that somebody rescued Fennec, and all that? Peli and the majordomo were a surprisingly fun pair.
The music was great – I LOVED the new version of the Marshal’s Tale we got when the Freetowners came in and the ending insrumental version of Boba’s Theme was great. I am NOT crazy about the vocals literally being ‘Boba Fett’ though.
And of course Mando and Grogu – I liked some of the creative ways they found to defeat some of the enemies (like the dupe with the tablet – which I think is the first instance of writing we’ve ever seen in Star Wars!) but also that even the Darksaber and the rancor weren’t automatic wins. I liked seeing them stick together and I think there is still some indication that Din is going to still try to honor the Creed (maybe he’s on his way to seek out Mandalore).
Holy crap their runiting though, I teared up! For a minute I DID think Luke was going to show up and I’ll be honest I was feeling like it was a tad overdone? Luke can’t come save their asses every season! So I was actually, in a weird way, glad Luke wasn’t in that X-Wing. At first I wondered if Grogu stole it, haha. But I think he just respected his choice and had Artoo take him which is really a very nice thing to do – he got to ride in Red 5!!!! I have to admit, I was hoping he’d wip out his lightsaber at one point to help out, but I actually LOVE that he ultimately just used the Force to connect with the rancor and calm him down. I was honestly irritated at the others for shooting at it! Aside from being stupid and just enraging it further, it’s just an upset/scared creature, not to mention Boba’s pet. So I like that Grogu found a peaceful solution which is very pro-Luke in my opinion and one of the first times we’ve seen him use the Force in a way that wasn’t just about his own needs or in aggression (there were a few times he’s used to to save Din in a more non-threatening way but I think this was more blatant). And him snuggling up to the rancor is obviously meant to make us all squee and it did, it totally did.
So, I’m looknig forward to future adventures with Din and Grogu now that he’s chosen his path, and I wonder how much of that will parallel with Din trying to find HIS path and break away from overly rigid rule systems.
RIP the Gamorreans, they get no respect :(
I want to see a spinoff where the Gamorrean twins get their own starship and go off in search of adventure. The title would be Pigs… in… SPAAAAAACE!!!
This show was so bad. I started watching it because I’d enjoyed The Mandalorian so much, but I continued watching under the influence of the car-crash-rubbernecker effect. How bad could it possibly get? Worse, and worse, and worse, turns out. I never, ever want to hear or read complaints again about how bad the writing is on this or that Star Trek series or Doctor Who. We have a new bar for WTF. Even as late as this finale, I thought “Y’know. Maybe this isn’t awful per se, it’s just meant for younger kids.” And then a line comes down from a ceiling and they hang a guy. With crunching sounds. And dangling feet.
After the novelty has worn off, I predict even the most enthusiastic people for this pile will admit it’s about as low as Star Wars is likely to get. Hopefully.
I wish they’d given Boba to Rian Johnson.
@1 – I don’t know, I did get that impression, I guess they just did a bad job of expanding it enough?
Having read the review now I’ll say that, yes thank you for pointing out the dumb-ness of the urban warfare setup just so we could get a bunch of smashy set pieces. :D I didn’t so much mind them separating out but you are right they should have drawn the battle away.
And definitely, double agree on the fact that we really didn’t get to dig as much into Boba’s psyche and daddy issues as I wanted to, but I guess that’s not as much fun as a rancor destroying Coit Tower in Mos Espa. (And to be clear, I can’t totally fault them, yes, Star Wars has lots of daddy issues but it’s probably not the main draw for most people).
I also got vibes with Drash and Jo so my vote goes there.
Oh,and I kind of loved that Peli lost a tooth? It just seems like it’s so rare that people – especially women – are allowed to be disfigured in a battle in some way but without turning it into a huge thing. There were a few shots but it just felt like kind of a surprisingly realistic outcome and I love Peli more and more with each apperance.
Well that was something. And yes, Russell Crowe, I was entertained.
Overall this season was fun but badly structured, overly episodic in places, with some baffling creative decisions; yet smoothed over with cool special effects and wonderful rancor action — hey, a true sequel to Return of the Jedi.
By the by, I’m guessing the final confrontation between Fett and Bane might be a homage to A Fistful of Dollars. “When a man with a rifle meets a man with a pistol…” and so forth.
Forgot to ask: Anyone know if that Cad Bane guy is supposed to be doing a Lee Marvin impression?
Ususally when you say I’ll draw their fire and you take them out you aren’t supposed to be 2 feet away from the person you are drawing fire away from Drash
Yeah, I think they were hinting at a thing between Drash and the Freetown sniper, but given that Drash has barely had any character development and I don’t think the sniper existed beyond a couple of brief shots in the previous episode, it was hard to be sure.
I predict a bigger role for Drash in a future show or movie, especially if Yellowjackets continues going absolutely nuclear in popularity. Sophie Thatcher is going to hugely be in demand for other things. They just need to give her more to do than look vaguely cool riding a Vespa (not, it has to be said, an easy thing to do).
@12,
Cad Bane is “Angel Eyes” (Lee Van Cleef) from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. (allegedly)
@12/Puff: “Forgot to ask: Anyone know if that Cad Bane guy is supposed to be doing a Lee Marvin impression?”
The wikis say that the character was modeled on Lee Van Cleef in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. But Corey Burton has said that he based Cad Bane’s voice on a mix of Lance Henriksen and Peter Lorre.
“That’s part of the reason why Luke is busy regurgitating bad Jedi dogma he’s already learned instead of saying something new; he can’t.”
The nature of a generative AI means they largely could have the avatar say whatever they want (albeit it’s likely that they had to tweak the script around phonetically in order to maximize the perceived output quality), so this really just indicates they had no idea what to do with the character other than have him act as a talking prop.
15/16: Well, then, apparently doing a Lance Henriksen by way of Peter Lorre (Peter Lorre!? Really?) gets you Lee Marvin. I just rewatched Cat Ballou and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance a couple months ago, and it’s uncanny, really.
Anyone else notice how inconsistant beskar armor is in this one? In Mandalorian s. 1-2, Din just brushes off blasts like they’re nothing. In the fight in front of the Sancuary, Boba and Din seem to be really taking damage from blasters and getting worn down. And then Cad Bane decides that he can blast clean through Boba’s armor with his pistol (not even a carbine). Over all, it was just messy all around.
@19/Echthelion: I did wonder why Bane was even bothering to try a shootout with an opponent in body armor. Like, was he planning to aim for one of the seams or something? Boba even reminded Bane that he had armor and Bane didn’t.
I thought he got him in one of the creases/gaps or something.
What I DID notice is that of course blaster bolts are always instantly lethal no matter where they hit if they are hitting a mook, but for other people it can just be shrugged off.
Granted, this is par for the course in Star Wars.
Like with real bullets and real body armor, it appears that there’s still an impact. It’s not going to penetrate beskar, but apparently it will still sting like a… dink ferret (or whatever the hell they’re saying). I think the point was Bane was trying to knock him down with the shots in order to remove the helmet, which he did.
But, Bane, as Eli Wallach famously said, “When you have to shoot, shoot, don’t talk.”
@6 Went there, you did… :-)
I am used to fiction where tactics make no sense, and trying to enjoy things anyhow, but this episode took the cake. Boba had so few people he could count all of them on his fingers and toes, and he decided to split them up to protect the entire city? This is a guy who has been fighting his entire life?
My least favorite part of the show was the jaw-droppingly clumsy “As you know, Bob” speech they gave to Ming-Na Wen. She did as well as anyone could with the lines, but ouch…
The whole was less than the sum of its parts, but there were some great moments. The rancor riding, Fennec’s one-person-army attack on the Pyke leaders, Mando’s dogged determination, his reunion with Grogu, and Grogu’s non-violent approach to the runaway rancor were all great. I suspect that Mando has a new home base on Tatooine, and that may be the biggest impact of this show going forward. I’d like to see Fennec work with Mando more in future episodes.
Next up is the Obi Wan show, which now has a May 25th debut date scheduled. I’m looking forward to that one!
Great fun, but really terrible. Lisamarie, I’m totally with you on the destruction porn — for people trying to protect the city, they were doing a shitty job of protecting the actual city itself. And there’s so much open space on Tattooine, why not draw the Pykes out into the sands? (Because then Robert Rodriguez can’t do urban warfare….)
Lots of good bits, but just a mess, storytelling- and pacing-wise. It feels like a rushed first draft that never got any editing…………
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@24 “Why not draw the Pykes out into the sands?”
That would be too metaphorical, as in Newton N. Minow’s “vast wasteland.”
I think I figured out the problem with this season. It was written to be marathoned all at once. The disjointed nature of the writing would be much easier to deal with watched that way……
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@26/krad: I don’t think a marathon would help its pacing all that much. If anything, the slow, meandering pace would get far more tiresome that way, and you’d still have the problem where it suddenly stops being its own show and spends two hours being the other guy’s show. Plus the problem where most of the characters introduced in the frame sequences were underdeveloped, and Garsa Fwip in particular ended up serving no real narrative purpose since she was just randomly killed off (plus, seriously, “Fwip”?).
What this needed was a wholesale re-edit by someone who could rein in the filmmakers’ fannish self-indulgence and startlingly languid pacing. You could probably have tightened this up to a solid 4- or 5-hour story that intercut the Boba Fett present-day stuff and flashbacks with the Mando side story, with better balance and less wasted time. It still wouldn’t have been great, though.
I pretty much agree with everyone’s problems re: storytelling, pace, character development, etc.
But on the other hand, my 9 & 11 year old kids absolutely fucking loved the whole thing, especially the finale. They still called out some of the weak shit, and told Boba/Din to just move slow to get past the shields because they’ve seen Dune, but at the end of the day this is fun shit for kids and on that front it succeeded.
Yes, let’s protect this ruined nightclub at all costs! Also let’s forget that we have two really cool spaceships that could probably turn the tide of battle quite easily. Seriously in Episode One Anakin takes out the Droidekas in seconds with his starfighter. You can’t tell me that the Slave 1 wouldn’t mop up those droids in less than a minute.
Also for all the street fighting that occurred, the streets of the city never seemed to be part of the same city we saw in establishing shots. I realize it was all green screen but it felt like a back lot studio set.
And yes, rest in peace piggies. Even if your design seems off from the ROTJ design, you still got a bad deal. I would have liked to see them at least take a few bad guys with them. They are supposed to be tough, if a bit dim.
I also felt a bit cheated at the lack of Wookie action. We see him overwhelmed, but we never got to see him going Wookie sh-t on those Trandoshans, I wanted that. Then he seemed to mostly exist to get repeatedly shot at. Finally, he seemed like a poor choice to be given the Trandoshan quarter as sentry. It was established that he really hates those guys.
The Vespa gang still looked like they were dropped into the wrong set. Also I don’t care about them.
Let’s keep shooting at the droids with no obvious effect!
The Sand People were not fridged. Okay, yes they totally were. But the hero also got a cool stick from them!
Finally, the series should have been called The Book of Fennec. She seemed much more capable than Boba most of the time.
It was entertaining though, even with all of its many faults..
@9
Never watched the Holiday Special, have you?
I loved the Rancor-trashing-the-city callout to the Star Wars Kinect game. That game was pretty dang budget, but getting to play the Rancor was always a highlight (right behind getting to dance-dance-revolution with Han Solo).
I gotta say…that theme song already struck me as odd. With all due respect for the professionality and dedication to craft that was apparent in the performance of that multitracked singer, it still seemed a shade towards parody to have the theme be someone singing nonsense syllables…sorta like a college acapella choir (or one of those 1-person virtual choir pieces on Youtube) doing a homespun arrangement of a pop classical piece (or a TV/movie theme song). (esp. with the singer not quite getting all the way up the high notes in the B section!) And then this latest version with the words being “Bo-ba-bo-ba-bo-ba…Fett!”. That felt like a parody of a parody.
…Still better than it woulda been if the words were “Jango Fett” though…
Must admit, I loved the final version of the Boba song. Reminded me of the over-the-top theme from RoboCop 2 where a choir enthusiastically sings, “RO-BO-COOOOOOPPPPPP!” Meh, it’s all cranked up to eleven anyway. Might as well.
I also must admit to being disappointed that Fennec didn’t get a rematch with Bane after their dustup in The Bad Batch……
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
This was all worth it for Boba Fett Riding A Rancor. I had to pause my viewing to reminisce about Christmas Morning 1983 and the arrival of “Return of the Jedi” toys under the tree…
(when we hear “tales of the glories of Christmases long long ago” in The Most Wonderful Time of the Year, my brother and I have the ongoing joke about 1983’s under-tree package of RotJ toys coupled with He-Man and the initial pre-lineup of Transformers)
Hey, the Darksaber became lightweight again!
More timeline questions. Fett’s reign as Daimyo seems to be barely a few weeks old, but the Naboo starfighter restoration and Grogu’s Jedi training are more likely to take several months each.
@36/BeeGee: IIRC, Fett killing Bib Fortuna was in the post-credits scene of Mando season 2. So that could’ve been a considerable length of time after the season finale, enough time for Grogu’s training. And the fighter restoration (which seemed more like days or weeks than months) could’ve taken place during the previous episodes.
But then, Yoda’s training of Luke seemed to take only a couple of days, unless it took a really long time for the Falcon to reach Bespin without a hyperdrive. Maybe Jedi masters can compress time?
Well, it didn’t take long for someone to do the inevitable joke/meme about Din and Grogu’s departure…
I’ve been irritated all season about the slow, stodgy hand-to-hand combat scenes. They just aren’t believable – I know the actors are older (AND THANK YOU FOR INCLUDING FATTER, MATURE CHARACTERS!!!) but come on… It was hard to watch these “legendary warriors” do the martial arts equivalent of paint-by-numbers, both physically and tactically. Why keep shooting at the shields endlessly? Not to mention splitting everyone up, failing to build defenses / traps / etc. Ug.
When it comes to asking “why in the city?” I thought that Drashd the other Mods made it clear – you fort up in the palace, nobody in the city is going to respect you… which, yes, is kinda stupid, since nobody ought to want a war in their hometown, and the destruction of Jabba’s Palace might be a net gain.
But tactically what the city offers (and is too often spurned in movies/TV) is cover and concealment. Wars on open terrain tend to be short, nasty, and brutal – see the various operations outside of the cities in Iraq – he with the biggest gun generally won, and quickly. Cities, or built up areas, as shown by assorted insurgencies, tend to re-balance things a bit more towards the weaker, defending, side.
However, apparently Boba Fett, Fennec, and Din have never heard the phrase “Defeat in detail.” And they very nearly experienced it by splitting their forces all over the place.
Back to city fighting tactics – when the reinforced Freetown mob took shelter behind those walls, it gave them time to flank the mega-droidelkas. Which was actually a bit silly, since from all appearances the droidelkas could have just walked up, leaned over the wall, and blasted them all to their constituent particles. The rancor was neat – but these people needed air support.