The last episode of season three! The last episode ever? Probably not, but given all the wrap-ups involved, it certainly could be…
Recap
Bo-Katan gets in touch with Axe Woves and tells him that they’ve found Gideon, his base, his plan, and that a fleet is coming to intercept their people. They need to get all their warriors on the ground and use the flagship as a decoy to distract the TIE fighters. Axe boards the ship, gives the orders and takes over command alone, automating the weapons so their people can take drop-ships to the surface. Din takes on his guards and is helped by the sudden appearance of Grogu. He asks the kid to be brave, as he plans to find Gideon and stop him. Asking for R5’s help, he learns where Gideon is likely to be on the base.
Din finds a series of guards and fights them in turn, taking their weaponry. He then finds Gideon’s cloning chambers, and destroys the entire lot. Bo-Katan and her people are taken to underground caverns where they learn that Mandalorians have been growing native flora. Their reinforcements arrive, and they head to the base to fight Gideon’s troopers. As they clash in a jet-packed assault, Din confronts Gideon, who brings out the Praetorian guards. They fight Din until Grogu steps in. Then Gideon has the guards menace Grogu into another room while he fights Din, but Bo-Katan sees this from above and arrives to have her final fight with Gideon. Din goes to help Grogu and the child uses the Force to help him defeat the guard.
Buy the Book
Some Desperate Glory
Bo-Katan fares well in the fight with Gideon, but he crushes the Darksaber in her hand. He gloats, insisting that she cannot beat him, but she reminds him that Mandalorian strength comes from unity as Din and Grogu return to help her fight. Axe Woves is crashing the flagship into the base, telling everyone to flee, but Bo-Katan, Din, and Grogu don’t have time to evacuate. As the ship explodes, Gideon is taken by the flames, while Grogu shields Bo-Katan and Din using the Force.
The Great Forge is relit on Mandalore. The Armorer completes Ragnar Vizsla’s “baptism” into the covert. Din wants the same for Grogu, but the Armorer points out that he cannot talk, meaning he cannot take the creed. Din says that his parents could give permission, but she notes that they have no idea if his parents are even alive. Din decides that he will adopt Grogu. The Armorer accepts this and dubs the child Din Grogu. Now that he is adopted and an official apprentice, Din must take him on journeys to mentor him, as custom dictates.
Din heads to the New Republic outpost to see Carson Teva. He tells him that he can continue to help the New Republic on his own terms, and that if Teva needs help, he should give them missions. Teva knows this would never get approved, but basically agrees to the arrangement. Din asks for an old IG unit head that he sees Grogu eyeing in the bar. They use it to repair IG-11 and give him to Greef Karga as a Marshall for Nevarro. Karga gives Din the key to a cabin on the outskirts, where Din and Grogu can rest “between missions.”
And that’s exactly what they do.
Commentary
This was simultaneously wildly satisfying while being the goofiest, most clichéd mess I’ve ever watched, and I’m still laughing about it. I mean, I had fun, but what.
Let’s start with a couple obvious things—first off, how long does it take to jetpack up to low-atmosphere, like I buy that it would take some time, but there was a whole speech and a fight and a face-off with Gideon, a lot of stuff has happened and Axe is still jetting to the carrier like it hasn’t been about a half hour since he bolted. And then Grogu magically appears to save his dad and Din is like eh, we should definitely just take on Gideon ourselves while we’re here, right?
To be fair, this is very him. What’s not very him is immediately calling up R5, asking for desperately needed help, and calling him “buddy” the whole time. Din, you doubled down on your droid racism, remember? It was awful? Why is R5 suddenly okay again, aren’t you still mad at him for telling Carson Teva where the cult was hiding out? Also, how did he get here, I don’t remember seeing him jetpack down with everyone else…
And look, I know that we love a series of ray shield partitions, but this is absurd. With Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon in Episode I, those shield segments were being used for dramatic effect and they worked wonderfully, so I’ll forgive the fact that they don’t make much sense at first glance. With this… why would you keep your forces sectioned off from each other? What is the point of stationing them in a line with the partitions unless Gideon literally just did it for vibes? Not that he doesn’t strike me as a “this looks cool” guy, I mean, look at his demonic Mandalorian helmet knockoff…
So Din does his video game simulator and gears up as he takes on each section of troopers—seriously, this is a video game, they’re all equipped differently, so he takes different weapons and gear from each set, don’t even look at me right now—and gets into Gideon’s cloning room where we find all his duplicates and one of them fully jump-scares Grogu before Din blows them all to hell somehow. (Everything is always rigged to explode, didn’t you know?) Then it’s time to stumble on Gideon, who is ready to tell them about the whole evil plot, being that he was trying to give his clones the one thing he needed to be truly great, which was obviously the Force!
…There’s a whole aside here that needs making, being that it’s super unclear what anyone thinks they’re accomplishing when cloning themselves like this because clones aren’t duplicates or new bodies. They’re unique individuals, as the clone troopers show us, so unless Gideon developed a way to download your consciousness into a fully grown clone (which was clearly a thing Palpatine wanted/eventually does, but is never brought up here), then how exactly is he thinking of these clones? As his… progeny maybe? The overwrought lines certainly have that ring to them—“I’ll give my kids opportunities I never had, like Force supplements with their blue milk!’
We’re just gonna skate right over the fact that, as of this moment, the whole Doctor Pershing episode was utterly pointless. I guess they can bring it back later, but for now, it did absolutely nothing for this arc aside from showing us the New Republic being unethically monstrous to people who are technically prisoners of war. (Which, again, WHY?)
Then there’s another totally random aside where the Mandalorians who have been living on the planet briefly take Bo-Katan and company to await the arrival of reinforcements in a cave where they’ve been growing vegetation this whole time. The entire all-too-brief section is literally devoted to the showing us that green native plants can still grow on the planet, there is nothing else to add since they immediately leave because their reinforcements arrive, and it could have easily been shown to us in the previous episode. But, you know. It’s pretty. So that’s nice.
Sorry, another thing, didn’t they transport wounded to the flagship in the last episode? Wasn’t that less than a day ago? People who were too hurt to go without advanced medicine? Where did—you. You just forgot about them, didn’t you. Yeah.
Also, the fact that Axe Woves doesn’t die when they give him all the usual “suicide run” cues once he takes over the flagship is pretty funny, but that’s a discussion for another day.
Battle commences, everyone’s fighting in midair, Bo-Katan can see that Din is having a tough time with Gideon since the guy had Grogu hauled off by the Praetorian guards. She sends him off after his kid, has her proper showdown with This Fucking Guy, who has been ruining her life on a regular basis. While Din gets to feel the full advantage of the Force (this kid should not be able to make the fight this easy for him given the Praetorian skillset, but fine, I digress) as Grogu helps him dispatch the guards, Bo-Katan holds her own against…
…hang on, is Gideon half-a-robot here? Does no one else hear that clanking every time he moves, what is going on with this man’s joints?
Then he grabs her hand holding the Darksaber and crushes it like an aluminum fairy wand and, yup, you know what, this man is definitely part robot. Are we not. Not gonna talk about that. No? Okay.
Which is unfortunately distracting because when he insists that Bo-Katan can’t defeat him and she tells him “Mandalorians are stronger together,” I did genuinely tear up. Not because it’s a good line, it’s pretty dang rote, but because she’s right and that’s the theme of the show, after all, and it’s great watching Din show up to defend her the way he promised he would. Watching him and Grogu give it all up for her while the rest of their people escape and the flagship is crashing down on Gideon’s base. Watching Bo-Katan shield them in turn from Gideon’s assault, this is all great stuff. And then the ship hits and Gideon is engulfed in an explosion and there’s no body, so I’ll believe it when I see one—also, as mentioned, this man is half-robot, I’m pretty sure. What are those sound effects for otherwise.
Of course, Grogu must protect Din and Bo-Katan from this inferno with his Force powers, but I have to tell you all, the music cue being used is almost the exact same cue used whenever Moses commits an Act-of-God in The Prince of Egypt, so that’s all I’m thinking about while I watched it. Sorry, I’m ruining the moment. I’ll wait for Grogu to part the Red Sea some other time.
Then we get all the cool denouement stuff, with the relighting of the Great Forge, and Din demanding the Grogu be added to the song of his covert. Which is how we find out that the adoption hadn’t been quite official on their terms, only being “apprenticed” to Din or whatever. (I would like to point out the apprentice terminology didn’t really turn up much until this season, so methinks they changed their minds about how they wanted the adoption deal to work, to make things more dramatic. They were a clan of two before, how is that not being adopted? Anyway…) Din finally makes it official. THAT’S HIS SON NOW, OKAY? HIS ENTIRE SON.
Now that means he has to take the kid off and train him, which is… not a thing we see being done with any of the other Mandalorian kids, but okay. Sure.
Which is how we get Din heading to that New Republic pilot hangout (I guess he asked R5 to tell him where Teva lives as payback) to create a brand new arrangement. Din and Grogu will be the sheriffs of the Outer Rim for the New Republic, taking bounties to help the new government keep things in check. And, you know what, okay. I’ll allow it. I’ll also allow for Dave Filoni (creator of Clone Wars, Rebels, and Ahsoka to name a few things) just sitting at the bar in his regular people clothes, but seriously, guy, you couldn’t ask them to make you a pilot suit? Who are you supposed to be? I love ya, but why would you step on set and not ask the costuming department to make you a real outfit? This is baffling to me.
That droid head is highly convenient, but yeah okay, IG-11 is back and the Marshall of Nevarro now. Karga gives Din a cabin (because as I’ve been mentioning since Peli gave it to them, that starfighter is not a house, thank you for finally fixing this). The cabin has these weird not-rails that look like a place for tying up horses, only there are no horses and they’re clearly just there to give Din a place to put his feet up when he’s sitting in his trusty Adirondack chair. Sorry, this is a Western, that’s the wrong region. Lawn chair. Fine Nevarran rocker.
And honestly, you could end the show here? They’ve done all the stuff they need to do, but presumably we’ll get at least one more season of Din taking Grogu on learning missions. Which seems fine, but I’m perfectly contented to leave them in their cabin. They deserve a break.
Bits and Beskar
- Sorry, Gideon is still calling Din “The Mandalorian” like he’s not fighting all of the Mandalorians.
- I would like more information on the fact that apparently they couldn’t grow anything outside of well-regulated gardens on Mandalore well before the Empire attacked. Tell me what they did to the planet, I’m so curious, it sounds bad. The idea of regrowing all the native wildlife is so exciting to me, can we get way more of that?
- The naming convention with Din is weird because literally no other Mandalorian names that we know work this way—they all go first name followed by family surname (typically the clan name), but Din Djarin is apparently the opposite for no given reason. It’s possible that the Mandalorians know the naming conventions of his former people and this is where they’ve taken the cue from, but then they should tell us that?
Well, my friends. That was season three, and Ahsoka is coming. Star Wars abides.
Surface to low orbit would be hundreds of kilometers on an Earthlike planet, so if anything I’m surprised that a jetpack can get Axe out there so fast, let alone that it has the fuel to achieve escape velocity.
Also, I don’t see a problem with having multiple layers of shielding to protect your sanctum sanctorum. Always good to have redundancy. What I don’t get is why there are pits there for people to fall into.
So there were no secret spies or traitors, and last week’s title “The Spies” was not a clue, just a poor choice. Typical of the superficial, careless writing of this whole season. Like, having Gideon just drop the bombshell that he was creating Force-capable clones after it’s already too late to still be an issue. Wouldn’t it have been more suspenseful if we’d known that all along? I mean, it belatedly explains why Gideon was after Grogu in the first place, but it’s so disconnected that it doesn’t feel like a culmination of a series-long arc, just a throwaway reference. It took me a minute even to realize the connection.
I realize that I don’t think we saw Pedro Pascal’s face even once this entire season. The first two seasons contrived excuses to get his helmet off occasionally, but this season committed fully to the helmet-on thing, which is the opposite of what I expected. I thought we’d see Din beginning to question his cult beliefs and maybe grow beyond them, but instead he just reaffirms them and everything works out nice and hunky-dory, very uncomplicated and shallow. Quite disappointing.
So we end with what could be a series finale, or a reset to the original episodic status quo. It’s struck me that Din had completely abandoned the bounty-hunter thing this season in favor of reuniting Mandalore, which kind of explains his tiny fighter ship. But if he’s going back to hunting bounties, I hope he gets a more suitable ride.
Jon Favreau said that season 4 is already written and that they currently have no plans to end the show, so I took this season as sort of a reset button back to the season 1 structure. I’m perfectly content with that.
I appreciated the subversion of my expectations from the previous episode. I was sure there was a Mandalorian traitor somewhere, probably Axe Woves (or maybe the Armorer). I was happy to see they were all as loyal as they claimed. And I personally loved Axe defying the cliche and remembering he had a jetpack and didn’t have to die. I just wish they’d given him a cool one-liner like the Master Chief’s in Halo 2:
”Axe, what are you doing?”
”Giving Gideon his ship back.”
I’m also content to see the show get back to its episodic format. I liked the picture of the lone cowboy with his trusty steed at his little house out in the West. Moff Gideon’s latest dark trooper armor must have powered components somewhere like Iron Man. The plot made no sense for all the reasons pointed out above, but I thought the mouse droid cops were cute and funny. (I also thought the droid morgue a few episodes ago was amusing and funny.)
Pedantic details hat on, now – I think in Star Wars world, “orbit” mostly means “hovering over a point on the surface at very high altitude (maybe 80,000 ft up to the Karman line),” not “freefall with a sufficiently high tangential velocity that you loop around the planet without ever hitting the ground.” That’s been pretty consistent with how space battles are shown in Revenge of the Sith, Rogue One, and now Mandalorian season 3. And also probably most of the cartoons, but I’m not going to take the time to remember which episodes right now. I think for a starfaring civilization like Star Wars that has overpowered ships that have no need to pay attention to orbital dynamics, that makes sense. It would sure make crew escape and recovery a lot safer and easier than in deep space or in true orbit. – – – Of course, all it really means is that Star Wars writers have never understood orbital dynamics or had any compelling reason to account for it.
@2 – So, it turns out we were all kind of wrong about ‘The Spies’ meaning a spy/traitor, but instead it’s a Biblical reference about Moses sending 12 “spies” to scout the land of Caanan. So…another allusion to Jewish culture. The Mandalorians were the spies all along!
@@.-@ Ooh, did somebody come out and say that it was a Numbers reference? Because I really like that.
There are some aspects of the finale I was let down about, in that most of it was a pretty by the numbers resolution and we didn’t get any massive twists or shocking developments. However, there is a part of me that would kind of like to normalize that. When every season feels like it needs to ‘outdo’ the last in terms of shocking developments it starts to feel overdone. Literally nothing can top the season 2 finale for me, and that’s okay.
My main let down is that I did want to see a little more of Grogu’s Force abilities (I feel like he could have been using it way sooner) and I really wanted to see the Mythosaur be a more active part of it. However, I did really love that they showed Grogu mostly using the Force in protective ways.
My other main criticism is that the stuff with Gideon did feel like there could have been more with that. Force sensitive clones are kind of a huge deal! Did he survive? Did a clone survive? It all just felt a little too rushed. Although I can kind of appreciate the sheer arrogance it takes to be all “I’m so awesome I’m just gonna clone MYSELF as the ultimate soldier, but with the Force”. Hell, there are some days I feel guilty for having children, much less cloning myself, lmao.
And yes, Gideon is 100% extra enough to want the ray shields for vibes. (I actually really do love that it’s clear that this is being made by people who have affection for the prequels). But more to the point, I hope this isn’t seen as overly critical, but…if I hadn’t ever read anything by you but these reviews, I would wonder…do you even LIKE Star Wars? (I know you do, lol) Does it make you happy? Star Wars has always been a vibe and mishmash of a bunch of different imagery and none of it makes practical sense, and…that’s okay! While I am not an advocate for just ‘turn your brain off and accept anything the corporation throws at you’ but sometimes these types of reviews (not just here) that strip everything down scene by scene just seem to rob the viewing experience of any potential joy.
Granted, I can also get going on picking stuff apart, or my own criticisms with this or that, and certain things drive me crazy or just end up not working for me – that’s what fans do. So I guess I can’t complain too much. :)
One thing I loved – while from a ‘historian’ point of view it was painful to see the Darksaber crushed (that thing is an antique!) I actually think there was a lot of heavy thematic and spiritual symbolism to it, somewhat in line with some of the other things going on with the different tribes uniting. The Armorer’s covert is learning to be a little less strict about The Way (even though they themselves will still choose to follow and find meaning in their Creed) and the Darksaber legalism is also potentially going to be done away with. I really liked the ending in Mandalore with Bo and the Armorer lighting the forge together (and I am so, so, so glad the Armorer was not a traitor, as I mentioned in a previous comment thread I have a lot of feelings about that and what the archetype of her character means to me personally).
Kinda love Din and Grogu just heading out to settle on the frontier, to be called when needed.
Overall…I’d say it was a fairly average/middling season in that it didn’t have the same highs the previous seasons did, and some of the pacing/storytelling was a bit sloppy (perhaps in part because they had to make up for Rangers not being a show any more?) but I still enjoyed it and what it contributes to other aspects of worldbuilding, character development, etc.
I really enjoyed this episode, and I was also struck by how this could be a fine series finale, but we know it won’t be. It’s just a big old reset button. I’ve read a lot of comments online about how people are disappointed that Din didn’t realize that he didn’t need to wear his helmet to be a Mandalorian, but I think it’s enough that he realized that other people could be Mandalorians without living by the same creed. Also, people need to face the fact that Pedro Pascal has other commitments and isn’t going to be popping up on this show very much.
As for Gideon being part robot, I just assumed he had powered armor.
Pretty sure the robot noises Gideon made is the armour – in the old EU Dark Trooper M3 was “Power Armour”, or a “Powersuit”.
But, jetpacking into orbit? When a couple of episodes ago made a big thing of the limited fuel the jetpacks have? That not a thing now? If so, why do they even need a drop ship? It’s an easier target than a mass of people flying.
And “Din Grogu” just seems like decided that Grogu wasn’t a good name, and “Grogu Djarin” was to much of an mouthful.
The feeling I get this season is that it seems like Disney finally decided what they wanted to do with Star Wars – basically do a version of the old EU like a lot of people originally wanted, and to set up the new movies and series and bring in Thrawn, but to do that they had to tidy up the stuff this show had set up that contradicted other parts of new “canon” – separate Gideons cloning as being off book and nothing to do with the coming First Order/Snoke/Palpatine being the main one.
So Mando is working with the New Republic to police the Outer Rim? Kinda like a Ranger of the New Republic? They did say that stories from that would be “absorbed” by The Mandalorian, so that works as a set up for the show going forward – hopefully we’ll see a larger variety of planets in future seasons.
@3/iwytor: Even so, the Karman line on Earth is 100 kilometers (60 miles), so Axe would’ve had to be going really fast to be able to get there in half an hour or less.
@8 – putting aside all the other impracticalities (I am honestly impressed at how insulating Mando armor and helmets are, haha) I was also wondering about the fuel thing, but wonder if the covert has more limited resources, or perhaps Bo’s troop just has better/more efficient equipment as they strike me as a more finely tuned military force.
@7 – was gonna say, I feel the same way. Din and his covert are still free to find value in that tradition if they so choose; I don’t think the point should be that they are all just wrong. But there are other ways to be a Mandalorian as well.
Thanks Emmet — love your reviews, and this was a fun way to end the season!
@1 I may be wrong, but I think Pedro Pascal was never on set in this season, he was busy filming other stuff, like The last of us. He just provided his voice and the stuntman acted in his place in all the scenes.
@10/Lisamarie: “I am honestly impressed at how insulating Mando armor and helmets are, haha”
Sci-fi always gets this wrong, and I’m sure Star Wars is no different, but vacuum is an insulator in itself, which is why thermos bottles work. People don’t freeze instantly in space; on the contrary, spacesuits need cooling systems to keep astronauts from overheating. (Just as you freeze faster in water than air because it’s a denser medium that conducts and convects heat away faster, so the reverse is true when there’s no medium at all and you’re left only with radiation, the least efficient mechanism for heat loss.) So insulation is the last thing Axe would’ve needed in space. The bigger stretch for me is accepting that his armor was airtight and had a built-in air supply.
@13 – that’s actually what I meant, I just wasn’t sure of the right word. Is it just airtight? Or is there a more technical term? And maybe pressure-regulating; not sure how fast you actually ‘explode’ in space, either.
But I actually never thought about heat transfer in space!
Incidentally, you’d think that, so many years after the Death Star, the Empire and its remnants would’ve installed some safeguards against astromechs hacking their systems. I mean, given how ubiquitous astromechs are, if they can just blithely control every system in an enemy base, then there’s effectively no security at all.
@14/Lisamarie: “And maybe pressure-regulating; not sure how fast you actually ‘explode’ in space, either.”
You don’t. That’s an even bigger myth than the freezing thing. “Explosive decompression” means that it happens in a single abrupt burst, not that it actually blows people up.
Surprisingly, one of the best explanations I’ve seen in sci-fi of what really happens when you’re exposed to vacuum was in a Doctor Who episode, “Oxygen”:
Okay, the “lungs will explode” bit is an overstatement, but it will rupture the alveoli inside the lungs. Otherwise, it’s pretty accurate. It is important that a spacesuit maintain your pressure to prevent the described effects.
Remember, George Lucas said in his universe there’s air in space when there needs to be.
That was a lot of fun! And since I enjoy Star Wars because it is fun and exciting, that’s all I need.
The idea that the spies from the title of the last episode were the Mandos sent ahead to the Holy Land, I mean Mandolore, makes so much sense. I read an article recently that looked at all the parallels between the Jewish people and the Mandolorians, and the inspiration is pretty clear.
I wonder if it would make more sense for Mandolorian rocketpacks to work like those from Buck Rogers, with a repulsor or anti-gravity device to lift it, and the rockets to send it in a particular direction. Even using the goofy physics of Star Wars, small rockets doing what we see on screen, especially Axe’s single-stage-to-orbit stunt, are hard to swallow.
And it was pretty silly, but I loved the swarming mouse droids with their light bars flashing.
That was a lot of fun. I did notice many of the quibbles already mentioned. Axe’s shot put to orbit, or a bit lower. Mando as chummy with R5, as Luke with R2. The screens game level I can forgive since it appeared the guards thought they could lower them to rush him, but R5 was preventing that (maybe?) And, it’s Star Wars. There are always pits to fall into.
I was also amused at the handy timing of the drop ships entering the sensor-obscuring atmosphere mere seconds before the Interceptors emerged at the exact same spot and angle. Could have been awkward if half the squadron flipped around after them.
But, as I said, overall, I enjoyed it. And this may be more a function of my age, watching the originals in the 70s, then so many reruns since, but when Din Djarin was making his pitch to Teva, I really expected him to say his fee would be reasonable, “200 credits a day, plus expenses”. Especially once we saw that final shot, settled into his trailer by the beach, I mean, cabin in the desert, with his sports car parked beside. They’ve set up Season 4 to be Outer Rim Rockford. With a cute son, instead of a cute Dad. And Grogu will be way more help than Rocky. I say, Bring it on!
@18/Agent6: “They’ve set up Season 4 to be Outer Rim Rockford.”
It would be really cool if they did that. So Carson will be Sgt. Becker? Who’ll be Angel Martin? Greef Karga? IG-11? (Hondo Ohnaka would be perfect for it.)
“…the whole Doctor Pershing episode was utterly pointless.” I quite liked that episode. I’m okay with having standalone “tales from Star Wars” stories. We may never get a true live action anthology show but dropping a few side stories here and there works for me.
“is Gideon half-a-robot here?” I guess they showed so much action leading up to the boss battle they felt the need to ramp up the threat level. But it felt a bit silly to me too.
I’m pretty pleased with how the season wrapped. The episode was a bit goofier than I would have wanted. Tonally it felt more like one of the trilogy movies than this show usually does, but it wasn’t so overdone that it kept me from enjoying the episode. Except the mouse droid gag. That was prequel level.
I was surprised to see the clones were of Gideon, and not part of a long term plan to clone Palpatine. Having it be Gideon cloning himself didn’t make any sense to me—Gideon’s always come across as a true believer and not a megalomaniac. I don’t want to see the show sucked into the trilogies’ baggage, but I thought as a bit of set decoration having it be Palpatine makes more sense. Would Gideon really want a bunch of more powerful Gideons walking around?
I’m a bit sad that with the Mandalore storyline concluding I expect Bo Katan will not be a recurring character in season four. I think “Guns for Hire” demonstrated that Bo Katan/Din can make a really entertaining double act. But realistically you could only stretch out the Mandalore arc for another 3-4 episodes. If it continued into all of S4 I think it would have dragged.
My 2 credits on Axe’s orbital flight was that the Mandalorian ships had to be hovering in the atmosphere. As soon as he cleared the clouds he was in reasonably close proximity to the ships. That cloud density wouldn’t be possible at a high altitude. I’m not sure how you’d work lighting the ships as they were while still having a night sky starfield background. Rule of cool I guess. Also impressive is how he was able to plot a rendezvous course without LOS or radio contact. That’s likely another argument for the ships hovering in atmosphere right over the landing site.
Also, the rule of cool ended up destroying a perfectly good base for no reason I can determine. I guess that’s just what you do to Imperial bases.
Something that occurred to me during this episode was that the Armorer is the only one taking a practical approach to fighting opponents wearing beskar. Whack them with a mace or hammer for the concussion damage. The shock sticks don’t count—you need something with some mass to it.
All in all I liked this season. I’m much happier to see S4 set up as a return to adventures of the week instead of going down the path of galactic scale shenanigans. I hope they find him a good recurring partner to replace Bo Katan. I think it would liven up the show.
Is this yet another new Force ability? In A New Hope there was Force-mind-changing, Force-weapon-accuracy and Force-choking. In The Empire Strikes Back we got Force-levitation and Force-disarming. Return of the Jedi brought us Force-ghosts, Force-mind-reading and Force-lightning. The Force Awakens gave us Force-mental-torture, The Last Jedi showed us Force-projection-to-a-different-planet, and The Rise of Skywalker had Force-wound-healing and Force-resurrection. Have we seen Force-protective-bubble before this?
The ‘robot’ noises on Gideon didn’t throw me, exactly since he had said last episode he was wearing a new version dark trooper suit. All of his fight scenes very much read like he was wearing, not just protective armor, but strength-augmenting power armor. It actually brought to mind the Martian Marine recon suits from The Expanse, for me at least.
Overall, this felt like the writers decided they had had some character-driven drama earlier in the season and the finale was just going to be fun. And it was! The episode was internally tonally consistent, with all the abovementioned silliness fitting together in a way that big reversals or revelations , or even another Noble Sacrifice, would have disrupted. I’m a sucker for capital-D-drama, but using this episode to finish up on a high note? Works for me.
S
@21/BeeGee: “Have we seen Force-protective-bubble before this?”
I recall it being used in one or two of the novels in The High Republic. The bad guys, the Nihil, had a gas they used in their attacks to blind and incapacitate their foes, and the Jedi used the Force to push it away and create clear zones around themselves and the people they were rescuing.
Didn’t Obi-Wan use the Force to hold back ocean water in Kenobi? I think similar things have been done in the animated shows too.
Of course, as long as I’m bringing real physics into a discussion of a space fantasy, I should mention that even once the flames cleared, the air would still have been lethally hot, so dropping the protective bubble would’ve been a bad idea. Although a ship of that mass falling that far would’ve had an immensely more destructive impact, probably vaporizing the whole base and everyone in it in a split-second.
@21 In the Rebels episode “Jedi Night,” Kanan used the Force to hold back an explosion in a very similar manner as Grogu did here. I see it as another way of using the “push” power.
@21 in addition to @24, I’d offer the barrier around the Seeing Stone on Tython back in Chapter 14 (? I think). It seemed at minimum the Force assisting some sort of ancient mechanism, and possibly entirely Grogu’s creation.
@21: Rebels did that twice, I think.
loved the mythosaur! We very much enjoyed the episode, even having noticed a few of the things you’ve all noticed. Just a fun ride!
Speaking of the mythosaur, it’s very weird that there was no payoff to the revelation that they still exist — just another glimpse of it being down there. They put the gun on the wall and never fired it. Maybe it’s a long-game setup for a later season, or maybe for the climactic Filoni movie that all the shows in this era are apparently building toward. Or maybe it’s just this season’s careless, unfocused writing.
@20 I agree about the Pershing episode, but in retrospect, it was not about Pershing at all. It was Elia Kane’s episode, Pershing was simply the POV character, allowing the audienc to question Elia’s motivations until the very end. And the revelations in that episode did play a role in the last two episodes.
@21, I think the franchise has set a firm precedent that ships falling from orbit don’t work in Star Wars the way they work in real life. I’m thinking of the opening of RotS and the Clone Wars finale particularly. You don’t get a colony drop—you get the absolute minimum damage the plot requires.
As I think about it, it was actually a kind of meh end to Gideon. He basically whupped Bo Katan and Din then got killed by collateral damage. Tradition would have him more explicitly ended by one of the heroes. Not a huge deal, though.
@24, That’s the first thing I thought of when they used the power here. It gave me the sad feels instead of the triumphant feels, though I think it still works for a general audience.
@27, “Speaking of the mythosaur…” I think it did what the story required of it. Earlier in the season it gave Bo Katan the shock needed to start getting her mojo back and in the finale it adds a little emphasis that the Mandalorian culture has been reestablished. It served a purely symbolic role.
@@@@@#19/CLB For Mando as Rockford, Carson Teva is definitely Becker. Angel, the oddly endearing schemer? I’d say Peli Motto. Plus she’s the resident mechanic for the Firebird, which is what I will forever call that ship now. It’s a role the original show should have had, given how Rockford abused that car. (Fred Beamer doesn’t count.) And, of course, Bo-Katan is Beth Davenport, his perfect woman who he can never get together with, because…reasons.
I thought in the first season Grogu does something to protect them from a flamethrower but on a much lesser scale (and then falls asleep immediately afterwards). But Kanan was the other example I was thinking of as well, and like CLB mentions, Obi-Wan does something similar in Kenobi on Nur (and I think that it self is pretty similar to something in the Jedi Fallen Order game).
But like CLB my husband and I were debating what this Force ability entails. What about the heat? (Granted, this is a world where Jedi can also fight on metal platforms in literal lava…). What about oxygen? Wouldn’t the fire be sucking the oxygen out of that little bubble eventually? And what about the other structural damage/shock waves/etc? Maybe the ability also funnels in oxygen and dissipates heat!
But in that thread, I imagine Gideon’s suit is also fireproof (and hopefully has a cooling system so he didn’t roast…).
And yes, circling back to a previous comment, cybersecurity in Star Wars is a JOKE. I think about that whenever a droid can randomly scomp into ANY system from any port. Ideally the shield gates would be on their own isolated system. Ships can just be piloted away without a concept of a key. Tala’s random stormtrooper credentials apparently get her elevated access in Fortress Inquisitorious. This of course dates back to the movies…they don’t even change their codes frequently enough ;) Even when they do try to pay some lip service to encryption, apparently any random dude you find in a casino jail will be able to hack it for you ;)
Perhaps R5 (as a Rebellion agent) has special hacking abilities though, shrug :)
I actually thought the mouse droids were hilarious and the gag went on just the right amount of time. The mouse droid ‘humming’ to itself as it tries to ‘casually’ approach R5 (before speeding up to confront him) cracked me up.
@31/Lisamarie: “Perhaps R5 (as a Rebellion agent) has special hacking abilities though, shrug :)”
I was actually just about to suggest that.
Although it’s hard for me to think of R5 in those terms. As I’ve mentioned, the only Star Wars action figure I ever owned in my life was an R5-D4 figure, whom I partnered with my two Tomy wind-up walking robots (the ones that looked kind of like baby versions of Robby the Robot) in a “science lab” made out of cardboard consoles, a broken pocket radio, and assorted other bits and bobs. When I played with them, I cast R5 as the dimwitted one of the trio, the big bumbler. So it’s taking a bit of effort to wrap my mind around this more canny and capable R5, who’s basically been turned into an R2-D2 surrogate.
That’s really cute :)
I remember there being a fan theory about how R2 told R5 about his mission and so he purposefully self destructed in ANH (I don’t recall if this stemmed from any canon source) and then some of his later exploits were covered in one of the ‘certain point of view’ anthologies. Not sure those are intended to be strictly canon either though; there are intended contradictions (I as I think it’s supposed to be similar to a ‘House of the Dragon’ scenario where it’s all from the POV of various minor characters who have their own perspective.)
I’m pretty sure the music that played when Grogu put up his force shield to protect them from the exploding starship — because mass is not a thing in the Star Wars universe — was the same music that played as Root wove the sphere of himself around the rest of The Guardians of the Galaxy in the first movie. It might as well have been.
At its heart, the Mandalorian is a simple, feel-good adventure. This episode and wrap-up delivered in a way that fit the tone of the show; no big surprises, no tragedies, a lot of rote feel-good. This is by no means a criticism! It knows its tone, and while there’s always going to be a bit of risk and loss—Pax Viszla, we’re sorry it had to be you; you fit the “sacrifice” tone just too well—we’re meant to leave the episode feeling fulfilled and satisfied, ready to go out and replay the whole thing with our action figures.
(Dr. Pershing’s/Elia Kane’s episode was actually an amazing shake-up to this—I absolutely adored that episode, and with the reveal of Gideon’s clones I assumed that this cemented the theory that Kane’s intent was to scramble Pershing’s loyalty to the Republic right out of his head, so that the two of them could conspire to send Pershing’s data to Gideon for his new clone army. If she had just wanted his data safe from the Republic she could have pushed him off a railing-less walkway somewhere—god knows there’s no lack of those—so clearly she needed something more from him, and that now makes sense.)
@33 Skippy the Jedi Droid – not canon, but cute idea :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuOWYGCKJgM
I thought it was a pretty satisfying resolution to the season, hit all the high points, etc. I tend to hold Star Wars to a different standard from Star Trek given the high “woo” quotient that’s been in the movies from the beginning.
One thing that’s pretty clear from context is that ships almost never “in orbit” in Star Wars. You can’t physically stay at a single point over the surface while maintaining orbital momentum without being at geostationary distance, — which is 22,236 miles up for Earth, too far for plot distances — and almost every ship in Star Wars stays over a single point on a planetary surface. So ships are using the Star Wars galaxy’s cheap antigravity/repulsor technology to stay at fairly low altitudes. (It’s one thing that actually made sense in The Last Jedi, when crewmembers at the Resistance base “hear” First Order destroyers appear and look up and the ships are close enough to see, and the bombers can later “drop” bombs because nobody’s in free fall. And of course Revenge of the Sith opened with a giant battle where ships which are clearly not actually moving according to orbital mechanics fall when incapacitated.) May just be my headcanon, but it does reconcile some quirks.
@21 I thought the mythosaur thing had dual purpose this season: to give Bo-Katan credibility with the Armorer, and as set up for the future. I thought we were clearly shown that Grogu had reached out to it with the Force at the end, like he did Boba’s rancor. That’s going to come back some day.
I thought the Pershing story made sense with Gideon’s spy mind-flaying him in order to dead-end clone technology. This way only Gideon would have clone technology, Palpatine’s recloning would be thwarted, and Gideon would have a clear path to new emperor with that much less competition. But it didn’t work for him. Don’t know why they didn’t just murder Pershing with poisoned empire-lembas, I guess they wouldn’t have netted an episode of his adventures and betrayal out of that.
The only thing I didn’t get that I expected from the finale (other than a sudden but inevitable betrayal from someone) was a giant beast attack (either mythosaur or kaiju) destroying the base. But instead, we got Axe riding that corvette in like an avenging valkyrie (which also kind of reminded me of Slim Pickens in Doctor Strangelove). And until we see a body, Gideon is only mostly dead.
@40
We don’t have Gideon’s body, but we also don’t know the mechanism behind transferring one’s consciousness into a clone. Did Gideon figure that out perhaps? Are force-sensitive clones the key?
Dave Filoni is wearing a pilot suit? He’s just also wearing a jacket over it, surrounded by other folks wearing similar jackets (including Carson Teva). It’s just that Dave Filoni’s jacket is more closed so you can barely make out the orange jumpsuit. Which I agree, maybe he doesn’t really have the full costume and that’s silly but also he’s definitely wearing what other folks are wearing in the scene.
If you remember what Gideon said in the previous episode, he basically made it explicit that next-gen dark troopers were superior not just because of beskar armour but also because instead of being robots they would contain his body. The implication being that the new suits were exoskeletons, as we saw demonstrated in the finale. So that’s what the clones were for… not some longevity scheme, but a personal army of force-enhanced Iron Men. I’m sure they would have been free to have their own personalities within the limits permitted by their implanted control chips.
A fun romp and a great ending, to this casual viewer. One noteworthy LOL moment – Gideon uses the same phrase (with the same heavy breathing inside helmet) when he says about Din, “I will deal with him myself.” Just like another helmet wearer ….
@1/ChristopherLBennett
Because all architects in the Star Wars galaxy are members of a cult, and the pits are how they provide sacrifices to the eldritch entity they worship.
Here was my problem with the finale.
Why are Mandalorian tactics so bad?
They are supposed to be the BAMFs of the galaxy, but pretty much every large-scale battle we see them in boils down to “Group up and shoot them until they die!”
I would have loved to see the advance guard of Katan’s crew using those funky portable shields they have to create cover while the rear guard shoots. Especially if they did it while flying.
I also wondered what was the point of giving the covert all that land if they were just going to pull up stakes at the end of the season and return to Mandalore. Does that mean all that land on Navarro goes back to the government? And what of the promise to protect the planet? It STILL doesn’t have an army.
Overall I enjoyed the episode as a Stars Wars “set suspension of disbelief on high”, big action, big blow ups, fun time. I did wonder if Elia Kane is now unemployed. I remember years ago reading books about Thrawn but can’t remember much of anything about them. Was Gideon alive for those?
They faked me out with Axe surviving. I really thought he was going down with the ship. I noticed pretty much all the same issues others have mentioned but it was an episode that had the right feel for me.
My lasting image of the show was when I realized Moff Gideon’s helmet looked like Batman to me.
Din Djarin now literally (well, meta-literally) lives by the Creed.