After a season spent meandering, last week’s episode of The Mandalorian somewhat refocused the season’s story and seemed to point to a big clash in this week’s finale. It almost did. Let’s get into it.
1. Safety squeeze
If you scour the internet looking for Star Wars rumors and discussion, last week was a goldmine of interesting ideas. With the episode’s title of “The Spies,” it seemed like the show was teasing a spy within the Mandalorian ranks, which led to a lot of discussion about who that could be. There were compelling cases made for the Armorer, the survivors who were living on Mandalore and using that weird pirate ship on land thing out of a Terry Gilliam movie, and even someone from Axe Woves’s crew of mercenaries being a spy. There was also a fair amount of talk about this being the end of Din Djarin, with Bo-Katan set to take over the show and Din in a seemingly inescapable position.
Since you’ve already watched the episode, you know that the show did none of this. It presented the most cookie cutter ending you could imagine, with a few small exceptions. Everything you see on screen is what a pre-teen with action figures would’ve done: Grogu in his IG-12 outfit saves Din. The Armorer and Bo-Katan fly through the sky, taking out Imps with their unique weaponry. Axe Woves crashes the ship into Moff Gideon’s base but gets out just in time. Grogu uses the Force to save his mom and dad.
Now, I suppose there could be a longer game to the ‘spies’ conversation, but after seeing all the major players doing their best to kill Imperial Darktroopers, it seems like that was just a title for Elia Kane and, I guess, maybe just the idea that Gideon was still pulling strings around the galaxy? It was a bad title if that’s the case, especially when something like ‘The Shadow Council’ was waiting there for you.
Is it fair to dock this episode points for not following up on a plot point from the last one? I think it is, because even if that episode was called something else entirely, this still felt like an incredibly predictable finale. Maybe we’ve been spoiled by the “IG-11 blows himself up” and “Luke fucking Skywalker returns” finales of years past, but this felt extremely safe.
2. Moff Gideon
If Moff Gideon is truly dead and not just pulling a Captain Phasma, then I want to issue a formal apology to both Giancarlo Esposito and Star Wars fans everywhere on behalf of Jon Favreau and co. Esposito is one of the most charismatic actors of his generation, and was used so infrequently here that it feels like one of the all-time wastes in casting. This is a very late-period Star Wars problem; remember when Merry from Lord of the Rings/Charlie from LOST was in like 5 minutes of The Rise of Skywalker for no good reason?
But even beyond just being a waste of a good actor, the whole Moff Gideon story felt as oddly paced and poorly laid out as anything we’ve seen on a Star Wars television show. The first season used him sparingly, but well. The second season barely touched him until the second half (again), and the same thing got pulled this season. Add to that the cloning thing being one of the more mysterious elements until in “The Return” he literally talks about “adding the Force” to clones which, if you’ve watched five minutes of Star Wars, you know isn’t, to quote Han Solo, how the Force works.
I really can’t get past how poorly handled all of the Gideon stuff was, especially as all the stuff that tangentially touches him has been pretty good. The Dr. Pershing episode had a ton of intrigue in it. When Captain Teva and Tim Meadows were talking about the growing Imperial presence in the Outer Rim, there was a lot of good nuance there. But everything with Gideon himself has felt like they only had Esposito for a day and a half of filming and had to re-write all of his lines on set. What a shame.
Continued below3. RIP Darksaber
The only thing that we can definitively say, 100%, was destroyed this episode is the Darksaber, which is supposed to be symbolic to the old ways dying (cue The Last Jedi trailer) and letting a new Mandalore rise from the ashes of its old champion. In general, I thought the stuff with the joining of the two coverts to create the new Mandalorian society was maybe the best stuff in the episode. Yes, there will be lots of disagreement and growing pains in the new society, but the show did a good job of showing how and why these groups may want to work together. I appreciate the hopefulness of these moments, even if it is something that seems doomed to fail.
But that failure can be interesting. Like Bo-Katan said last week, the only way that Mandalorians have been brought down is from within. This seems destined to happen again. I wouldn’t be surprised if there is either a new Mandalorian show announced that focuses on Bo-Katan and the Armorer and their new society, or if this show shifts to that perspective.
One last note on the Mandalorian culture. After Grogu is officially adopted by Din Djarin and given his new name of Din Grogu, the Armorer tells Djarin that he has to bring Grogu around the galaxy on adventures, as he once did. I can dig that, but why are none of the other apprentices doing that? We saw the season end with the baptism of the latest Viszla kid – whose aborted baptism started the season – but it seems like he and the other kids are going to be hanging around. I know they needed to get Grogu and Djarin off planet to do Star Wars elsewhere, but it seemed like a very lazy way to introduce that idea.
4. Rangers of the New Republic
Back at the Disney Investors’ Day announcement of 2020, Rangers of the New Republic was announced as another TV series in the Mandalorian world. This was never confirmed, but rumored to be a Cara Dune-led show. With her conveniently being written off for Gina Carrano’s dogshit opinions, the show seemed to go away. However, with Captain Teva approaching Djarin about being a gun for hire in the Outer Rim, it seems like maybe that show will be where the adventures of Din and Grogu live, either in title or at least in spirit. Those two seem destined for adventure that is more swashbuckling than the business of rebuilding a society. I wouldn’t be surprised if The Mandalorian became The Mandalorians and Djarin and Grogu headline their own show.
5. Feels like the end of something, no?
For all the shit I’ve slung at this episode, I must give it credit for feeling like an ending. Whether or not this signals a shift in the overall story, this episode felt sufficiently epic in terms of giving the Mandalorians their home back. It is surprising how little bodycount there was, though not a bad surprise, as deaths should matter in any media. But I didn’t have Axe Woves and the Armorer each walking out alive, and since I don’t really believe that Moff Gideon is dead, I’m not counting him either.
I’m sure some of these plot points will continue across Star Wars TV, whether through Ahsoka or other properties, and the way these things go, I wouldn’t be shocked if the shows get even more interconnected over time. But with an end date in place, at least hypothetically, with Dave Filoni’s just-announced film, the story is going to coalesce a bit, and it seems like some of the themes of the first three seasons will move in the background.
All in all, this was a disappointing season and, coming on the heels of somewhat disappointing experiments in The Book of Boba Fett and Obi-Wan Kenobi, Star Wars TV seems like it is in a bit of a rut. Let’s hope that Ahsoka, Skeleton Crew, and The Acolyte can start to put things right.
See ya this summer for Ahsoka!
