Welcome back to another season of The Mandalorian recaps! After a lengthy lay off – more than 2 years! – we are back with adventures of Din Djarin and Grogu. Let’s stop wasting time and get right to it. This is the way.
1. Nice fake out
The episode begins by showing a ceremony of a young boy, presumably a foundling, being presented with their beskar helmet and initiated into the Mandalorian culture. The ceremony is interrupted by a sea-dinosaur trying to eat up the assembled Mandalorians. It appears, at first, that this is a flashback to Din’s initiation, and that is presumably what the show was attempting to convince you of, until Din and Grogu swoop down in their bicycle starship built for two.
This set up a conversation between Din and the Armorer which will act as the mission statement for the show’s third season: Din is going to Mandalore to bathe in the ‘living waters’ under the mines. It should be noted that the entire world is crystalized over, and is reportedly poisoned. On one hand, this seems perfectly true to the character and is what a brainwashed, radicalized orphan would do. On the other, just about everyone in his life is telling him in their own way that this is a terrible idea. The Armorer basically tells him he’s dumb and when he doubles down, she replies with a jaunty “this is the way.” Bo-Katan is so sure the plan is bad that she tells him exactly where on the planet he has to go, knowing he’ll never be able to get there. Greef Karga offers him a plumb job and a tract of land instead of chasing the ghost of a cult.
The issue with this storyline isn’t whether or not it is a bad idea in story; there is a lot of great media built around a bad idea. The issue is that this is the most predictable path the show can take. Separating Din and Grogu for a season would’ve revitalized the show in a number of ways, but instead, they were reunited between seasons. Giving Mando a story where he could put down roots would allow the character to be more than just a shell that others can project their feelings on. Even if the point of this season turns out to be his slavish devotion to a mistake, that could be something. But this feels like it is setting up a Din triumph by succeeding in his forgiveness ritual.
This all discounts the fact that he chose to break Mandalorian rules. Why? Because he recognized that Grogu is more important to him than his old cult is. He’s trying to have it both ways, and that won’t work from a storytelling perspective, no matter how much it is pushed by the writers.
2. Cara Dune died on the way back to her home planet
A few simple lines of dialogue were written to explain why Cara Dune, portrayed by the problematic Gina Carano, would not be appearing in this season. I understand why this was necessary, as we last left her as the marshal of Greef Carga’s Nevarro settlement, and it is something that future viewers will have no problem accepting if they notice it at all. But as of today, this stinks of a quick write-off that was crafted to be as non-committal as possible. If Carano changes her ways, she can easily be written back in. If she’s recast, same idea. If she never comes back, sure, why not. I’m not saying it’s bad writing, but it makes for unsatisfying television.
3. Why are we going back to all the wells?
I mentioned before how the reuniting of Grogu and Din seemed like a rush job. This episode, despite nothing really happening in it, also felt like it was rushing…well, everything. Specifically, it felt like it was trying to get as many Star Wars references shoved in as possible. We had to bring in Babu Frik for some reason. IG-11 needs a resurrection. We needed a tree full of Salacious B. Crumbs and a city infested with protocol droids. There appears to be a carbonite bust of Karga. We see the first live-action Purrgil (hyperspace whales, for those who never watched Rebels). Any of those things could have been cool on their own, but this just felt like a bucket of Star Wars dumped on screen without any real reason to have any of it appear. None of them were set up in a way that felt creative or unexpected, and none, as of right now, contributed anything to the episode at all.
Continued below[Before someone points it out in the comments, yes, seeing alive Crumbs instead of ones on a spit like in season one shows the progress of Nevarro. I get it. And yes, I know the species is Kowakian monkey-lizard, but let me have my fun.]
4. The Bo-Katan of it all
The Din/Bo-Katan relationship is one of the most interesting ones on the show. Din has the darksaber, which Bo-Katan wants more than anything else. But he can’t just give it to her, and she can’t beat him in combat, so they’re locked in a stalemate where no one can proceed. Bo-Katan thinks he’s part of a cult; Din thinks she represents a false interpretation of his religion. There is a lot here to make a story interesting, but the show doesn’t want to pair them together. I’m sure this isn’t the end of Bo-Katan this season, but we just get a brief interaction between the two Mandalorians that teased so much more. They have both been rejected by their people and have so much in common. I want more of this duo, but I fear we’re not going to get too much of them.
5. A glorified recap show
One of the nice things about the first season of The Mandalorian is that it used eight episodes to build entirely new characters and scenarios to play around in. Season two expanded the universe by bringing in Ahsoka, Bo-Katan, and Luke, but the focus was still on what was created for this series. This episode didn’t introduce a single new piece to the overall mythos. It was a rehash, a greatest hits episode.
In the days of TV before streaming services and Wikipedia, a season premiere sometimes needed to remind viewers what happened last year. And while I know it has been 26 months since the finale of season 2, the world is just different now. An episode like this – one eighth of the season, mind you – was there to just remind you why Star Wars is cool. But the problem is that the episode told us why Star Wars was cool; it didn’t show us. None of the set pieces felt really important. None of the cameos had any real meaning to them.
Let’s hope that, with this out of the way, there can be a more cohesive and satisfying story beginning next week.
