Well, that was a hell of a finale. Not only did the episode bring several of the season’s best characters together for one final assault on Moff Gideon, it also brought back (for good and for ill) one of Star Wars’ most important characters to take little Grogu under his Jedi wing and train him. And, for those who wisely sat through the end credits (and if you didn’t, run off right now and do so, lest you be spoiled in this review), we learned of another upcoming Star Wars television series coming our way in 2021.
Now, as someone who was lukewarm at best, ambivalent at worst, regarding The Mandalorian’s first season, I’m happy to admit that season two fully won me over. And those final moments between Grogu and an unmasked Mando finally convinced me that Pedro Pascal is giving a solid performance in the role. Yes, I’m still docking points for the amount of time a double spends performing the character, but finally getting to see Pascal emote as his little buddy was taken away for a chance at a better life*, well, it hit me harder than I expected. And it’s a good thing we were able to see Mando’s face during that final interaction, as the series is going to have to rely significantly more on Pascal’s voice work in the upcoming third season without little Grogu to take the weight off of Mando’s job as the focal point of the story. Even when we can’t see his face in the coming episodes, we at least have a good frame of reference as to what Mando is emoting under the helmet now.
*Judging from how poorly things ended up with Luke’s Jedi training academy, I’m certainly worried for the future of Grogu. At best, he gets out of there before things really go south. At worst . . . well, I don’t even want to think about it. Maybe he escapes to a far away planet and eschews the Force and ignores everything that happens in the final trilogy. But, yeah, odds aren’t great that things turn out well for Grogu.
With Grogu off on his next adventure, Boba Fett and Fennec set for their own (very cool looking) spin-off (which hopefully will include an appearance from Cobb Vanth), and Cara Dune likely fronting the Rangers of the New Republic series, it’s looking like season three of The Mandalorian will be focused on, well, Mandalorians. With Mando in possession of the Darksaber (and Moff Gideon presumably on trial with the New Republic and out of the storyline), the only real hanging thread is how Bo-Katan will (or won’t) gain back control of the Darksaber. Now, I don’t know about you, but Bo-Katan seems like the type of person who would kill her own mother if she got in her way on her quest for reuniting Mandalore under her rule – although not before she exhausted all non-violent means, of course. And the look on her face at the end of things? Well, yeah, she wants that Darksaber and she is going to get it (and to be fair, Mando doesn’t want it, so I’m sure they can fight it out and she can be on her way to her own spin-off at some point).
I kind of love how the plotting of The Mandalorian in the first two seasons turned out to simply be a long and winding path to get us invested enough in various side characters that we would continue watching not only this series but a host of others once they were provided for our consumption. And I’m certainly hopeful that season three of The Mandalorian will, as I’m predicting, actually get into more about Mandalorians and Mandalore – seeing as that’s what most of us were expecting coming into the show a year ago. I’d love to get deeper into their culture and more removed from the Star Wars cannon as it currently stands. And, if I never see a CGI de-aged version of Mark Hamill again, well, I certainly wouldn’t complain*.
*Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should. If and when we see Grogu again (and I’m sure we will – this series has proven that no character is ever really gone), I sincerely hope it’s not with a CGI Luke Skywalker hanging around. It’s time to put his story (all parts of it) and the story of the rest of the Skywalker clan to bed in the post-Return of the Jedi world. One of the main reasons I’m not looking forward to the Obi-Wan series is that it’s just going to deal with legacy characters who don’t need additional fleshing out. Time to move on and tell new, original stories.
Far too often, Star Wars is afraid to diverge from characters, events, and stories that the audience is familiar with (and looking at the recent trilogy and the backlash that occurred when the story swerved into new territory, I certainly get Disney’s reluctance to fully leave the past in the past where it belongs). But the only way to really expand the universe is to show us things that we haven’t seen. Introduce us to new characters. Explore pockets of the galaxy without Jedi or Imperial troops. We don’t need lightsabers to get invested in a storyline. Hopefully season three will be one without the Force, exploring how an important facet of the Star Wars universe functions when there isn’t a galactic space battle raging. Not everything needs to connect to other stories, and once The Mandalorian is free to blaze its own trail, I’m excited to see what it has in store for us.
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