Just going to create a separate thread for this, considering it won’t be available legally for a lot of users for five months.
The Mandalorian – SPOILERS
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Q: How in the fuckity fuck did the radical left push Gina Carano to tweet absolute bullshit?
A: Because odsjf;odsjf’aisdhoisdafjhvsd’JG’IOHgidjfEK?JGsrouia\gh.
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Yeah sure… I keep forgetting how much of a bad idea is to try to discuss certain topics in here. No biggie… Moving on…
You’re right. Sorry. She wasn’t being racist. I stand by the POS for all the other hateful stuff she said though.
Not being horrible to people shouldn’t be a high bar to cross.
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My boring and inadequate opinion is that everyone is entitled to their opinions and feelings about almost any topic. If you don’t flaunt those opinions in front of me, we’re good. If you tell me your thoughts, and I don’t agree, I may call you out on it privately and try to come to a mutual agreement regarding how we deal with this difference of opinions.
But if you feel the need to post on social media how you feel about blacks/gays/Muslims/WhiteSupremacists, then you are basically opening yourself up to whatever backlash results from that. You didn’t have to post it, and in this current “cancel culture” you must be aware of the potential consequences, particularly if you are someone of stature. Knowing all that, if you still want to post your opinion, that is your choice and there is no crime in doing so; but don’t be surprised at the results.
I enjoyed Gina Carano’s performance on The Mandalorian; I have nothing against her, and was not particularly offended by her comment relating modern Republicans to Holocaust-era Jews (it was a stupid comment in that the two situations are in no way similar, but I don’t see it as vehemently anti-Semitic). I just think she should have chosen her words more carefully.
I don’t know what Giancarlo Esposito thinks about the current political atmosphere in the US. Smart guy, Giancarlo.
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the radical left pushed her to it…
how much of a bad idea is to try to discuss certain topics in here
I don’t care one way or another but i am okay if you say unpopular things AS LONG AS YOU HAVE PROOF. My biggest problem with arguments is people making unsubstantiated statements. Deal with facts not hearsay or assumptions. Btw, what someone else says is not a fact.
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(it was a stupid comment in that the two situations are in no way similar, but I don’t see it as vehemently anti-Semitic).
You could argue that her most recent statement wasn’t anti-Semitic, but there’s also this:
And that’s right out there Protocols of the Elders of Zion level anti-semetism.
Also, it seems that Disney low-key dropped her in November, they were going to announce her as the star of Rangers of the Republic and quietly shelved that news in favour of just having the show in their list of upcoming productions. The recent shitstorm just forced them to make a statement.
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You could argue that her most recent statement wasn’t anti-Semitic, but there’s also this:
Well, that certainly goes beyond a bad choice of words.
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And here’s the double down.
Gina Carano Reacts to Mandalorian Firing: “They Can’t Cancel Us If We Don’t Let Them”
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She wasn’t fired. Disney decided not to work with her again. There’s a difference.
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And here’s the double down.
Gina Carano Reacts to Mandalorian Firing: “They Can’t Cancel Us If We Don’t Let Them”
I’m sure whatever production they gin up together will be as good as the Daily Wire’s initial movie production, which was Die Hard, but in a school shooting.
I’m not kidding.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Run_Hide_Fight
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And here’s the double down.
Gina Carano Reacts to Mandalorian Firing: “They Can’t Cancel Us If We Don’t Let Them”
I’m sure whatever production they gin up together will be as good as the Daily Wire’s initial movie production, which was Die Hard, but in a school shooting.
I’m not kidding.
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Y’know, it doesn’t have to be a professional fighter. They can employ an actress.
I still say go with Lucy Lawless.
And of course Carano would double down. It’s okay. I am sure her movie career of doing cheap b-movie fight films will remain stable.
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Whisper it…. Fight choreography can be taught.
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Gina Carano’s Cara Dune ‘Mandalorian’ Figure Canceled by Hasbro
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Q: How in the fuckity fuck did the radical left push Gina Carano to tweet absolute bullshit?
I blame Deadpool. First TJ Miller, then Carano – one more and the Deadpool curse will be official!
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Okay, this is kinda ridiculous:
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I still say go with Lucy Lawless.
At least we know she can tweet intelligently.
Yeah, but I was really gunning for the role in the ‘God’s Still not Dead’ sequel. https://t.co/zVeiw35nWt
— Lucy Lawless (@RealLucyLawless) February 12, 2021
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Er… yes, I can see how Joe Dante might really believe that if he had never seen The Empire Strikes Back four years before he made Gremlins, *and* he had lived in a cave for the last 40 years and so completely missed all cultural references to adult Yoda.
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By now they know the rules – no Grogu, no show.
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By now they know the rules – no Grogu, no show.
This is the way.
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The show had to give him a name but yeah, Baby Yoda is here to stay and Disney know it.
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A very fun start with a good amount of pace – battle with a super croc, shoot-out and a six-on-one space dogfight.
Oh and Baby Yoda.
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Both episodes were alright. Liked the space battle in ep 1, and it was nice to see Mando get to shoot some pirates. I hope those guys will be back, fighting pirates is fun. In ep2, I really loved the design of the weird blood-sucking robot (so weird in those moments that this show is being watched by little kids, but hey, what the hell). Apart from that… bit all over the place, really. All that talk about getting IG-11 back up and running because he can trust him and he’s his friend and then… he just takes a random different robot to that planet? That show is still weirdly inefficient when it comes to its plots and characters. But okay, we’re not expecting Andor here, it’s fine.
Those were two entertaining episodes, and that’s all wee need really. -
Yeah I loved the robot design in episode 2. The whole scale and visual polish of the episode (and the series more widely) is so impressive. It’s kind of amazing that we’re now getting these movie-style visuals in a weekly TV show and we already take them for granted.
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Easily one of the best eps in the entire set of seasons.
I thought the opposite. Aside from the bookending Mando scenes, I found this a pretty dull episode. It almost felt like them trying to do Andor, but in a way that doesn’t suit this show at all.
That said, the production values are still really impressive, they’re doing stuff Lucas could have only dreamed of. I’m just not sure he would have dreamed of using the tech to show us imaginative wonders such as living in a block of flats, working in an office job and riding the tube.
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That’s an interesting theory, I hadn’t heard that.
I guess this episode will probably be more interesting to longtime Star Wars fans with an overview of the whole franchise as it gives you a look at something you haven’t seen before. But in the context of Mandalorian alone it felt like a big left-turn.
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Structurally, the episode didn’t work for me. Having Mando scenes bookend the the Doctor’s story just made the Coruscant stuff feel badly shoehorned in. I think if there had been some direct ties to the current Mando storyline, it wouldn’t have felt so forced. It was interesting, but just felt jarring. It wasn’t quite as bad as Mando taking over two episodes of Boba Fett, though.
I honestly wouldn’t mind a SW anthology series. I think there is a lot of potential stories out there that would work for 1-3 episodes but not for 8-10. It would be a bunch of one-off stories covering the width and breadth of SW. It would allow them to experiment with different styles and tones. They could use existing characters and create new ones. They could tell big stories and smaller slice of life tales. If a particular character and/or story really caught on, it could be spun off into its own miniseries or ongoing series. It would also allow them to get big-named talent for behind and in front of the camera. I’m sure there are a lot of big names don’t want to commit to a series but would do a single episode. I think it would have a lot of potential.
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The Visions series was successful enough to get a second series so I think an anthology show could work. The current thinking seems to be these more experimental episodes need to be hosted by existing series, so boosting them. Do they need the boost? I suspect not.
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I think this is a set up ep, that plot with Kane is going to go somewhere, they’ve placed the gun on the wall – all that’s left is to fire it.
The problem is Chekhov is a Star Trek character, not Star Wars.
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I did not expect this show to make Star Wars: Jedi Temple Challenge canon, but I’m glad it happened.
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Best cameo for a while.
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I’m really watching a different show to you lot :D
The Jack Black stuff was cringe that made me want to hide behind the sofa in embarrassment. Oh, the cutie stuff with Grogu was worse. Has Favreau had a stroke recently?
I was thinking that the writers seem to have realised that Mando and Baby Yoda are a storytelling dead end and Bo-katan is a far more interesting Mandalorian to follow around but who can be sure.Am only still watching because the wife wants to see it.
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I’m really watching a different show to you lot :D
The Jack Black stuff was cringe that made me want to hide behind the sofa in embarrassment. Oh, the cutie stuff with Grogu was worse. Has Favreau had a stroke recently?
I was thinking that the writers seem to have realised that Mando and Baby Yoda are a storytelling dead end and Bo-katan is a far more interesting Mandalorian to follow around but who can be sure.Am only still watching because the wife wants to see it.
I agree with your assessment.
The overall storytelling in the series is not very good. Mando needs the IG droid to help him on Mandalore. When can’t get him fixed, takes a shitty R2 unit instead. I honestly expected him to ask the Ugnaughts to rebuild the IG in this episode. Maybe they’re saving that for later. Speaking of saving for later…
…Shouldn’t Mando have told Bo the whole bit with the Darkblade sooner, especially when she was with his tribe? That may helped things a lot.
I just find everything with the Mandalorians to be stilted and wooden. I think the lack of seeing their faces makes it hard for me to connect to them. They really need to show Mando’s face more often. I think it would help.
Two random things:
1) The C-3PO in the blue metallic finish looked fucking awesome.
2) Every time someone says “Bo Katan”, I hear “Boca Raton”, which is a city in Florida.
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The C-3PO in the blue metallic finish looked fucking awesome.
I thought the black and white R2 unit was going to be the murder droid from kieron gillen’s Darth Vader book.
I was disappointed 😕
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The C-3PO in the blue metallic finish looked fucking awesome.
I thought the black and white R2 unit was going to be the murder droid from kieron gillen’s Darth Vader book.
I was disappointed 😕
That was my first thought as well until I saw the protocol droid’s head.
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I thought the black and white R2 unit was going to be the murder droid from kieron gillen’s Darth Vader book. I was disappointed
Same, I thought it was both of them at first.
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Wow – hell of an ep.
We have confirmation that that bastard is indeed working for Kane but that then leads into a full Imperial conference. Pellaeon is in there, Thrawn gets a mention, plus Brendol fucking Hux. Yep, Hux’s creepy dad.
Then we have the Mando factions teaming up to hit Mandalore, they do so, meet some Mad Max style Mando survivors. Cue ambush at the Great Forge by Gideon and his new Darktroopers.
What follows is Din getting captured, Bo getting the rest of her force out while Paz Visla sacrifices himself, in a very well done death scene. It’s only flaw was the elite, Praetorian guards only being able to kill him with two of them holding him while the other stabs. That isn’t impressive.
The other very fun strand here was Grogu piloting IG-12, complete with a yes/no voicebox! Grogu also had a more serious role in stopping Axe and Paz killing each other over a trivial matter.
That linked well to the theme of how Mandalorians greatest enemy has always been themselves. Bo includes herself in that category. We also get the fuller story of how Mandalore fell. It fits a recurring motif of Imperial activity – strike deal, immediatly betray and destroy a planet
Roll credits! Dammit.
A whole lot to like here, a lot of progression. Some clear set-ups for the Ahsoka series and film. Also, it had some really neat shots in it.
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The other very fun strand here was Grogu piloting IG-12, complete with a yes/no voicebox!
Yes!
Food?
Yes!
leaving the armor?
no!no!no!
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I would’ve enjoyed the episode a lot more if the bad guys weren’t just evil mandalorians… what a stupid bland way to go with it… I see the whole “evil reflection” thing CB movies are plagued by is also plaguing other movies u_u
Also, not to mention that the whole thing really cheapens the coolness factor of the mandalorian, since it seems anyone and their grandma can get beskar armors. And apparently it’s a rule that they all have to look the same… ughhhhh
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Caught up with the second half of the season now. I thought it wasn’t great, all in all. There’s just too much incredibly lazy writing. I mean, in that wannabe-Andor-episode, spy girl’s plan was to get the doctor guy arrested and then… rely on him not being interviewed at all and thus being unable to implicate her? And then she relied on the police officers leaving her alone with the torture machine and on the medical procedure being completely without any supervision or check-up? Great plan! Almost as great as Christopher Lloyd’s plan to spark aggressive behaviour in some droids to… uh… to… uh… well, I’m glad he only got exiled for trying to… whatever it was he was planning on doing.
And then there’s stuff like Paz Visla’s death which they wanted to make as cool as possible, but the fact that he defeated all those guys means that if the others hadn’t run away, they’d have defeated the Pretorians, too. And there’s suddenly Mandalorian survivors who have just been on a Viking ship for decades and exactly now is when they’ve run out of food, apparently? Jesus, they don’t even give a shit anymore, do they?
There’s a thousand things like that, it’s not worth listing them all, but pretty much every episode got to a point where I started rolling my eyes and groaning. It’s still fun enough to watch, but very barely so at this point.
Oh, and Grogu’s presence in this season of the show was totally random; they clearly had no idea what to do with him now that nobody is after him anymore and he’s not going to be Jedi, either. So he was… there. And then he was riding around in the hollowed-out corpse of his friend who died for him and making that corpse dance like a puppet. Ahahaha, how funny! (Seriously, the morbidity of the whole thing once you actually think about it was what did make it funny to me.)
One good thing about the show is the spaceship battles. Those have been really cool, and it’s amazing what they can now do on a TV show over at Disney. Well impressive, that.
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This scene made me want to die. Or the writer.
Still no squeezie!
Start streaming the new episode of #TheMandalorian, now on @DisneyPlus. pic.twitter.com/BBRSMcxDiP
— The Mandalorian (@themandalorian) April 14, 2023
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Oh, and Grogu’s presence in this season of the show was totally random; they clearly had no idea what to do with him now that nobody is after him anymore and he’s not going to be Jedi, either. So he was… there.
I agree. Resolving his storyline (in a spinoff show!) seems to have robbed this series of its sense of purpose, so it all feels a bit rudderless somehow. The shift in focus to the Mandalorians and their power struggles hasn’t held the same interest for me. The last few episodes have all felt quite tossed off.
In terms of production values it’s really well made, but a well-made mediocre story is still a mediocre story.
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With the whole Grogu story reaching a conclusion at the end of S2 + BOBF, they’ve shifted from a more close, individual tale to a bigger, more macro one pretty fast. Sure, they were seeding pieces across S1-2, but it’s still a sharp turn.
It’s also one that is more overtly linking to the Sequels. Which is no bad thing because the Sequels, flawed as they are, need the kind of support TCW and its successors gave to the Prequels.
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I think there is a lot of fodder for the kind of Star Wars fan who has watched every episode of the Clone Wars multiple times and knows every detail of the prequels (and possibly even the sequels). For the casual fan… I don’t care about any of that stuff, I’d just like to see a well-told story, and unfortunately I’m not really getting that.
And Bo Katan is a neat character and all, but I haven’t been given any particular reason to care about her and her faction’s aims and designs. Putting her in the center of everything is a bit like Mando taking over Book of Boba. Apparently, switching main characters is now just what they do when they have no idea what to do with the actual protagonists’ story anymore.
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Bo has done the full SW dance of hero to villain and, now, back to hero. If you want more detail it’s out there but that’s the core of it.
Mando is practically a covert live action sequel to Rebels. It’s woven in bits from it and used those to set the stage for Ahsoka, which is a far more overt sequel with most of the Rebels characters back.
Problem is, like a Bendis Avengers book, it’s so busy setting everything else up, Mando’s own identity suffers.
It’s interesting to note, where the Sequels are concerned, this ep had nods to all three films. Those three films are nowhere near a trilogy. They actively work against each other. But the pieces from all three? They can be combined well.
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Bo has done the full SW dance of hero to villain and, now, back to hero. If you want more detail it’s out there but that’s the core of it.
Oh, I do know the core, my kid forced me to watch some of the central episodes of Clone Wars. :)
Problem is, like a Bendis Avengers book, it’s so busy setting everything else up, Mando’s own identity suffers.
Yeah, exactly. Which people who are deep into all of the shows (plus some of the novels and comics) probably don’t mind, but if you just want to watch The Mandalorian, it doesn’t make for a great show.
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Yeah, Visions was fun enough, especially if you’re into anime in the first place.
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I think there is a lot of fodder for the kind of Star Wars fan who has watched every episode of the Clone Wars multiple times and knows every detail of the prequels (and possibly even the sequels). For the casual fan… I don’t care about any of that stuff, I’d just like to see a well-told story, and unfortunately I’m not really getting that.
FWIW, as a casual viewer, I’m A LOT more interested in the whole mandalorian stuff, rather than baby yoda and his shenaningans… but yeah, it’d be nice if the show had good writing, or like, decent writing… actually are there any writers? ’cause at times it feels there are none.
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I have a problem connecting with Din Djarin. We never really know if it’s Pedro Pascal or a body double in any given scene and the body language is non-descript. Even Pascal’s voice work for the character is fairly monotonal. In the beginning, the mysterious stranger was fun and when we saw him without his helmet, it was special. The scene at the Imperial site in season 2 was great. But now, I’m kind of over it. He just kind of… does things. Overall, he is a rather bland character for me. I think it’s time to see more of his face.
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This article sums up a lot of what we have been discussing here.
Star Wars has a Baby Yoda problem
One could argue that season three of The Mandalorian went off the rails before it ever debuted. Prior to the season’s release, another Disney+ series, The Book of Boba Fett, featured an entire stealth plot arc of The Mandalorian that served to connect the timeline of the show’s previous season with the one about to be released. Without watching it, the first episode of season three felt like a jarring reset. And even with it, the episode glossed over continuity and gave rise to what has become the series’ biggest question: What is this show even about?
It’s a query that reflects a larger one within the Star Wars universe. On the back of this year’s Celebration, Star Wars’ annual fan/industry convention, and the confirmation of three new Star Wars films, the franchise’s flagship TV show stands at something of a crossroads. It seems to be caught between Lucasfilm’s attempts to learn from the mistakes of its controversial latest trilogy and avoid succumbing to the “MCU-ification” of its own IP.
The Mandalorian has burned through a lot of goodwill as it meanders its way through season three, and with next week’s finale approaching, it could take a lot more than a cute green baby puppet to convince fans the franchise as a whole isn’t still spinning its wheels.
The Mandalorian seemed like the solution to Star Wars’ problems. Instead, it’s perpetuating them.
It’s no secret that Lucasfilm has struggled ever since the tremendous backlash to, well, everything about its recent cinema revival. First, 2015’s The Force Awakens drew an endless barrage of criticism from right-wing fans angry at the film’s trio of diverse main characters. This clamor paved the way for a philosophical bait-and-switch between Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi — which was, despite being critically beloved, even more controversial than its predecessor — and the subsequent Rise of Skywalker.J.J. Abrams’ trilogy close-out jettisoned so much of Johnson’s more subversive ethos that it arguably drew more outrage than any of the other films — and a walloping profit drop at the box office. The angry right-wing fans were joined by many left-wing fans, who were angry that the trilogy essentially used a Black male character, John Boyega’s Finn, as a fake-out for a white woman, Rey (Daisy Ridley), ultimately giving him little to do at all. The final film also courted backlash for the decision to write Finn’s intended love interest, Kelly Tran’s character Rose Tico, nearly out of the final film completely, after the actress endured endless harassment from fans. As a bonus, no one seemed to like the resolution to Rey’s storyline either. The movie even spawned an entire fandom conspiracy theory that there was another, better, purer film out there.
This complex squabbling over Star Wars identity politics effectively derailed the entire franchise, throwing numerous planned spinoff films into stasis, as they had promised the kind of fresh takes on Star Wars that came out of the first two films. The final film was an attempt to walk back everything that had made a certain type of fan mad, only to blunder into pleasing no one. As Emily St. James wrote for Vox, “The film’s ecology is destroyed early on, as it attempts to serve multiple masters — corporate, fan, and otherwise. It lurches from scene to scene without any finesse. It almost feels like a trip through several enclosed Star Wars habitats that offer a quick glimpse at some of your favorite characters and locations, while never finding a way to make those habitats share the same ecosystem.”
That criticism may sound awfully familiar to fans of The Mandalorian. For its first two seasons, The Mandalorian seemed to be the spark and the glue the franchise needed to revitalize itself — a fun, streamlined little show with an uncontroversial lead that drew general audiences in with a commitment to atmosphere, good CGI, and, of course, Baby Yoda. Soon, however, critics noticed that the show was not only thin on plot and characterization but that it increasingly relied on big, social-media-ready sequences to drive its momentum, with little connective tissue in or around such moments.
The complaint that Star Wars is trying to do too much at once has become especially prominent through The Mandalorian’s third season, which sees titular Mandalorian Din Djarin (Pablo Pascal) abruptly reunited with his adopted son, Grogu (the frankly appalling real name of Baby Yoda). This, despite the fact that the narrative journey of the second season was for Grogu to leave Din’s care and train with other potential Jedi like himself.
Externally, the reason for this reunification is obvious: Baby Yoda is too much of a marketing coup to go without. Internally, the reason for this reunification gets explained, sort of, not in The Mandalorian, but over three episodes of The Book of Boba Fett, another breakout series meant to capitalize on the renewed energy provided by The Mandalorian. But despite the popularity of the character Boba Fett himself, The Book of Boba Fett drew widespread criticism for being less a coherent narrative than a collection of cool Star Wars action figures with no ideas. It turns out Boba Fett himself is a terrible character to build a whole story around; while he may be popular, there’s just not that much to him, which could be why the writers ultimately turned the show’s back half into a Mandalorian installment.
That Boba Fett got his own show at all speaks to the increased emphasis on commercialization and fan service that keeps getting in the way of the franchise’s attempts to move forward. The Mandalorian continually falls prey to this, and season three’s unsatisfied viewers have grown increasingly rowdy over it. Each episode has drawn ire for waylaying the main plot and getting fixated on side characters and quests that seem to have little meaning in the scheme of things. While season one was largely made up of such Trek-y one-offs, those felt fun and fresh because those missions served to build our understanding of the show’s main characters and establish the sociopolitical landscape of the show’s timeline.
Now, however, none of those early episodes seem to matter much. In season three, the Star Wars universe and the complex geopolitical dynamics between different worlds and politics are an excuse for flashy starship battles. Despite disconnecting from all that worldbuilding, season three keeps meandering its way around the galaxy at the expense of its own big plot. In only eight episodes, season three has had to: “redeem” Din Djarin as a Mandalorian (since he took his helmet off, long story), unite two mutually antagonistic Mandalorian factions, establish Bo-Katan (Katee Sackhoff) as their leader, organize a return to planet Mandalore, build up a confrontation between the Mandalorians and Empire loyalist Moff Gideon (Giancarlo Esposito), and actually show that confrontation. It could also have bothered to show us Baby Yoda growing into an actual Jedi force to be reckoned with, especially since it stinted the show’s viewers on all his cool Jedi training.
Instead, season three keeps falling back on more made-for-TikTok set pieces. Multiple episodes seem to have had little narrative purpose other than to present cool cameos and viral moments for viewers. Episode six, for example, was an instant hit on social media due to cameos from Lizzo, Jack Black, and Christopher Lloyd. But it proved one of the most divisive episodes yet, probably because outside of ensuring that a limited edition Star Wars Lizzo Funko Pop will be coming soon to a Comic-Con near you, it’s unclear if there were any narrative stakes at all.
Mandalorian is Star Wars’ flagship streaming series. If its showrunners, the ever-inventive Jon Favreau (Iron Man) and Star Wars master builder Dave Filoni, are flagging this much, do the studio’s other streaming series even stand a chance?
Lucasfilm jettisoned the Star Wars Extended Universe only to give us … the Star Wars extended universe
Star Wars’ pivot to streaming has produced franchise installments that vary widely in quality. The Mandalorian is beloved, but Boba Fett and 2021’s offering, Obi-Wan Kenobi, each drew criticism for sidelining their titular characters. (Obi-Wan also predictably drew racist backlash for having a Black actor in a lead role, and then more backlash directed at Disney for remaining largely silent while yet another Star Wars actor of color endured harassment.) Andor, 2022’s critical coup de grace, seemed to contain all of the promise of the Star Wars universe in a drama that was both invigorating and unforgiving.But Andor was a double-edged sword: by committing to a point of view and being unapologetic about its thesis that the Empire was an evil police state (a far more controversial take than it should be!), it highlighted how shallow most of Lucasfilm’s other offerings have been.
Some of the reasons for this variance may be about avoiding the fandom meltdowns that happened over the last film trilogy’s storytelling efforts. Fans already knew how Andor’s titular character, Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) would end up (he’s also in 2016’s Rogue One). Since Andor himself was a relatively low-stakes character in the Star Wars universe, the show was able to take storytelling risks that it couldn’t with a new character like Mando to whom fans are increasingly attached, or to an OG like Obi-Wan or Boba Fett.
But part of the issue also seems to be structural. It’s not just that the studio keeps making lackluster franchise installments, but that, increasingly, it expects fans to consume all of that content and understand how it all fits together. For many fans, that’s an unfair expectation, an assumption of trust that the franchise hasn’t actually earned over the years. It’s also just logistically difficult; few people, for example, have the time to watch 100+ episodes of Clone Wars just to understand the backstory behind a three-minute scene in The Mandalorian. It’s unclear whether a critical mass of Star Wars fans even watched Boba Fett at all, let alone knew they were supposed to watch three episodes of Boba Fett to get the Mandalorian arc they needed.
When the highly anticipated Ahsoka appears later this year, it, too, will tie into both The Mandalorian and Boba Fett. So will the untitled film that Filoni is directing, which is intended to serve as a wrap-up on all three of these series. While that’s not inherently bad — spin-offs happen, they’re fine! — what has got viewers antsy is the way this structure has increasingly become built into the franchise. The Marvel formula of turning every show and film into an explicit set-up for the next show and film isn’t even working for Marvel anymore. And despite the hype around the upcoming films, Star Wars fans are openly uneasy about the promise of more overlapping tie-ins.
After all, it wasn’t that long ago that Star Wars not only tried to quash this kind of endlessly spiraling franchise expansion, but explicitly excluded it from the revamped Star Wars universe. In 2014, in order to make room for The Force Awakens, Lucasfilm announced that the Star Wars Expanded Universe (EU) — the decades of lore-filled Star Wars media from tie-in novels to comics to board games, a staggering compendium reportedly featuring over 20,000 characters — would no longer be considered part of the official Star Wars canon. Not only that, but no new stories in those worlds would be forthcoming; the studio instead transformed the EU into a giant archive called “Star Wars Legends.” Fans are still mad and sad about this decision to this day.
Rather than fully abandon the EU, however, the current franchise promptly began cherry-picking, or perhaps more accurately, flinging entire handfuls of the old EU back into the new canon universe. The most high-profile upcoming storylines, like that of Ahsoka Tano and popular villain Grand Admiral Thrawn, are straight out of the Expanded Universe, and there’s rampant speculation that more direct adaptations of EU stories are on the way. If the franchise reined in the EU because it was too unwieldy to begin with, it hasn’t exactly solved its own problem.
This also speaks to something of an overall franchise identity crisis. Most mainstream Star Wars fans — the kinds of casual fans whose interest you need to cultivate and keep — likely associate Star Wars with a handful of beloved legacy characters and a few new ones thrown in. They’re not tucked away in a forum somewhere opining the loss of, for example, Mara Jade and Ben Skywalker to the new Star Wars canon. Yet that’s also kind of a problem when the studio increasingly expects fans to not only know who EU characters are (for example, Ahsoka Tano) but care about them before their storylines are even underway.
Is the return on that investment worth it? This is a franchise, after all, where the worldbuilding vacillates between carefully crafted narratives built over years and haphazard whimsy — all of which could be tossed aside all over again. When you have the biggest series in the Star Wars oeuvre more or less phoning it in, as fans have accused Mandalorian of doing all season, there’s not much incentive to commit to learning the lore.
This is the ultimate problem Star Wars needs to solve: Will it commit to deepened characterization and worldbuilding, to making the Star Wars universe feel connected and lived-in, even for casual fans? Or will it instead continue to coast on the consumerist appeal of gimmicks like Baby Yoda?
When the Star Wars universe is Baby Yodas all the way down, then what?
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Just watched the final episode. After a fairly weak back half to the season I actually thought this was pretty good, there was a decent climactic feel to it and the action was great throughout – it feels like they must have held a ton of budget back for this one.
In terms of story it’s a bit of a Star Wars Megamix at times – so many scenes and ideas are basically just direct lifts from the movies – and sometimes the masked fight scenes feel a bit too much like action figures being bashed together, but mostly I thought this was a pretty competent finale.
Again, the CGI and effects were movie-level, really impressive.
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The action parts of the finale were good, and I really liked the epilogue stuff with Mando adopting Grogu.
The season as a whole was a complete mess. All of the Moff Gideon stuff felt very rushed, and anti-climactic. We don’t even find out about his self-cloning plans until the clones are already destroyed. After years of Darksaber talk, Gideon easily destroys it.
I like Bo Katan, but all of the other Mandalorians are completely uninteresting, and the more we learn about their stupid culture and rules, the less I care about it.
I’m not sure if the ending was setting up a return to the Mando and Grogu on missions setup of S1, or giving those characters a happy ending so Bo Katan and co can take over the show fully next season. I definitely hope it’s the former, but considering Pascal didn’t appear once this season, they might want a lead actor who actually shows up on set.
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Yeah I had similar thoughts about how they left it and the lack of Pascal this season. It almost feels like this was a full series finale. They certainly seemed to want to leave their options open for where the show goes next at the very least.
Not sure there would be as much interest in a Bo Katan-led Mandalorian show though, even if Mando and Grogu did show up as supporting characters.
Either way I think it’s all symptomatic of the lack of direction the show has had since the end of season 2.
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Odd stuff was Gideon’s clones, why is someone like Gideon trying to do clones? They’d attempt to take out both him and each other!
Didn’t they alter the Jango Fett clones to make them more compliant? Presumably Gideon would have done the same and had an army of handsome sub-Gideons.
Or at the very least several new managers for a successful chicken shop franchise.
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Odd stuff was Gideon’s clones, why is someone like Gideon trying to do clones? They’d attempt to take out both him and each other! Still, that was why he was after Grogu at the start of the story.
Because he was force-jelly… he wanted to be a force user, so he was perfecting a force sensitive clone… and THAT would’ve been a pretty good character arc for a villain, a guy who basically wants to be a jedi/sith, but he’s just a mundane bitch… that also explains why he wanted the dark saber so much… also, did they just break it?? WTF, isn’t that supposed to be a mega powerful weapon? so fuckin underwhelming.
Ah, if only they had writers competent enough to put all of those pieces together in a coherent fashion and build the show around THAT, instead of wasting almost a full hour episode in something absolutely irrelevant, amongst many other things.
It was also probably a bad idea to cast Esposito in that role, since he was probably only available for little time… If they’d cast another actor, they could’ve spent more time with the villain. Maybe make him look not like a discount Mando/Vader… ugh why do I even bother…
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I watched the finale.
So, Mandalorian armor/suits…
Sometimes a blaster shot will kill them but other times it won’t. They also can survive transatmospheric travel and in space. They also sometimes have problems underwater. Sometimes they are fireproof and sometimes they are suseptible to extreme heat. Capes and other dangling fabrics also appear to befire proof.
Their jetbacks have limited fuel when chasing chasing flying monsters, but have more than enough fuel to reach escape velocity and also have sustained flying battles. They also have two exhaust ports but are highly maneuverable and able to change directions on a dime.
Bottom line, they are great and terrible. This is the way.
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Then, at the end, Grogu is torturing a frog, the little bastard.
A character strong in the force torturing a helpless animal for fun? Darth Baby Yoda, here we come.
Some fun bits in the episode, but the post Mandalor was guff, just the worst writing and some pretty shocking acting. I’m guessing season 4 will just be the one off episodes so hopefully the wife won’t make me watch it…
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