The Mandalorian Season Three Premiere & The State of Star Wars
After the boundary-pushing 12 episode arc of Andor season one, Star Wars has returned to the safe and familiar.
Today I’m breaking down the season three premiere of The Mandalorian, with a mini-recap and review. Following that, I’ve got a discussion of the state of Star Wars as a whole. Spoilers for The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett follow.
The Mandalorian Season 3 Premiere Recap
It’s been almost two years since we spent any significant time with the galaxy’s favorite duo. Aside from their reunion in The Book of Boba Fett (which was likely missed by many fans who didn’t watch that show), we haven’t seen Mando and Baby Yoda since December 2020. Now, The Mandalorian is back with a season premiere that plays all the hits but doesn’t offer up much of anything new.
The episode opens with the sound of clanging metal in a cave filled with Mandalorian iconography and forging equipment. We see a figure who many will recognize as The Armorer (Emily Swallow), hammering molten metal to form a Mandalorian helmet. She walks the fully formed helmet out of a cave to the sound of some very cool drums and armor-based percussion from the other Mandalorians, towards an unmasked boy who definitely looks like he could be a young version of our Mandalorian, Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal). This is some sort of initiation ritual, with the boy standing in a lake as she leads him through a series of vows.
As she places the helmet on his head and the boy begins to repeat the line “From this moment on, I shall never remove my helmet,” The Armorer stops him. There’s a rumble, and a large lizard-like monster launches itself out of the lake, gobbling up Mandalorians left and right as the gathered warriors fail epically to wound it in any way.
Up until this point, I definitely thought we were watching a flashback. All of the promotional material has hinted that season three will focus on Mando’s quest for redemption after breaking his vows by removing his helmet in the season two finale, so it made sense that we would start by taking a trip back to watch said vows be taken in the first place. Suddenly, we hear the first strike of Mando’s theme song as his new ship (as seen in The Book of Boba Fett) roars across the screen. Apparently, it’s not a flashback after all, and it takes full-grown Mando essentially one shot to down the monster in his flashy new ship.
After he saves the day, Mando and The Armorer essentially repeat the conversation they had in episode five of The Book of Boba Fett: Mando removed his helmet, so he’s no longer a Mandalorian. He could theoretically redeem himself by being cleansed in the sacred waters under the mines of their home planet, Mandalore, but the entire planet has been destroyed so he’s out of luck. Mando, however, has evidence that their home world might be inhabitable after all. Reluctantly, The Armorer agrees that if he can somehow bring proof that he has cleansed himself, he would be redeemed according to their creed. “This is the Way.”
Thus begins Mando’s new quest. He spends most of the episode catching up with old friends — first The Armorer, then later Greef Karga (Carl Weathers), and after that, Bo Katan Kryze (Katee Sackhoff). As Mando catches up with Greef, he informs him that Baby Yoda’s name is Grogu. “If you say so,” Greef replies, along with the rest of us. While Karga would love Mando to stay on Nevarro as their new marshal, especially after Mando proves he still has what it takes by easily disposing of four pirates who threaten Nevarro, he has no intention of sticking around. He’s here with Grogu only to resurrect their old ally, former bounty-hunting droid IG-11 (Taika Waititi), because he needs a droid he can trust for his mission to Mandalore. Before he can do that, though, Mando needs to hunt down an apparently hard-to-find memory circuit in order to keep IG from defaulting to his original programming and constantly trying to kill Grogu.
Our heroes set out yet again, quickly ending up in a space dogfight with the pirates from before. Mando easily deals with them in a fun space battle that harkens back to some of the best in the saga.
Once the fight is over, however, Mando doesn’t go to look for IG-11’s memory circuit. Instead, he tells Grogu they are going to the planet Kalevala, pointing out a Mandalorian castle which they quickly land at. As the two stride (and float) through a large great hall, we see them approach a throne. Seated on that throne is none other than Bo Katan Kryze, fan favorite from The Clone Wars animated series and Mando’s uneasy ally from season two.
Mando introduces himself as he walks, saying, “It is Din Djarin,” as if there’s anyone else it could be marching towards her throne, little green baby in tow. He tells her that he wants to join her mission to retake Mandalore, but she informs him that when she returned to her castle without the Darksaber that he now possesses, her forces abandoned her.
Anger in her voice, Bo Katan tells Din that the “cult,” which adopted him, called The Watch, is responsible for the fracturing of the Mandalorian people. “Go home,” she says. “There is nothing left.” When Din tells her he will go to Mandalore to bathe in the Living Waters and be forgiven for his transgressions, she responds by calling him a fool, telling him that his people’s idolization of the mines of their home planet is nothing but superstition.
Beneath the Star Wars of it all — the spaceships and the Darksabers and the aliens and the Force-wielding green babies, The Mandalorian has an interesting story about a man wrestling with the ugly parts of his religion for the first time in his life. Din Djarin has been exiled from the only family he’s ever known for daring to show his face to someone he loves. At the same time, he’s being told by others who claim to be the true representatives of his people that the family who exiled him is a fundamentalist cult partially responsible for the destruction of their home planet. He’s not yet willing to accept this idea, but it will be interesting to watch where his exploration of Mandalore and its history leads him.
Ultimately though, this is a space adventure, and while it has definitely evolved from its original format as a relatively episodic, mission-of-the-week style show, it’s not going to stray too far from those roots. This week we mostly hung out with Mando and Grogu as they traveled around checking in on old friends, getting into some fights, and picking up some quests.
While it’s mostly fun and games, there’s a lot of nonsense in this episode’s plot. In the opening scene, Mando happens upon the other Mandalorians just in time to rescue them from the lake monster. How did he find them? Why was he there? I guess it was to ask The Armorer if he would be redeemed if he bathed in the Living Waters, but we (and he) already knew the answer was yes. It feels to me like a sloppy way of making up ground for those who missed the crucial episodes of Boba Fett that set up the next chapter in Mando’s story.
Next, after Mando is told that he needs to find IG-11 a new memory circuit in order to get him working again, he randomly visits Bo Katan to tell her he wants to join her army and retake their planet. What was he going to do if she said, “Okay, let’s go today.”? Abandon the IG-11 plan that he spent half the episode working on?
The score, as always, is phenomenal and does a lot of the work of pulling you into the story. As soon as the first drumbeat struck in that opening scene, I was reminded just how great the music in this show truly is. That opening drum rhythm felt so authentically of this world, yet also served to introduce us further to an entirely new and distinct aspect of the Mandalorian culture our hero grew up with. Composer Ludwig Göransson is up there with Succession’s Nicholas Brittell as doing the best work on TV right now.
Visually, I have incredibly mixed feelings about this episode and this show in general. Some of the scenery is simply beautiful. In particular, the opening shots of the Mandalorians on the beach with their colorful armor contrasted against the tan sand and blue waters, and the castle on Kalevara looming on a seaside cliff come to mind. This show, which invented and popularized the use of the virtual production stage known as The Volume, is by far the best at implementing it. However, there are still numerous shots in which it’s incredibly clear that nothing around the actors is real, and there’s an inescapable sense of smallness and emptiness that The Volume brings to scenes.
Finally, the most perplexing decision made by this show continues to be its decision to use two whole episodes of an entirely different show, The Book of Boba Fett, to show critical plot developments in Mando and Baby Yoda’s storyline. Rather than use season 3 to reunite the pair, creators Jon Favreau and Dave Filion immediately did so in a different show. I assumed The Mandalorian would have a clever way of explaining their reunion, Mando’s new ship, etc. to viewers who didn’t watch the other show and therefore missed these important developments. Instead, it just jumps in and assumes everyone knows exactly what’s happening except for some messy retreads of exposition. Ultimately these decisions point to the failure of creative vision and leadership of the Star Wars franchise, but more on that later.
Even at its best, this show has traditionally moved slower than my preferred pace, with side quests and sidetracks and episodic installments being its M.O. since day one as it lopes towards each season’s exciting culmination like its titular character’s iconic walk. It’s more of the same here, though there are signs this season will continue the show’s evolution into something a little bigger and more serialized as it has become, for better and worse, Star Wars’ flagship property. This is a premiere that plays it safe on a show that plays it safe. After the boundary-breaking first season of Andor, it leaves a lot to be desired, but for those who enjoyed the first two seasons or who just want a lower-stakes space adventure, there’s plenty of fun to be had.
The State of Star Wars
Now to discuss the state of Star Wars more broadly.
Where It All Went Wrong
I was not an anti-Disney Star Wars fan. In fact, even after Solo (2018), and even when it was revealed they were inexplicably bringing back Palpatine for the final movie in the sequel trilogy, I was extremely confident in The Rise of Skywalker (2019) prior to its release specifically because of my faith in Disney’s ability to manage the franchise. I really liked The Force Awakens (2015), loved Rogue One (2016), and to this day still believe that The Last Jedi (2017) is the best Star Wars movie. Not to mention that Disney is the company that built the Marvel Cinematic Universe, still the shining example of franchise filmmaking. So I kept saying, to myself and to others, there’s no way they would mess up the end of the sequel trilogy and main saga. It’s too big and important and they’re too good at this sort of thing.
And then they did.
It’s rare that I don’t enjoy a movie in theaters. The big screen, the loud sound, the hype I built for myself prior to seeing it, and the thrill of getting swept up in a story usually take over and often it’s only on further reflection and subsequent viewings that I realize a film doesn’t live up to my first impression. When it comes to The Rise of Skywalker, my first viewing is the only viewing I’ve had, because I was so thoroughly disappointed. I wanted to like the movie so badly, yet I sat there in the theater as the credits rolled mostly sad, disappointed, and confused.
I spent the next several days and weeks processing the film and trying to verbalize why so much of it felt so disappointing to me. To this day, over three years later, bringing up the movie will send me on a spiraling rant about Disney and Lucasfilm, the choices they made with the sequel trilogy, and how horrendously disappointing of a film Rise of Skywalker is.
In spite of all of the specific mistakes made by the individual writers and directors of the recent films (and especially the last movie; looking at you, J.J. Abrams), the true fault lies with studio Lucasfilm’s leadership and its management and direction of the trilogy as a whole. The choice to give each movie in the series to a different writer/director is an interesting one that didn’t have to lead to chaos and complication. The original Star Wars trilogy had three different directors, one for each film, each of whom brought their own ideas and styles to the series, helping to influence and shape the world in its early form.
The difference was that creator George Lucas was heavily involved as Executive Producer of all three, receiving a story credit and a screenwriting credit on the second and third films in the trilogy, respectively. This meant that despite different writers and directors being involved with each film, there was one strong creative vision and voice behind the entire trilogy.
Lucasfilm could have easily used this model with the sequels, choosing someone (J.J. Abrams or otherwise) to write and direct the first movie and then stay heavily involved in the story direction of the final two while turning over the directorial reigns to new creative voices. Another option, and my preferred one, would have been to hire someone or a group of someones to develop the overarching plot-line of the entire trilogy, providing the three directors they chose with a basic outline of a story arc that they could then work within to write and direct each individual movie in their own unique style. This is more or less the model that Marvel has used to great success over the last decade, with the early films especially having pretty distinct styles, and Avengers: Endgame proving that the whole thing can be wrapped up into one cohesive and unified conclusion.
Instead, Lucasfilm chose “none of the above,” and the result is a slapped-together patchwork of ideas that contradict one another, giving casual and super-fans alike a sense of whiplash as the trilogy backtracks on and retcons itself repeatedly on its way towards a deeply unsatisfying conclusion.
Where We Are Now
In the wake of backlash over the sequel trilogy, Disney embraced a new path spurred by the success of The Mandalorian on Disney Plus: resurrecting character after character and story arc after story arc to capitalize on fan nostalgia for the glory days of Star Wars, relying on the cuteness of Baby Yoda alone to bring new audiences into the fold while filling in even the tiniest story gaps between pre-existing films and shows. This plan has been more or less successful, at least in terms of numbers, with The Hollywood Reporter reporting last year that The Mandalorian is the most highly viewed Star Wars or Marvel show on Disney Plus.
Season one of The Mandalorian was admittedly light on connections to Star Wars’ past outside of the recognizable green face at the heart of its story, but each subsequent series has brought increasing reliance on rebooted pieces of Star Wars lore. Mando’s second season brought Boba Fett back from the dead, fan favorites Ahsoka Tano and Bo Katan from animation into live action, and the peak-Jedi Luke Skywalker fans had been clamoring for since 2017’s The Last Jedi. Next came The Book of Boba Fett, which further solidified Boba Fett’s return while filling in details about how exactly he survived the sarlacc pit, bringing back Luke Skywalker once again, and giving us more characters from the animated shows. Obi-Wan Kenobi featured its titular character returning in a story about what he did between Episodes III and IV of the movies. Andor was a fluke, showing Star Wars could finally live up to the potential it has always had for mature stories told in the less visible corners of the galaxy and focusing on someone other than Jedi, but at the end of the day was still a prequel to a prequel.
Season three of The Mandalorian seems to be doubling back on the retreads with even more animation characters making their way into live-action. After that comes Ahsoka, with more Ahsoka Tano and more continuation of storylines and characters from the Star Wars Rebels animated series. Skeleton Crew is the last show in development before more Mando and Book of Boba Fett, and will be focused on the same section of the timeline as Mando, Boba, and Ahsoka. Lucasfilm has said these are building towards a climactic Avengers-style team up event.
None of these shows (with the exception of Book of Boba Fett) are particularly bad. The Mandalorian is an exciting show that captures a lot of the intangible Star Wars feel with some interesting mystery about Baby Yoda/Grogu’s past while answering questions about what the galaxy was like after the fall of the Empire in the original trilogy. The shocking entry of Luke Skywalker to save the day at the end of season two is a top moment in all of Star Wars. Ahsoka is a great character, and fans will be rightly excited to catch up with an older version of the character and find out what she has been doing since we last saw her.
The problem is that when it’s all said and done Lucasfilm will have spent the last seven or eight years telling stories that simply bring back old characters and fill in the gaps between the already existing stories rather than coming up with new ones.
What’s Next
In the meantime, there hasn’t been a movie released since 2019 and there are none in sight. Each previously announced plan for future movies has been cancelled or put on hold, including a medieval-style trilogy from the creators of Game of Thrones, an all-new trilogy from The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson, and a fighter pilot movie from Wonder Woman director Patty Jenkins. Supposedly, Taika Waititi is planning a movie and so is Marvel head Kevin Feige, although there has been little news about either of those since they were announced. The films that were specifically detailed, like Jenkins’ Rogue Squadron, also seemed to have been heading in The Mandalorian’s direction of simply fitting in with the already established timeline of the original trilogy.
Even Disney’s most ambitious Star Wars move, establishing the all-new High Republic era separated from the existing canon by a couple centuries and portraying the Jedi at the peak of their power, has fallen short in several critical ways. In terms of an entire galaxy’s history, the High Republic is still set incredibly close to the existing timeline; close enough that recognizable characters like Yoda are present as fallbacks and fan-service. Its status as a prequel set relatively close to a very established set of canon means that it is limited in terms of the paths it can take rather than allowing Star Wars to truly branch into new stories.
Primarily, though, Disney has failed by allowing the High Republic to exist only in books and comics thus far. There are plans for a video game and television series set in that portion of the timeline, but so far none has materialized. If it wanted to truly set Star Wars up for the future, it would have chosen one particular new portion of the timeline to focus on, be it the High Republic or otherwise, and developed an entire slate of books, shows, movies, and games, to take place in this new era of Star Wars storytelling. Instead, it’s trying to have its cake and eat it too by capitalizing on the nostalgia money-printing machine with the Mandalorian portion of the galaxy while timidly dipping its toes in a new era. The result is that all of Star Wars is weakened by a lack of cohesive vision.
If I was Disney CEO Bob Iger, I would be looking hard at Lucasfilm leadership and whether or not they are the best choice to lead Star Wars into the future. Studio head Kathleen Kennedy, despite her long and successful career producing films like E.T. and Indiana Jones, and the relative financial success of the Star Wars sequel trilogy, has proven herself to be a timid and reactive leader with a history of either choosing poor directors or driving good directors away through micromanagement. She’s been protected by her status as George Lucas’ chosen successor, but this has not been Lucas’ company for 11 years now, and that should no longer shield her from the consequences of her poor leadership.
Possibly more controversially, I would strongly reconsider Dave Filoni’s place as the lead creative voice in the franchise. Filoni is considered by many fans to be the true heir to George Lucas’ vision, and thus has essentially been given his own fiefdom to operate alongside Jon Favreau in the world of the Disney Plus shows. He is the mind responsible for taking The Mandalorian and turning it into a vessel for bringing back his own favorite characters and elements from past shows he developed like The Clone Wars and Rebels. Thus, it is becoming clear to me that Filoni is too tied to Star Wars’ past and worse, his own creations, to ever take it into the future.
A telling illustration of this played out in two shows released this fall on Disney Plus. One, Andor, was created by legendary filmmaker Tony Gilroy, proved that Star Wars could successfully tell adult-focused stories set in new parts of the galaxy, and is considered by many to be the best Star Wars content created in the Disney era if not ever. The other, Tales of the Jedi, was created by Filoni and is essentially a further continuation of The Clone Wars with more stories focused on Ahsoka that serve to fill in the gaps between Clone Wars and Rebels, two shows which, themselves, exist to fill in the gaps between the films.
The possibilities are endless in a massive fictional galaxy with decades of supplemental material to draw on in the form of the Extended Universe books. For years, fans have been clamoring for an adaptation of The Old Republic, set thousands of years before the prequel trilogy and featuring a totally different galactic dynamic where the Sith were plentiful. Or, Lucasfilm could release itself from the shackles of pre-existing canon by going into the future after the sequel trilogy. This would give the franchise a completely blank slate and allow creators to craft a new story that builds on what came before but isn’t burdened by having to slot itself in between years of already established events.
What happens after the fall of the First Order and final destruction of the Sith? How does the galaxy rebuild itself after 60 years of war? What new threats arise? Does Rey start a new Jedi order? Does she find a way to be a new kind of force-wielder freed from the strict and in many ways harmful Jedi practices?
Rather than answer these questions and embrace a new future for Star Wars, Disney has chosen to remain in the past. As a result the Star Wars we have today is a sad imitation of its former self. Instead of taking the bold creative choice to build something totally new, it has retreated to the safe, well-trodden ground of the original trilogy era, resurrecting old characters and planets and storylines repeatedly. As long as it continues to do so, Star Wars will limp along as an almost literal shadow of what it could be.
I think Mando’s new ship, as seen on The Mandalorian season three premiere and The Book of Boba Fett, serves as a poignant illustration of the state of Star Wars. It’s fast and shiny and flashy, stripped bare and refurbished until it looks new on the surface, but at the end of the day it’s just a recycled skeleton of what came before. It reuses and repurposes the familiar to the point that even just the way that it sounds will stir up nostalgic warmth in the biggest fans, but once that 50+ year old skeleton finally gives out, what do we have left?
Well said, and strong agreement across the board. (I, too, have only seen The Rise of Skywalker the one time and will probably never watch it again, despite being a life-long Star Wars fan.)
It's pretty clear that Kennedy's experience as a producer has not translated to the duties of a studio head. My take is she's a bean counter who doesn't have the creative talent to make story decisions. (I wonder if George picked her because of this? Like he thought she'd just use his story treatments for episodes 7-9, since story has never been her strength. Interesting hypothesis, anyway.) Instead she's abdicated her creative responsibilities to every director she's hired, which is why the Sequel Trilogy in particular is so disjointed (and ultimately ends so unsatisfactorily). But it also explains the scattershot approach Lucasfilm has approached everything post-Lucas. There is no Feige-esque unified plan because the person in charge of planning is out of her element.
And now I'm hearing rumors about Disney+ shows featuring Luke, Han, and Leia... WTF We are doomed to forever keep circling this one particular point in galactic history. The best thing for Star Wars would be to go back way into the past or far into the future, and tell stories about entirely new characters. The Mandalorian felt like a nice compromise--give us the familiar totems, X-Wings, Stormtroopers, etc.--but make it about an entirely new character and a different part of the galaxy. But season two shoehorned in Ahsoka and Luke. And it's increasingly clear that's the direction Lucasfilm intends to go.
As for Filoni.. he's a middling director, not a messiah. This probably isn't true and I have no way of vetting it, but I attribute all the good things about The Mandalorian to Favreau, and all the stupid expanded universe crap to Filoni. I included this Filoni take in my list of my controversial Star Wars opinions: https://medium.com/fan-fare/7-absolutely-controversial-things-i-believe-about-star-wars-4bbc51875dd1?sk=fa0ce0ba42cb8595eb8f79a57c8c2c1f
Great read, glad I follow you. It's hard to find people that both really care about Star Wars and aren't blinded senseless by the spectacle of it. If you go to a Facebook Group or Reddit and talk about how disappointing The Book of Boba Fett was (disjointed, made a mockery of the main character, stepped all over the season two finale of The Mandalorian), you'll get shouted down. There's no room in the fandom for serious critical analysis. You're either with them or against them. Which, as you know, is the way of the Sith.
Love the analogy in the last paragraph