Let’s call a spade a spade: this season of Mando was more uneven than my heart rate, and the last three episodes really exemplified a lot of the problems I had with this season as a whole. I put off writing this review because, honestly, I just didn’t find the end of the season that interesting…but I’ve wrangled my thoughts like a herd of nervous cattle and now I’m bringing ‘em on down to auction. I’ll do my best to keep things chronological, but no promises.
Episode 6, if I’m remembering correctly, was a real low point of the season – no, not because Jack Black and Lizzo showed up. It just felt like a couple of prominent plotlines were wrapped up with the grace and sense of closure of a damp fart. Din and Bo-Katan’s conflict over the ownership of the Darksaber had been building since last season – and it ends over a legal technicality?
…Sweet. That’s what I come to Star Wars for: to see characters take advantage of loopholes to get out of conflicts that might actually be interesting. Bo-Katan’s claiming of the ‘saber led to the Nite Owls falling back in line under her control. Thankfully, it seems that the entire surviving population of Mandalore consists of, like, 60 people, all of whom essentially overcome their deep-rooted cultural differences in the space of two and a half episodes. Fuck’s sake. That’s a less realistic scenario than my parents telling their friends that they’re proud of me.
I will say, the Mandalorians’ battle to retake their homeworld looked cool from moment to moment, thanks to solid choreography and direction that didn’t get in the way of the action. Unfortunately, when you spend about ten seconds thinking about what you just watched, some holes start to appear. First, of course, is the oddly small scale of this supposedly epic mission – I mean, sure, I get that it’s on a TV show’s budget, but I feel like splitting the invasion force up into teams on different missions might have added to the sense of scale without necessitating the addition of a ton of extras or CGI. Din’s capture wasn’t that much of a cliffhanger, and was resolved almost cartoonishly quickly. The appearance of the surviving Mandalorians on the planet’s surface was completely out of left field, and none of them felt like real characters – more exposition (and fast travel) devices. How’d they survive so long, especially with Moff Gideon running a massive Imperial operation just under the planet’s surface? Why did the Mythosaur never really do anything besides float around underwater? I’m sure I’m forgetting some shit, but you get the idea. On to some more character-specific stuff…
IG-11’s – or, rather, his corpse’s – plotline was, to put it politely, a waste of time that came out of nowhere and ended up in the same place. What a weird way of coming up with a replacement Marshal for Cara Dune. Ol’ IG’s reappearance didn’t make sense to begin with – it’s harder to get destroyed more thoroughly than blowing up while standing in a lava river – and his brief repurposing as a mech suit for Grogu was interesting but ultimately kind of pointless. I guess it gave us a couple of fun scenes with Baby Yoda playing with the “yes” and “no” buttons.
On the topic of Baby Yo’, the little guy’s action chops are starting to get a little out of hand. Those three Praetorians had no problem chopping up Paz Viszla like he was an overpriced salad, but Grogu (literally) runs circles around them for thirty seconds before they get him in their sights? I’m not rooting for the little guy’s death, here, but perhaps he could have used his force powers in an offensive manner earlier in the encounter?
Bo-Katan hijacked a bunch of this season the same way Mando himself hijacked a big chunk of The Book of Boba Fett. This wasn’t a bad thing, in and of itself; Bo-Katan is a compelling character and Katee Sackhoff gets to be a protagonist who has actual facial expressions. That said, I couldn’t help but feel like I was watching the setup for another show during the episodes focusing on Bo-Katan’s journey – maybe if these had been filmed more from Din’s[1] perspective, showing his viewpoint on Bo-Katan’s ascension, there wouldn’t have been as much whiplash in terms of narrative focus.
Giancarlo Esposito kind of leaned into the scenery-chewing aspect of his character this season, and I didn’t really hate it – as usual, we didn’t get a lot of screen time with Moff Gideon, so I appreciated the hamminess every time. The overpowered nature of his hydraulic armor was kind of dumb – like, seriously, he could just crush the Darksaber in one hand? – and his “death” was underwhelming, but at least he looked cool. Oh, and on the Imperial side of things – I guess that’s all we’re going to get on Elia Kane and her biscuit-munching plotting? I just felt like the season was setting her up to have more of an impact. Also, who was the second spy in “The Spies”? The plural nature of the title implies that there’s at least one besides Kane..that episode should have been titled “The Indeterminately Effective Beskar Armor of Every Non-Named Character” since that shit got a hell of a lot more screen time.
Dumb armor physics aside, there were some better-than-decent action scenes on offer, even if they leaned into the sillier side of Star Wars (remember how the Armorer was having a jetpack fight while wielding a hammer and tongs?). The shield hallway fight in the finale was a particular standout, even giving poor old R5 a bit of a hero moment as he opened the gates for Mando.
The end of the season was a bit of a soft reset, I suppose – Bo-Katan’s quest to reunite the Mandalorians and retake their home is complete, Din has officially adopted Grogu as his son, and the two have retired to a nice little house on Nevarro, with plans to take on odd jobs for the New Republic on a case-by-case basis. Maybe this heralds the return of the more “monster of the week” style episodes that were more common in the first season? I wouldn’t mind that – Disney’s “TV/Cinematic Universe” ambitions get their grimy fingerprints on everything these days, and this season was very much not an exception. Something a little more back-to-basics might do to wipe the smears off.
Rating:
Episode 6: 4/10 (+1/-0.75)
Episode 7: 6.5/10 (+.5/-.5)
Episode 8: 7/10 (+.5/-1)
Overall Season Rating: 6.5/10 (+5/-1.5)
[1] I’m not calling him “Djarin”. It doesn’t feel right.
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