Well, they did it, they ruined Mando season 2, this’ll honestly sour any rewatches of the Mandalorian for me and I couldn’t be less excited for the eternal Grogu merchandise adventures. The finale really cemented how shoehorned the past two chapters were. Din should’ve been a gun for hire in Boba’s squad, nothing more.
I really liked Cad Bane in this episode though, I liked how he called Boba out, and his duel with him was really good, if only the show had been building up to it. Bane would’ve worked really well as a nemesis to Boba, a constant reflection of his past life, instead it was just a last minute cameo.
And the other antagonists were so underwhelming, all that slow and tedious build up for the Pykes, the mayor & the Mos Espa houses only for Fennec to just kill them all in 5 seconds, what was even the point? For a bit I thought it was Boba that killed them, it really should’ve been him, showing he’s a killer like Bane just said, bringing things back to when he shot Bib at point-blank range, and capping the story with the somber conclusion that diplomacy failed and he had to resort to violence again. Instead it was just presented as Shand being a “badass”.
This was supposed to be what the past four actual TBoBF chapters were building up to, and it ended up being quite a mess. The fight with the droids felt so drawn out, when they first appear they seem very threatening, but after so many shots of everyone just standing around them or messing with their shields most of the tension was lost. Also everyone kept shooting the shields over and over to no avail, but once the rancor breaks them nobody thinks to blast the droids, I kept expecting Boba to bullseye their bright red weakspot just like his papa, but no, other than Din everybody just sat there and watched the rancor struggle to tear the droids apart. I also thought it was funny how Boba says “those droids will tear down the city!”, and then proceeds to unleash a Rancor on the city.
On a more positive note, I really liked the life-sized Rancor they built for the close-ups, and the CGI was so good it was hard to tell when they switched between the two, that was really a hightlight. Paired with the Cad Bane stuff it just goes to show we didn’t need all the shoehorned Mando storyline.