The Mandalorian - a general discussion thread - * SPOILERS * — Page 62

Yeah I thought S3E1 fell flat on it’s face too.

But I’m not surprised. They absolutely shot themselves in the foot when they completely nuked the dramatic tension set up by the finale of season 2 in one episode of not-his-own-show. BoBF completely ruined Boba Fett’s return AND Mando season 3 in one fell swoop. So many awful decisions with that show.

I’m still hopeful that we get something more exciting with a fight to retake Mandalore but it’s not staring out on the right foot at all.

canofhumdingers said:

BoBF completely ruined Boba Fett’s return AND Mando season 3 in one fell swoop. So many awful decisions with that show.

There are certainly some weird decisions going on… because it feels like the two BoBF Mando episodes were what I’d actually have expected the season premier to be.

After watching this latest episode, I had to remind myself what made this show good in the first place.

Season 1 was compelling for many reasons:

• It was the first live-action Star Wars show
• It showed us a much smaller-scale, simple story set in the Star Wars galaxy, which felt unique at the time
• It depicted this gritty, lawless, wild-west/frontier atmosphere that gave off similar vibes to the Original Trilogy
• The over-arching plot was simple and effective: ruthless bounty-hunter must protect small innocent child

Of course, even Season 1 had a lot of the “video game side-quest” style writing, but at the time I never minded it and the idea of a bounty hunter and a little child going on random unconnected adventures across the Outer Rim of the Star Wars Galaxy seemed charming and fascinating.

The Mandalorian episode that (inexplicably) aired as a Book of Boba Fett episode (I think it was Episode 5) somewhat recaptured a lot of the original charm of this series. Mando was alone, off on a job, looking for his target in some grimy underworld meat locker. There was unexpected extreme violence (Mando slices some criminal in half, then walks around with a bisected corpse in a bag), which recaptured the sense of danger and lawlessness prevalent in the first season. The giant “ring” space station was an incredible new location (despite being a common sci-fi element).

But the ACTUAL Season 3 Premier somehow just seemed incredibly bland, safe and directionless. The fact that Baby Yoda is suddenly back makes the show feel dramatically meaningless to me. Suddenly it’s much harder to care about anything going on. Every shot of Baby Yoda doing something cute comes off now as forced and manipulative. It feels like the “edge” of Season 1 is gone. The Wild West of the Outer Rim feels closer to a Disney theme park now. This might have something to do with Navarro now having developed into a thriving First World city - but the sense of blandness permeates beyond that. There’s a fight with a giant monster, but it comes out of nowhere and feels arbitrary and meaningless, unlike the Krayt Dragon fight in Season 2, which was integrated into the plot. We meet some “Space Pirates”, but they feel like silly cartoons. Pirates/gangsters in Star Wars used to be depicted with a certain level of grotesque darkness, while keeping everything rated PG. Jabba the Hutt may have been a giant slug with a cartoon laugh, but he also executed his dancing slave girl because she refused to “come closer”.

I don’t know. This just feels like a different show than Season 1. It just feels bland and aimless, especially since the heavy emotional payoff from last season was basically rendered completely pointless. I feel like that decision caused incalculable damage to the series as a whole. On top of that, there’s no real “hook” or open plot thread that seems particularly engaging. There’s this potentially exciting idea of “retaking Mandalore” floating around, but what does that even mean? Retake it from what? I thought it was almost entirely irradiated and uninhabitable. In fact, I’m not sure what Bo Katan expected to do even if she had the Dark Saber.

Anyway, it isn’t looking good at this point, but hopefully I’m wrong and the rest of the Season turns out to be amazing.

I feel like Season 1 was much more self contained, or at least properly bookended, with the whole Werner Herzog plot. Structure goes a long way in a series that has tiny 8 episode seasons. Maybe they were just trying harder because it was unclear if things would work out for the future.

Channel72 said:

After watching this latest episode, I had to remind myself what made this show good in the first place.

The Mandalorian episode that (inexplicably) aired as a Book of Boba Fett episode (I think it was Episode 5) somewhat recaptured a lot of the original charm of this series. Mando was alone, off on a job, looking for his target in some grimy underworld meat locker. There was unexpected extreme violence (Mando slices some criminal in half, then walks around with a bisected corpse in a bag), which recaptured the sense of danger and lawlessness prevalent in the first season. The giant “ring” space station was an incredible new location (despite being a common sci-fi element).

But the ACTUAL Season 3 Premier somehow just seemed incredibly bland, safe and directionless. The fact that Baby Yoda is suddenly back makes the show feel dramatically meaningless to me. Suddenly it’s much harder to care about anything going on. Every shot of Baby Yoda doing something cute comes off now as forced and manipulative. It feels like the “edge” of Season 1 is gone. The Wild West of the Outer Rim feels closer to a Disney theme park now. This might have something to do with Navarro now having developed into a thriving First World city - but the sense of blandness permeates beyond that. There’s a fight with a giant monster, but it comes out of nowhere and feels arbitrary and meaningless, unlike the Krayt Dragon fight in Season 2, which was integrated into the plot. We meet some “Space Pirates”, but they feel like silly cartoons.

Exactly this. TBOBF undermined everything the climax of Season 2 (for all its flaws) built to.

Navarro increasingly looks like Galaxy’s Edge. The dialogue & performances seem like those of theme park characters in an interactive visitor experience.

The cartoony feel of the show suggests the growing influence of Filoni in the Mandoverse. I’d rather they’d kept the animated tales entirely separate from this. Not least because I find elements to be absurd - space whales - or corny.

NFBisms said:

It’s the team-up of him and Favreau that I think enables a lot of the schlock. I may not agree with or buy into Filoni’s Star Wars all the time, but at least he’s interested in more than the theme park. Favreau feels like the guy that says it’s okay to indulge like that, and has the perspective of someone removed from the franchise’s prior history. He knows all audiences haven’t watched the cartoons and understands how wide the net should be for a big one. It worked well in Mando season 1 as the first live action tv series, but it solidified an emphasis on form that’s restrained a story itching to evolve.

I agree with you. It’s like they encourage the worst aspects of each other’s inner manchild.

I have no problem with the Mandalorian being the pulpy, Western-inspired side of Star Wars. I prefer Andor but the only way I think it needs to be a template for the other shows (or films) is in the quality of the writing & production. You can have a pulpy tone but still be prestige television.

They need a writers room. If Andor can get Beau Willimon from House of Cards & Stephen Schiff from the Americans, why not get Graham Yost from Justified for the Mandalorian?

It’s also bizarre, given how Disney de-canonised the original EU because it was so sprawling, complicated & of such variable quality, that they are making the same mistakes with these interconnected series.

Most people have neither the time nor inclination to watch every single piece of content - certainly not when it runs to seven seasons - in order to be able to follow the plot & recognise characters. Especially now when there’s so much (better) quality content on streaming. It’s ironic that Star Wars is leaning into this story approach just as it’s running into trouble in the MCU.

Looking at the first chapter (which I agree is quite weak), I think that this season the concept of this series as an anthology with a very marked POV is over. The starts of the previous two seasons were focused on a specific adventure that seeded subplots into the main story, but these 30 minutes almost seem like they were pulled from a longer movie or series. We have been on several planets with several conflicts going on at the same time (pirates, the recovery of IG-11, Din’s redemption as a Mandalorian), with a much more choral plot that makes clear the presence of several characters from previous seasons since the start.

I think that, as they point out here, the quality of Filoni’s works is super variable and seasons have started badly on other occasions. Without going any further, the beginning of this second part of TBB also seemed quite weak to me and has ended up giving great episodes.

That said, conceptually I like Mandalorian much more than Andor and I think that it formally has traits with more personality, but the development of one and the other is light years away. If Andor is much better, it is not for being a more adult series, but because Mandalorian has not managed to give real weight to its conflicts by not daring to take any firm step (the separation of Din and Grogu, the resurrection of characters, etc.) .

Warhorn said:

That said, conceptually I like Mandalorian much more than Andor and I think that it formally has traits with more personality, but the development of one and the other is light years away. If Andor is much better, it is not for being a more adult series, but because Mandalorian has not managed to give real weight to its conflicts by not daring to take any firm step (the separation of Din and Grogu, the resurrection of characters, etc.) .

The problem is that TBOBF undid the (potential) growth of Din & Grogu. There’s a danger they will just be spinning their wheels for the foreseeable future. With Pedro Pascal now in the suit far less (as he wants to do more interesting parts) & Din’s story switching to atoning for taking off his helmet there seems far less opportunity to give the viewers more depth to his character. Meanwhile, rather than being Luke’s apprentice, Grogu is back to being Din’s cute sidekick. Will he substantially develop as a character before he speaks? (Which Filoni vaguely promises will happen sooner rather than later.)

From what I understand from the trailers, this Season will somehow segue into a much larger plot arc about some kind of Galactic-level threat from a resurgent Imperial remnant. Obviously, saying anything more specific than that would just be speculation, but my conjecture is this means some kind of proto-First Order (I hope not), or some story leading up to Thrawn. I just learned that those weird space whale/octopus things imply a connection with Thrawn, but I haven’t seen most of the Rebels cartoon so I’m not certain. (The imagery of space whales seems wildly incongruent with the kind of military sci-fi vibes I remember from Zahn’s books). If these conjectures are even partially accurate, it seems this first episode is basically just filler. Also, it would mean the show is definitely moving away from its small-scale, lower key story-telling roots, which is kind of disappointing, and really doesn’t seem appropriate for this type of show. On the positive side, maybe a larger-scale story focus will distract us from the fact that Seasons 1 and 2 are now pretty much dramatically meaningless.

It’s strange - since I grew up with EU stories, I always imagined the larger scale events that shaped the Post-ROTJ era would involve Luke, Han and Leia. But I guess in this latest incarnation of Star Wars it’s going to involve Mando and various Filoni characters.

Personally, I would be happy to see Disney finally moving away from the legacy characters. The first season was quite effective in its lone gunman approach, although even that season had its filler episodes of varrying quality. The second season had way too much fan service for my taste, but generally the season was entertaining enough. Like many here I felt TBOBF completely removed the stakes by undoing the conclusion of the last season. This in my view was made worse by the fact that this show doesn’t have much story to begin with. The entire second season hinged on little more than Mando finding a Jedi, such that Grogu can get back to his kind. Putting Grogu back in the mix in two episodes of TBOBF felt cheap and pandering. Now IG-11 will be resurrected lowering the stakes even further. I think The Mandalorian had potential, but it would have been better if they had moved on from the character after season 2. Either that or hire a great team of writers to really flesh out the characters and a story for multiple seasons.

Reading the latest posts on this thread, I would say that’s my biggest problem with Filoni, his total inabilty to move on from characters and milking them for all their worth. This is best expemplified by his incessant shoehorning of Ahsoka in every last bit of SW media.

Anchorhead said:

fmalover said:

Reading the latest posts on this thread, I would say that’s my biggest problem with Filoni, his total inabilty to move on from characters and milking them for all their worth. This is best expemplified by his incessant shoehorning of Ahsoka in every last bit of SW media.

I agree 100%. Ahsoka is becoming the character version of Tatooine. Enough already.

I really don’t get this complaint at all. Outside of animation she’s only other been in 1 episode of Mandalorian season 2 and 2 episodes of Book of Bobba Fet where she gets less than 10 minutes of screen time. She hasn’t in my opinion been shoehorned into this series. If they were going to do Grogu needs to be sent to the Jedi the only ones alive, and not missing, during this time period are Luke and her, and she has a previous relationship with Bo Katan. Like if she was in more of The Mandalorian I’d maybe get this complaint, but she hasn’t shown up at all in Season 3

Anchorhead said:

screams in the void said:

It probably would have been better if those 2 episodes from BOBF were used to open the season here instead

For sure that was an odd call on their part. Book was a mess and using Mando to hold interest seemed weird (if that’s why they did it). Plus it can be confusing if you don’t follow both shows.

At our weekly lunch time TV\Film discussion at work, there was just that. One of my coworkers had bailed from Book after a few episodes. First question to the table was “Why does Mando have the baby again? I thought he went with Luke”.

Crossover is fine between series and can be fun sometimes. I was really happy to see James Woo show up in WandaVision because he was a great character in Ant-Man and the Wasp a few years earlier (plus I’m a huge Randall Park fan). However, one series shouldn’t be a requirement for the other to make sense. Woo as a character\plot element doesn’t affect one show or the other if you haven’t seen both.

I agree 100% and you can tell that Filoni and Favreau knew they’d made a mistake with that given their backtracking comments that Grogu was training with Luke for 2 years. I only watched the final 3 episodes of because I know Grogu was going to be back in season 3, as I wouldn’t have finished that show as the first episode was so bad I couldn’t even finish it. And the final episode was only Ok

daveybjones999 said:

Anchorhead said:

fmalover said:

Reading the latest posts on this thread, I would say that’s my biggest problem with Filoni, his total inabilty to move on from characters and milking them for all their worth. This is best expemplified by his incessant shoehorning of Ahsoka in every last bit of SW media.

I agree 100%. Ahsoka is becoming the character version of Tatooine. Enough already.

I really don’t get this complaint at all. Outside of animation she’s only other been in 1 episode of Mandalorian season 2 and 2 episodes of Book of Bobba Fet where she gets less than 10 minutes of screen time. She hasn’t in my opinion been shoehorned into this series. If they were going to do Grogu needs to be sent to the Jedi the only ones alive, and not missing, during this time period are Luke and her, and she has a previous relationship with Bo Katan. Like if she was in more of The Mandalorian I’d maybe get this complaint, but she hasn’t shown up at all in Season 3

I strongly believe Ahsoka should have died when she faced Darth Vader in Malachor. It would have been a powerful storytelling moment, but no, Filoni had her survive thanks to some time-travelling hijinks.

Episode 2 was much better, good pacing, some lore, some atmosphere. Still perhaps one too many CGI action beats that could have been shorter or replaced entirely, but at least it’s leading into a longer story.

Really enjoyed Episode 2. Still one plot thread too much, no idea why that opening with the droid was there, ended up feeling out of place. The perspective switch was also a little bit wonky but pretty much everything else was great. Really interesting to see how Din and Bo are getting closer to reaching a middle ground between their beliefs. Also loved the Grogu action. Really solid, I’m excited now.

I can’t believe we got to see a living, breathing mythosaur of all things. But the thing that has surprised me the most is the fact we already caught up with the redemption ritual storyline, which everyone though would be a season-long plot thread, by the 2nd episode. That leaves me very hyped to see what things await us for the rest of the season, especially after being slightly underwhelmed by the premiere. I’m particularly hooked on the dynamic between Din and Bo-Katan, that could lead to some very interesting developments…

What else is anyone expecting at this stage? I’m sure they’ve all signed clauses when they took the jobs they now have. Hand wave it and change the subject. ‘Nobody that matters to the Company even cares about it’ is at least partial honesty for once.