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The second half of my edit from mid last year
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I did this in June of last year because, while I like the show, I’ve always struggled to like the FORMULA the show operates under. For the second season, the episodes are generally more worthwhile to the overall story, so doing an edit of the season to match the one I did previously was a little tricky.
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Both halves of this edit are down from 8 episodes to 5, matching my “Grogu-less Edit” of TM season 3, and the episode title and episode cards are a blue-grey colour – almost verging on a hue of purple – keeping it consistent with the official studio poster for the second season and just helping differentiate from the other half of the same project.
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Episode 6: The Marshal - 51 mins, all of the first episode of the second season, with a custom episode card I made and custom ‘previously’ card to match my work on the first season, and with some of the footage from my Season 1 edit in the ‘previously’ portion for consistency’s sake since it otherwise uses footage that contradicts the flow of events in my edit of Episode 2 when they’re still on Arvala-7. It’s said to take place one month after Nevarro, but this is just a headcanon for the sake of details and overall world-building and spacing out the story, I don’t consider it properly set in stone, it just helps me with the story.
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Episode 7: The Heiress - 39 mins, a shorted and changed version of “The Passenger” and all of “The Heiress”. The former episode definitely always felt like a sidequest to pad out the story with the ice moon adventure, so cutting it was a relief for the most part (there’s one or two good or amusing moments, but not enough to make me want to keep it all). Now, The episode starts as usual, with Din travelling back to Mos Eisley with Boba’s armour, gets into a scrape and returns on foot, meets Peli in the cantina and gets another lead on other Mandalorians. Back in her hangar, she begins cooking the dragon meat and introduces Din to Frog Lady, declares she’s an excellent judge of character and it transitions right into “The Heiress” in the Razor Crest’s cockpit as they arrive at Trask with the same Iris Circle visual effect for the same amount of frames as the original episode. They still have the bumpy landing but because the first exterior shot of the ship is when they’re about to descend – the damage from the ice spiders can be “disguised” as the result of entering the atmosphere roughly and burning up moments later – the landing array not responding before that is just a simple technical malfunction as well, not the result of any attacks or enemies, and when Grogu is left with the Frog couple he isn’t told “you know what I’m talking about” when minding his manners, since he isn’t seen eating any frog eggs now.
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Episode 8: The Sieges – 74 mins, all of “The Siege” and all of “The Jedi” together as one episode. ‘The Siege’ always felt like a sidequest to me because right at the start Din’s talking about knowing he has to go to Corvus and why, but still has to spend an entire episode doing something else somewhere else before he can even get started on going there. Unfortunately it’s an episode that I just can’t cut out because it reveals a huge amount of things in one episode, so I’m forced to keep it: you learn about Mythrol’s background from 1x01, you learn where the Imps on Nevarro came from out of nowhere in “The Reckoning”, Mando learns Gideon is still alive and he (and the audience) get their first glimpses of the horrific experiments this Imperial Remnant is conducting that obviously becomes more important later – and the Crest is fixed up, which you see a lot of in coming episodes so you can’t just have no explanation for it. Ultimately I tried to just make the best of this episode – it starts with Mando talking to Grogu about Corvus, you meet familiar faces in a familiar place (who now don’t get told about the New Republic damaging the Razor Crest since ‘The Passenger’ hasn’t happened anymore), learn a bunch of stuff that fills in a lot of blanks, and then you actually go to Corvus properly and spend the rest of the episode there. It’s a bit long for one episode, but ‘special’ episodes are always longer and it’s the long-awaited first-appearance of Ahsoka in live action, who happens to be the director’s pet project – so it’s understandable in that respect. The name ‘SiegeS’ comes from the Mando trio attacking the Imperial base, and then seeing Ahsoka’s sieges at Calodan to get to Magistrate Elsbeth for the information she posesses.
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Episode 9: The Tragedies - 59 mins, slightly shortened versions of “The Tragedy” and “The Believer”, with a custom title card for the edit like the other episodes. The main way I turned this into one episode was to trim down the repetitive aspects of both (Din and the Forcefield so it’s just once now (pun not intended), getting rid of asking if a rock has a control, and later Din brawling three times on the fuel carrier), which then brought TT down to 29 minutes and TB to 33 minutes, which both seemed way too short for a full episode of live action in a <10 episode series, so I just chopped TT’s credits off and stuck them together. Luckily the two episodes go into each other very seamlessly and the fact “The Prisoner” wasn’t in the First Season’s Edit doesn’t actually matter – Din talks to Cara about Migs Mayfeld on Nevarro and in that conversation we get: his Imp background, full name, where he was arrested & why – so clearly Mando knows him - and Mayfeld’s reaction to seeing him on Karthon tells you something bad happened between them, so you can see this as his “first” appearance and get on board quite quickly without a whole sidequesting episode about how they know each other already. It’s called ‘The TragedieS’ now because it covers the mission on Tython resulting in Grogu being abducted & the Razor Crest being destroyed, and also the revelation of Mayfeld’s breaking point and subsequent defection from The Empire after they massacred an entire planet of loyal civilians and their own soldiers on Burnin Konn through ‘Operation: Cinder’.
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Episode 10: The Rescue - 42 mins, identical in principle and method to Episode 6 where it’s just another version of a single episode again this time. Custom title and episode cards as per usual. Starts out in the Mid-Rim (another headcanon for the sake of details and overall world-building), Pershing is taken into custody by the heroes, custom title and episode cards, rest of the episode plays out unchanged from the source.
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Like my edit of Season 3 and 1, I went back after “Andor” was finished November last year and added annotative text for locations the first time it appears in the season for the viewer - which, considering he Mandoverse has been shallow and underdeveloped as hell since the start in my opinion - it works fairly well to fill in the gaps nicely.
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It’s a Mega link like Season 3
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Footnote: I am in no capacity a professional editor or VFX artist, so some areas are visibly mostly good as I have to be realistic with the footage in front of me and what I can do with it. If you do have any particular notes and feedback, feel free to give me your thoughts, but please be constructive and don’t be an ass about it.