Spoiler warning: this blog is posted after The Mandalorian air on Disney +. Don’t read if you haven’t seen season two, program eight
Alright pal, it’s time to go – Din Djarin
Hidden deep within a remote subreddit, someone will have predicted exactly what happened in this program. But it certainly took me by surprise. A well-structured and well-structured final came to an end with the biggest cameo in the series to date when Luke Skywalker broke his way through a plague of Darktroopers to reach Grogu and take him under his wing.
The final image of the season is that the door closes on Luke, Grogu and a cheerful R2D2 as they head to a deep place to party with some Porgs. Our conventional hero, meanwhile, is left with nothing. Din Djarin’s whole reason for doing it, for getting into his arms in the morning, was removed. He wants to hold on to his baby (“He doesn’t want to go with you”, he said, trying it on with Luke), but he can’t.
This is not how a season usually ends. You squeeze the next adventure, pull back a villain or an unexpected complexity, something like that. But in a show of confidence from the show’s creator, Jon Favreau, who wrote this program, the Mandalorian offers nothing of the sort. Mandalore, a feigned duel for the darksaber, has a half – promise of fighting a civil war, but that’s it. It’s totally worse.
When Din Djarin takes off his helmet to show Grogu a face before they say goodbye, he looks struck, almost hard. Compare that to the postmodern clean cheeks of the Skywalker (CGI can take years away from you) and remind you that our hero is a good man. All with unique fighting ability and a strong moral code, but still. He’s not a pickup like Skywalker, or Grogu or even Bo-Katan. His job is to take actions to allow others to succeed. Without action, what is it?
At least that’s probably a bit chinstrokey, but I wanted to take it down. To get to my next point I need to quickly return to a routine recapture, reminding you all that this program starts with a clever space chase that allows Mando and a team of enforcers female landed below Moff Gideon ‘s tube.
The mission since then is simple: the women blast their way through a metric ton of storms as a distraction, while Mando goes off the darkness and rescues the baby. He thinks he has achieved the first thing when he pushes the robots out of an aircraft and, after a short battle with the old man Moff (beskar lance v darksaber is a fair fight, it turns out), he unlocks the second achievement as well. All done and erased. With … er … 20 minutes still to go.
I enjoyed this break in the story. We’re all used to watching a drama, thinking it was resolved but suspicious it wasn’t. But in this quiet moment my brain began to spin as I tried to guess what would happen next (and it had to be something, there was so much time left). I thought Moff had a plan up the aisle, but in reality it was the somewhat ineffective speaker whose fight with Mando had been open to him. Then the darktroopers turned again and I thought okay, this is a fight but one that our team will win. As the soldiers then went into formation and slowly, slowly sliding through the deck door, I began to reconsider my idea.
And just as I did so, the X-wing star arrived. What a great time. Turning plot is just like you tenterhooks waiting for another part of the story to settle. After that, a moment of screaming at the screen, trying to look behind the flashing lights to see who might be there (I believe the color gave it away, but no. definitely). Finally, a slash-and-tone with a dance shape.
That’s how you do it. Just to take the edge off, the next requirement was that you see a lively, renewed struggle of Luke synchronizing his lips with his conversation. But heck – you can’t have everything. Luke’s aura is enough to send a strong message to our team – you are heroes, but I am the image. And fast enough, he was gone.
The moral of the story
If work is worth doing… As he could be hurt, Din Djarin kept another promise. He passed the child on to someone who could finish his education (“Talent is not untrained at all,” as Luke puts it). The relationship between the tiny green thing and the big shiny silver one was life changing for both, but each story must end and Mando continued.
Special creatures
We got a short walk around a cantina at first and I think I saw a few Rodians complaining about it.
Camera corner
See above. Decent.
Grogu Guard
Looks traumatized for most of the program, but knows exactly what ‘s going on in the end. Seeing his little arms move to lift Luke was very appealing.
Last note
It has been a pleasure for me to write this recap, and after announcing a full galaxy of new Star Wars content with Disney last week (including the third series of the Mandalorian), I would be hope to see you all again in the future. Merry Christmas and stay safe everyone.