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The Mandalorian Season 3


Zathras
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My biggest pet peeve in video games is side quests--mainly having to do a bunch of side quests to complete the main quest.  I still remember investing all that time in Mass Effect only to find out the side quest to improve your ship was actually essential to completing the game. 

That is how I feel about this show.

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Lol. I was thinking this episode felt very game questy. I could almost hear Djin sighing under his breath "all right I'll fix ya fuckin droid problem". 

I don't mind side quests generally, however but this season has felt too rudderless overall. I like the direction it's heading the last two episodes with Bo to lead the Mandalorian repatriation and rule so (hopefully) Djin can ride off and become the lone ranger (with Grogu) again. 

I think the scope has started getting too big. I'd rather just follow Djin and Grogu as they go round taking side quest after side quest. Just make them fun to watch, and somewhat plausible (within the context of SW) not some goofy prequel-like stuff

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Good thing they did all that set-up to imply Bo and Din would have to face off some how. 

WTF has happened. I don't hate it-- but last season was MUST SEE TV. I couldn't wait for new episodes to come out.

I mean I KNOW what has happened, it's just sad.

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Christopher Lloyd’s character said Count Dooku was a visionary who was correct in trying to break away from the corrupt Republic. So what does that have to do with making the droids malfunction now? Didn’t he have what he wanted? A true democracy independent of the galactic government? So he’s trying to ruin this planet for what reason?

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Well - that was an episode! Lots to unpack there. Plenty of name checks at the start, we have references to Thrawn, and we see his number 2, Captain Pelleaon which was nice! Hux’s dad, played by the actors brother! All before the title sequence!

Then we get to the Mando’s. Good interactions between the divisions and a very tasty battle to finish off. Very nice in my opinion. 

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Yeah-- this was probably the first episode of the season that really lived up to the last season. And I agree, sooner would have been better. So little has happened they could have easily made this the midpoint of the season-- or hell, even the second or third episode.

And I also learned my current Star Wars angst problem with this episode. It came to me when Gideon was talking about combining Death Troopers, and Mandalorians, and Jedi and whatever else into one SUPER COOL THING. And don't get me wrong, the Mando-troopers were cool and all... but...

It took me back to the old days of being on this site and people theorizing about what was going to be in the PT. People always claimed to be in the know, AICN and force.net were always pumping out rumors, and I felt like the bad ones were always easy to spot.

The people making up the fake ones could never resist doing this sort of thing-- coming up ONMG SO COOL idea. The kind of people playing SWRPGs and making combo bounty hunter / Jedi characters. The other thing they would do, is say WELL IT HAS TO BE X BECAUSE IN THIS RANDO EU NOVEL Y HAPPENED.

I'd be rich AF if I had a nickel for every time I posted on here that no filmmaker, first Lucas, and later Abrams/Johnson or whomever, would ever be restricted by something done in a spin off novel or cartoon. Anything not on screen would end up getting retconned or de-canonized. And what happened? Everything written before the ST was cut loose.

Now we've reached a point where these things are no longer true. Filoni is becoming the lead creative more and more-- which on the one hand is good, the guy does know Star Wars. He gave us the Clone Wars we wanted. He's added nuance and pathos to Lucas' tone deaf ideas.

But on the other hand-- he is also a guy writing those animated spin-off stories and assuming everyone has seen them. He is giving is the OMG SO COOL concepts that are a bit over the top. 

I tend to watch most things Star Wars, and the kid in me loves how big and expansive the universe is becoming. But at the same time, I am weary of the constant retcons, changes in rules, addition of concepts I don't think fit, and in general the de-specialization of Star Wars away from being event-driven movies.

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The best part of the episode was Grogu in the robot. That was great.

I just don't get why I should care about the Mandalorians. None of them are very likeable. Their culture fetishizes weapons and violence. Two of them were gonna fight it out over a disgreement about rules to a board game. Why should I want things to work out for these guys? What a terrible culture. 

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They are the Klingons of Star Wars. Realistically speaking, a culture built around war isn't ever going to get to space, or solve hunger or illness.

That said, the CARE shouldn't be coming from their culture (which to be fair is shown as flawed and all but wiped out), it SHOULD be coming from Din Darjin as somebody who has adopted this culture as his own even though he is not technically one of them.

Using the Klingon parallel-- it wasn't until TNG that the Klingon's started being seen maybe as 2-3 note characters as opposed to the 1-note way they were in TOS and the TOS movies. That all came down to Worf. Without Worf, you wouldn't have gotten all the more nuanced Klingons, even the ones seen in TUC.

Worf himself though was very concerned with being less than Klingon. He was raised by humans, in Starfleet, and over-compensated by acting like an uber-Klingon. One of my favorite Worf bits was him insisting to Guinan that warriors do not laugh, and she calls BS on it and points out Klingons belly-laugh better than anyone. Point-being, Worf was so concerned with proving his Klingon-ness, it often got in his own way. This was his arc, to find himself.

Mando literally has a catch-phrase of "this is the way" and him being challenged on what the way is has been very passive-- essentially getting pissy when other Mandos take off their helmets.

The idea of him being an outsider in a sect he discovers also to be outsiders to the Mandalorian way should be his drive. Instead, this season he's doubled down on the fundamentalism of The Watch, and handed off all responsibility of unification to Bo. It's his show and story, he should be the one to unite these opposing factions. 

We don't care because they've given him no real stake in this struggle to restore the Mandorians. If it landed on him and he was trying to teach these factions to work together, while trying to raise Grogu, and realize his self-proclaimed judgement of character being what he holds value to, and that he should step up to lead as opposed to just hunting down wayward criminals, this season would make sense.

When he ended up with the darksaber by default, this was what was being set up. But they've been so freaking passive about it, we just don't care.

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I don't disagree, from the start I thought a main storyline of this show would be Mando learning that and then showing the Mandalorians that their way is completely wrong. This week he did say to Bo that he dont care who has the saber he cares about other things, so its maybe there a bit but not really.

Ya know people talk about "getting Star Wars" or whatever but for me nothing misunderstands Star Wars more than the Mandalorians.

Democracy is so inherently important to Star Wars that in TPM Lucas had Padme be a 14 year old elected Queen, against any and all logic, as opposed to just a monarch because the good guys could not in any way be non Democratic. The Mandalorians here their system of government is following whoever is a good fighter and can beat someone else who owns a laser sword.

The Jedi's ultimate fall is when they go from being peacekeepers to warriors. This is their downfall, yet the Mandalorians fetishize being warriors. Luke Skywalker, still Id say the greatest hero of the saga, his greatest moments are when he refuses to fight. When he throws his saber down at the end of ROTJ, when he saves the Resistance by commiting no violence. Yet the Mandalorians fetishize this.

The Mandalorians should absolutely not be good guys in Star Wars. They are the antithesis of alot of the themes and lessons at the very heart of it all. Like I said, and I think you in general agree, I thought the show would be about Din showing them that everything they do is wrong. Its just not the case.

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1 hour ago, Tank said:

They are the Klingons of Star Wars. Realistically speaking, a culture built around war isn't ever going to get to space, or solve hunger or illness.

That said, the CARE shouldn't be coming from their culture (which to be fair is shown as flawed and all but wiped out), it SHOULD be coming from Din Darjin as somebody who has adopted this culture as his own even though he is not technically one of them.

Using the Klingon parallel-- it wasn't until TNG that the Klingon's started being seen maybe as 2-3 note characters as opposed to the 1-note way they were in TOS and the TOS movies. That all came down to Worf. Without Worf, you wouldn't have gotten all the more nuanced Klingons, even the ones seen in TUC.

Worf himself though was very concerned with being less than Klingon. He was raised by humans, in Starfleet, and over-compensated by acting like an uber-Klingon. One of my favorite Worf bits was him insisting to Guinan that warriors do not laugh, and she calls BS on it and points out Klingons belly-laugh better than anyone. Point-being, Worf was so concerned with proving his Klingon-ness, it often got in his own way. This was his arc, to find himself.

Mando literally has a catch-phrase of "this is the way" and him being challenged on what the way is has been very passive-- essentially getting pissy when other Mandos take off their helmets.

The idea of him being an outsider in a sect he discovers also to be outsiders to the Mandalorian way should be his drive. Instead, this season he's doubled down on the fundamentalism of The Watch, and handed off all responsibility of unification to Bo. It's his show and story, he should be the one to unite these opposing factions. 

We don't care because they've given him no real stake in this struggle to restore the Mandorians. If it landed on him and he was trying to teach these factions to work together, while trying to raise Grogu, and realize his self-proclaimed judgement of character being what he holds value to, and that he should step up to lead as opposed to just hunting down wayward criminals, this season would make sense.

When he ended up with the darksaber by default, this was what was being set up. But they've been so freaking passive about it, we just don't care.

While I think you are being a bit harsh on Mandalorian season 3, I totally get what you are saying anf love the Klingon analogy. 

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The name of the episode is the Spies and they didn’t really call out who the other spy was aside from the Imperial at the start. 

Any bets on the other likely candidate? Some of the scenes with the Armourer had an ominous vibe to them and willing to bet we find out next week she’s working for Gideon. 

And great episode - even just the way it was shot, didn’t feel as cheap as some of the earlier episodes. Courscant didn’t just look like leftover shots from Episode 3. 

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Mandalorians ARE SW Klingons, of course!.. or space Vikings. 

I can understand where choc is coming from, that having space Vikings being the good guys doesn't make sense in the moral binary of traditional SW. Good guys have to be peaceful and good. The Disney era SW franchise seems to be bringing more things that challenge this and are trying to bring shades of grey for better and worse.

I like Tank's explanation. The mandalorians are meant to be brutal SW Klingons/Vikings that celebrate war and honour. (The ultimate Mandalorian was Canderous Ordo from Kotor IMO.) So it should have been up to Din to unite the clans and show the mandalorians a better way than mindless barbarism. They should have followed him because of his deeds, his honour and the darksaber. He was meant to be the Mandalorian Ragnar Lothbrok. 

There were cool moments in this episode, like the big guy doing his last stand "this is the way" and going to space Valhalla. But they have fumbled the main storyline so hard this season it's hard to care.

Meh

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7 hours ago, The Choc said:

I don't disagree, from the start I thought a main storyline of this show would be Mando learning that and then showing the Mandalorians that their way is completely wrong. This week he did say to Bo that he dont care who has the saber he cares about other things, so its maybe there a bit but not really.

Ya know people talk about "getting Star Wars" or whatever but for me nothing misunderstands Star Wars more than the Mandalorians.

Democracy is so inherently important to Star Wars that in TPM Lucas had Padme be a 14 year old elected Queen, against any and all logic, as opposed to just a monarch because the good guys could not in any way be non Democratic. The Mandalorians here their system of government is following whoever is a good fighter and can beat someone else who owns a laser sword.

The Jedi's ultimate fall is when they go from being peacekeepers to warriors. This is their downfall, yet the Mandalorians fetishize being warriors. Luke Skywalker, still Id say the greatest hero of the saga, his greatest moments are when he refuses to fight. When he throws his saber down at the end of ROTJ, when he saves the Resistance by commiting no violence. Yet the Mandalorians fetishize this.

The Mandalorians should absolutely not be good guys in Star Wars. They are the antithesis of alot of the themes and lessons at the very heart of it all. Like I said, and I think you in general agree, I thought the show would be about Din showing them that everything they do is wrong. Its just not the case.

Choc, I love this. You completely nailed it. 

It's the same reason it was a big misstep for the series to shift its focus from Din Djarin to Bo Katan and have her be the one to unite the "tribes" instead of him. I wrote a few posts back that Bo had been part of the faction who fought against her own sister to bring an end to the pacifist society her sister was running. Bo's group would commit terrorist atrocities, such as blow up civilian buildings on Mandalore, killing innocent people. She ended up leaving this faction only because Maul took over and “he wasn’t Mandalorian.” She's no hero and asking the audience to get behind her and care about the Mandalorians is a huge stretch now.

Also, I hate when characters commit suicide for no reason. The Mandos escaped through a hole Bo cuts in the wall that is only big enough for one person to go through at a time. They were all already out so Vizla could've followed behind and used that small hole to his advantage. He tells Bo to go because there's too many troopers and he's just going to fight off as many as he can right in the open. Duh, if you just go through the hole, as you fall back on the other side, the hole will nullifiy the troopers' numbers because you can shoot them with that crazy machine gun as they come through one by one.   

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I also just hate that nothing that happens matters on this show. This is a problem overall with Star Wars too. The season  finale famously has Grogu and Din separated and then back together like nothing happened in the next seasons first episode. Also though it has Gideon defeated and captured. Now he is back seemingly stronger than ever. I get that they showed one scene of the shuttle he was being transported on was attacked but for all intents and purposes his capture had zero consequence for the show. This episode ends with the one big Mandalorian dying but why cant he just be alive still? I mean you have guys who were cut in half, ate by a monster, thrown down some pit on a battle station that was then blown up and they all lived or came back in some way. Why can't this guy? Nothing that happens matters. Maybe Padme will show up next week? Who the hell knows! This isn't a problem only with this show, heaven knows TROS "killed" Chewy, had threepios memory "wiped", blew up Kajimi where Kerry Russell and Babu Frick were and had Kylo stabbed through the stomach and none of that mattered. 

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