Mandalorian Made Me Mad

  So when I finished my four-part series “The Real Reason You Probably Don’t Like Star Wars Anymore” about a month and a half ago, I said I would be taking a break from writing about Star Wars for awhile. Since then, however, Disney has announced ten new shows and three new films that will all be developed in unison over the next few years, beginning this spring with an animated series entitled The Bad Batch. Needless to say, we are about to enter a whole new era of Star Wars, so before that happens, I want to wrap up whatever current thoughts I have about the franchise for the time being. Therefore, in the near future, I will be tackling Star Wars (all canon films and shows up until now) as part of my “The Good & The Bad” series on this blog. Before doing that, however, there’s something specific that happened very recently in the world of Star Wars that I would like to address all on its own:

A few weeks ago, the second season of the hit show The Mandalorian came to a close. Warning: From this point onward, I will be discussing spoilers. So if you haven’t seen the season finale yet, and don’t want to be spoiled, then I suggest you leave here now. Got it? Okay, moving on… So yeah, Luke showed up. And as one would expect, everyone on the Internet freaked out. Now, before explaining why I have an issue with this, allow me to first say some positives: Firstly, I’m happy for all of the nice, respectful fans who wanted something like this to happen and are not toxic about it towards others. Furthermore, I’m happy for Luke himself, Mark Hamill, as he made it pretty clear during the making of the sequel trilogy that the Luke he envisioned was closer to where he seemed to have ended up by the final scene of Return of the Jedi, which is more or less the same Luke we see in Mando. I’m glad he got to play that version of Luke again, like he wanted to, using the magic of cgi to bring him back to the right age for it. Personally, I would’ve preferred if they had just casted Sebastian Stan, or some other lookalike, but that’s neither here nor there.

The last positive thing I’ll say for now is that, at least this way, there’s now a little something for everyone. You want a more “human” version of Luke with flaws and emotion? You can watch The Last Jedi. You want an idealized “superhero” version of Luke like the one you dreamt about when you were a kid? You can watch The Mandalorian. People change over time, so both versions of the character can exist in the same timeline and be considered “canon,” no matter what anyone might say. Besides, with all of these big hollywood franchises moving towards multiverses anyways, who cares anymore what’s “canon” and what isn’t? If they really do de-canonize the sequel trilogy someday (they won’t, by the way), I won’t care because I can still go watch The Last Jedi whenever I want to.

So with that all out of the way now, let’s get to my gripes with Mando… I think it’s pretty safe to say that, since development on this show first started, creators Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni have basically been “playing with their old Star Wars toys,” so to speak. Din is a toy of the Holiday Special version of Boba Fett. Grogu is a Yoda toy. Kuill is an ugnaught toy. Gideon is a Vader toy. IG-11 is an IG-88 toy. Cara is a “twisted” version of Leia (rebellion fighter who lost her family on Alderaan). Some people even say that Greef is a Lando toy (though aside from the fact that they look similar, I don’t really see the connection). By the time they got to the second season, Faverau and Filoni embraced the “toy” idea even further and, rather than creating “newish” characters, just straight-up gave us the toys. Bo-Katan is Bo-Katan. Ahsoka is Ahsoka. Boba is Boba. Luke is Luke… You get the idea. Personally, I didn’t mind Clone Wars characters like Bo-Katan and Ahsoka showing up. Their placement felt natural to me, and didn’t take away from the focus being on Din and Grogu. Furthermore, their presence allowed for more general audience viewers to become familiar with elements from The Clone Wars, and perhaps even get them interested in checking it out. As a fan of that show, I can only see this as a good thing, personally. As for Boba; he actually ended up being more of a character on Mando than he even was in the movies, so that worked for me as well.

So up until the season two finale, this approach felt wholesome to me, and actually seemed like a clever way of taking familiar elements from the franchise and recontextualizing them in a new way… And then we get to Luke… If any character on this show takes that “toy” concept to the extreme, it’s Luke. During his time on screen, he barely even felt like a character. The hallway scene of him slicing down robots like he was a god felt like nothing more than empty fan service, and the fact that it was a callback to an equally-empty fan service moment in Rogue One made it all the more embarrassing for me. 

What especially sucks about this is that it has made this already-entitled fanbase even more entitled now. Ever since this finale aired, all I’ve seen online are posts and videos with crap like “Hah! Take that Rian Johnson and Kathy Kennedy!!” And “Mando is ERASING the sequel trilogy! This is INSANE!!” First of all, Kennedy and Johnson helped Dave Filoni learn how to actually direct live action. Furthermore, if Filoni was trying to erase the sequel trilogy, then why did he put very clear homages to The Last Jedi in the final season of The Clone Wars? And why does Mando seem to be setting up the origins of Snoke and The First Order? 

More importantly than any of that stuff however is the fact that fans are now using Mando as a “weapon” against those who enjoyed The Last Jedi. Suddenly Faverau and Filoni “matter” more than Johnson, and people who prefer the sequel trilogy over stuff like Mando “aren’t true fans.” Sad shit. And you may be thinking to yourself “You’re doing the same thing right now to Mando fans, dude!” And in a sense, you may be right, but while I still want to vent out my opinions (part of the reason why I started this blog in the first place), I by no means want to directly tell specific people exactly how to think (like most anti-TLJ people seem to want to do these days). Take these posts however you will, and continue to form your own opinions…

Moving on: My biggest issue with Luke’s appearance is that it took away from the actual characters of the show. Suddenly, they all take a backseat and watch an overpowered, literal deus ex machina show up and effortlessly handle the conflict that they had been struggling with so much. How cool would it have been to see Din and his pals figuring out a way to defeat the Dark Troopers using what little resources they had (beskar spear, darksaber, etc.)? That being said, I understand that the season had been building up to a Jedi appearance, but did it really need to be Luke? I know I made the point in my last post about Star Wars that Luke was the “Flash Gordon” at the start of this all, but I also said in that same post that the opportunity to keep him at the center of this all passed long ago. We need to move on from Luke now, and what made Mando cool was that, before the second season finale, it felt fairly disconnected from the films. It was it’s own thing, for the most part, “toys” and all! 

If we really needed a Jedi there, I would’ve preferred Ahsoka coming back after having a change of heart about not wanting to train Grogu. Or maybe bring in Kal from the Fallen Order game. Fuck it! Or even better, just have other members of Yoda’s species find him (and finally say what the species is called and what planet they’re from). But if we’re just gonna double-down on Luke instead, then we might as well go with my crazy idea that I mentioned in my last Star Wars post and keep rebooting the whole franchise every twenty years or so, keeping Luke at the center of each new iteration. I’d almost rather have that than just shoving him into everyone else’s story…

I will say this, though: While I felt Luke’s presence took away from the actual characters of the show, I still absolutely loved the goodbye moment between Din and Grogu. Pedro Pascal acted that out perfectly, and who would’ve ever thought that a puppet could evoke so much emotion? Here’s the problem now, though: What happens to Grogu? Does Kylo kill him when he slaughters all of Luke’s students? Too many questions about the future now, if you ask me. Plus, this means we’ll probably see Luke yet again still, and the last thing I wanted was for Mando to become even more connected to the films…

Furthermore, not having Grogu around is going to be an issue going forward. Most general audience viewers were just watching the show because of Grogu, and nothing else. I understand that some people feel that keeping the show about Din and Grogu going on random adventures from planet to planet would’ve become boring, but personally, I feel that Star Wars is actually best when it’s simple and “episodic” like that (I know most of you feel differently, but I don’t care). I’m not a fan of the “Game of Thrones approach” that Filoni says the show will be embracing now going forward. While part of me is intrigued by the idea of Din eventually becoming the new ruler of Mandalore and the one who unites all the Mandalorian clans back together, I can’t help but feel like the execution of this will be weird. That being said, I’d love to be proven wrong. If I end up liking this approach, when it’s all said and done, then I am willing to eat my own words.

Nevertheless, the lack of Grogu is still going to feel really weird, at least for awhile. Another reason why I wish Ahsoka was the Jedi who came to pick him up at the end was so that he could at least be in her upcoming show. Rumor has it he might be in a Luke-centric show instead, but hopefully that show never actually happens, cause that would only serve as an even greater weapon for the toxic side of the fandom. Unless, that is, they use it as a way to better explain him trying to kill Kylo in his sleep in The Last Jedi, but even then, I feel like most anti-sequel fans still won’t be satisfied, so why even bother? Honestly, if it were up to me, I would’ve had Grogu choose to become a Mandalorian instead of a Jedi. Maybe this will still happen longterm? I’d find it weird if he were still with Luke by the time Kylo snaps. He already witnessed Order 66, after all. Does he really need to go through that all over again?

Whether or not that supposed Luke show actually happens, the point still stands that, at least right now, Disney is letting the toxic fans win. You don’t need to look any further than Luke saying “Talent without training is nothing” in the Mando finale to see that, for the foreseeable future, Disney just wants to pander to all the people who called Rey a Mary Sue, so that they can “win them back.” If I were in control, I would say “fuck those people.” Why should we be rewarding entitlement like that? The Force Awakens actually did the same thing, by pandering to everyone who used to shit on the prequel trilogy, including my younger, stupider self. As a matter of fact, this sheer level of pandering and entitlement is a problem with almost all of pop culture right now, not just Star Wars. But that’s a topic for another day…

Funny enough, however… I’m actually glad all of this happened! Bringing Luke into the second season finale of Mando, and seeing how all different kinds of people reacted to it in all different kinds of ways, taught me a valuable lesson:

Star Wars will ALWAYS be divisive!

Before now, I used to (foolishly, in hindsight) think that maybe all of this division amongst the fandom would end once the Skywalker saga was finally over, but now I see that all of this discourse is really meant to last forever, in some form or another. I’ve already come across several other like-minded individuals (some who like The Last Jedi, some who don’t), who feel the same way about Luke’s appearance in Mando as I do. Those people will probably continue to shit on Mando now. Meanwhile, there are probably a bunch of five-year-olds out there right now who love every single frame in Mando, and they’ll grow up to then shit on whatever the new thing with Star Wars is in ten years from now. This shit will never end! Might as well just embrace it, at this point…

As I close this post out, allow me to remind you all that I still enjoyed the rest of The Mandalorian, up until that second season finale, and while I may not be entirely happy with the direction it seems to be going in now, I still think it has the potential to do interesting things. Bill Burr’s character on the show interests me in particular, so hopefully we see more of him.. Oh yeah, and fuck whoever is saying that he’s “a better version of Finn.” Finn was a janitor kid who hadn’t been in battle until the beginning of The Force Awakens. They’re not the same thing! These same people say “Bill Burr had more character development in one episode than Finn did in his entire trilogy.” Really? Cause if I remember correctly, Finn learned to care about another person other than himself in Force Awakens, and then learned to care about an entire cause in Last Jedi, and then became a General and figured out he was force-sensitive in Rise of Skywalker. Could it have all been executed better? Yes, of course. But it’s all there…

So now the big question is this: Will I enjoy all of the other upcoming shows and films? And the answer is… I don’t know. Some definitely seem more interesting than others, but most seem to be relying on old characters and concepts still. Even The Acolyte, which takes place long before all of the other films and shows, will apparently relate to the Sith somehow.

In the end, even though I don’t agree with all of Disney’s decisions, I’ll still probably check out most, if not all, of these upcoming projects. I’m a nerd, after all… I probably won’t be reviewing any of them until, like, five years from now though, when this “phase” is over, unless I feel really motivated to talk about something or another. In the meantime, I do have a few more articles related to pre-2021 pop culture on the way…

Peace!

2023 UPDATE: Luke showing up at the end of Season 2 doesn’t bother me as much anymore… But I still think they shoulda just fully re-casted him instead of using CGI… And the line “Talent without training is nothing” is still stupid.