Season 3 of The Mandalorian Was The Most Uneven Yet

When I watched the first season of Disney+'s The Mandalorian in 2020 I really enjoyed it.  After the disappointing sequel movies and Solo, it kind of got back to basics as a sci-fi Western in the mold of those old Clint Eastwood movies.  I mean the main character was pretty much a "man with no name" until almost the final episode.  And also we didn't see his face until that final episode.  I'm not sure if those movies used the plot of the hired killer turning on his employers when they ask him to kill (or in this case snatch) a child, but that's been done a bunch of times with more modern assassin movies.

Anyway, the show was an unexpected huge hit much like the original Star Wars movie, which was a good thing and a bad thing.  The good thing was then we would get more of "Mando"'s adventures with "the Child" but the bad thing is it started getting away from that sci-fi Western format to cram in a bunch of Star Wars universe references like Ahsoka Tano, Bo-Katan Kryze, Boba Fett, and finally a deepfaked Luke Skywalker.  Then there was sort of the backdoor season 2.5 in The Book of Boba Fett, which was kind of distracting from the main point of that show.

After over a year of waiting thanks to Covid, Pedro Pascal's schedule, and whatever else, season 3 finally came along in March.  And like I say in the title, it's kind of uneven.  The first episode features a lot of stalling before "Mando," aka Din Djarin, and the reunited Grogu can go to Mandalore so he can rejoin his cult covert.  Another site mentioned "side quests" and that's what a lot of this felt like.  He can't just fly into Mandalore, bathe in some water, and go back.  Nope he's got to go to Nevarre (however it's spelled) and try to reactivate IG-11 and then help Carl Weathers against some pirates led by a dude who looks like a living Chia Pet.  And then he goes to Tatooine to see the mechanic lady and winds up just getting the R5 droid Luke and Uncle Owen didn't buy like 25 years earlier--or at least one a lot like it.  And then they go to see Bo-Katan on some other planet to get her help for...reasons but she doesn't want to help them.

It reminded me of the movie Killing Them Softly starring Brad Pitt.  He's supposed to kill someone but he doesn't want to so he recruits James Gandolfini but Gandolfini is all drunk and messed-up.  After a while, Brad Pitt just whacks the guy he was supposed to and it was so easy he could have pretty much done it and made the movie about 30 minutes long.  It's the same sort of thing where Din could have just gone to Mandalore with Grogu and it probably wouldn't have mattered much.

So there were all these arbitrary obstacles or side quests thrown in to extend the plot.  Essentially, padding the episodes.  That's something that would reoccur throughout the season.  I bet if you cut everything down to what's essential, you could have just left about a 2 1/2 hour movie.

No episode is more padded than I think it was the third one that features Din and Bo-Katan at the beginning and end but the whole middle is on Coruscant about two "reformed" members of Moff Gideon's team and the one betrays the other before frying his brain.  It was all pretty unnecessary.  I didn't even remember who the woman was supposed to be; she was just someone on the bridge from the clip they showed.  And I really didn't remember Dr. Pershing was still alive.  Or care.

Part of the problem I suppose is the goal created during season 2.5 in The Book of Boba Fett wasn't enough to sustain a whole 8 episodes.  I mean, "Go to Mandalore and bathe in the waters" isn't exactly taking the one ring to Mt. Doom.  It was a pretty weak quest.  So they had to throw in other things and then the whole thing becomes about reclaiming Mandalore.  Which while the New Republic is busy and stuff, why didn't Bo-Katan go to Coruscant to ask for some help?  That seems like the kind of project the bleeding hearts of the New Republic would appreciate, especially Princess Leia who, hello, had her entire home planet blown up.  And if deepfaking Leia would have seemed too ghoulish, they could have worked around it and just met with an assistant or something--like her nanny/servant Winter in the original Timothy Zahn books from the 90s.  I mean, since they've been using Grand Admiral Thrawn, Captain Pellaeon, and Mt. Tantiss recently.

Anyway, there's also another episode where Din and Bo-Katan go to find her old crew.  But first they have to find out who's sabotaging the droids on the planet, which turns into this whole Star Wars-themed episode of CSI or maybe The X-Files.  Only after they arrest Christopher Lloyd can they go meet with the other Mandalorians.  It was fun but a lot of padding.

Besides the padding, there were a few things that were just kinda dumb.  Someone else mentioned in that episode mostly on Coruscant:  why would you let some random person be able to just walk in and crank up the mind flayer?  Shouldn't there have been a key or password or something?  My computer at work is better protected than the freaking mind flayer.  Later, the Mandalorians seem to rout a bunch of Gideon's commandoes and run into the most obvious trap.  Aren't they supposed to be great warriors?  Many of them have decades of experience as soldiers-for-hire or bounty hunters or whatever.  They should have followed with more caution.  And why is it Bo-Katan's single Gauntlet and Din's N-1 could take down a bunch of Imperial fighters in the third episode but in the last episode a whole bunch of Mandalorians with Gauntlets have to flee to the surface and sacrifice their capital ship in the face of one squadron of fighters?

Another complaint is a problem I also had with The Book of Boba Fett:  the cutesiness thrown in at times.  I mean, besides Grogu.  Really with Grogu you have enough cutesiness already but then you have the little droid-repairing aliens, the Alice in Wonderland-style party at a planet run by Jack Black & Lizzo, R5 fighting mouse droids, and ending with a cartoon-style circle fade-out effect.  This was the same thing in Return of the Jedi with Ewoks and Phantom Menace with lots of dumb things.  It's pretty lame.

And really I wish there had been more focus on Din and Grogu.  So often it felt like this was The Bo-Katan show more than Din and Grogu's show.  (But it is called The Mandalorian and she's Mandalorian, so I guess that still works?)  During one episode there's a flashback to Grogu being smuggled out of the temple (by Ahmed Best's Jedi character from a kid's game show) but there's no follow-up to really complete Grogu's journey or say how exactly he wound up in the hands of Dr. Pershing or whoever.  I had this thought after that and seeing how Grogu struggled doing Mandalorian things that really Grogu doesn't want to be Mandalorian any more than he wants to be a Jedi; he just wants to be with Din--the person he loves like his daddy.  I think some more thought should have been put into that.  Like maybe finding wherever the hell Yoda is from so Grogu could visit his own people and see what kind of things they do.

It's not like I hated the show, though.  There are plenty of cool action scenes, including the fight with the commandoes, Praetorian guards, and Moff Gideon.  (I bet Qui-Gon wished he could have had a droid turning force fields on and off for him against Darth Maul.)  At first I wasn't thrilled when Bo-Katan showed up to help Din against Gideon, but this blog made some good points about how important it was for the Mandalorians to join together to take down the bad guys and reclaim their planet.  There wasn't a Luke Skywalker-level cameo but we did get to see Zeb from Rebels in live action and the return of IG-11 as a literal RoboCop.  So that's something.

I don't know what exactly the plan is for the series.  I think Disney is shifting focus back to movies, which includes Dave Filoni helming a movie that will involve The Mandalorian and Ahsoka and maybe Boba Fett too.  The end of this left plenty of room to continue the series.  At some point it would be good to know how it fits in with the crappy sequels.  The question on everyone's minds has been for a while, "Where are Din and Grogu during those sequel movies?"  Obviously they didn't exist yet but now we have to retcon an answer.  Are they hanging out in the Outer Rim or Wild Space or somewhere else?  Ve shall see.

Anyway, I've really enjoyed this series for the most part, but I think the first season was the best.  Like Deadpool, I think it helped that Disney wasn't really expecting huge things from it and that kept things smaller and more manageable.  At this point now it's like Arrow where it inadvertently became the source of an entire universe.  At least a section of the Star Wars universe.  I guess you could call it the post-Rebellion section.  I'm not sure if like Arrow some of these other series will outlive it or not.

It has been a heck of a ride and really helped Star Wars to get some of its mojo back after the bungled sequels.

(What I'd really like to end with is footage of making my stuffed Pumbaa dance to the end theme song, but I don't really have the set up for that.  So just imagine making Build-A-Bear Pumbaa dance to the song:

There is some irony in that Jon Favreau directed The Lion King and created and wrote most of The Mandalorian.)