So… The Rise of Skywalker, huh? It sure was a movie. You know what? Let’s talk about The Mandalorian instead. Yes, after we all saw the Skywalker saga come to a close, it turns out we’ve actually been watching 2019’s best Star Wars movie all along. This week’s season finale felt like a solid conclusion to the first part of a long story. Just what you want from Star Wars. Continuing directly from last week’s appearance by Moff Gideon, this pilot finds the gang locked in a standoff with an entire stormtrooper platoon. To up the stakes further, they brought a gun with them that both Cara and The Mandalorian have seen the wrong end of.
Gideon knows this. Strangely enough, he knows a lot about their past. He knows Cara’s full name and history as a rebel shock trooper. He also knows The Mandalorian’s name: Din Djarin. Our nameless, faceless character gets both in this season finale. We see an extended flashback of Imperial battle droids attacking his home. His mother carries him through the streets, but doesn’t make it. A team of Mandalorians fight off the battle droid and find Din as a child alone. That’s what it means to be a foundling. That’s how he became a Mandalorian. Finally, at the very end of the series, we have some kind of explanation for the difference between the people in the Mandalore episodes of Star Wars: The Clone Wars and the Mandalorians we see in this series. Mandalorian isn’t a race, it’s a belief system.
(via Lucasfilm/Disney)
Oh and then there’s the fate of the baby. Last week’s episode concluded with the tragic death of Kuiil and two stormtroopers on speeder bikes carrying the kid away. This episode puts our fears for the kid at ease, but it takes its sweet time doing so. And it uses that time to make us absolutely hate the stormtroopers that took him. That wasn’t entirely necessary, we’ve never needed justification to cheer for the deaths of stormtroopers, but I still appreciated this scene. It gave these two unnamed characters a humanity we don’t normally see from stormtroopers. They’re evil, but they’re also two guys at work. They hear the new manager has already killed a few stormtroopers to make a point, so they decide to hang back and see how it all plays out. It’s fun to see them joke with each other and and try to hit a can on the side of the road with their blasters. They can’t. Their blasters always shoot just to the left of their target. Huh, that explains a lot.
Lest we start identifying too much with them, they hit the baby every time he moves. It doesn’t matter how many funny jokes they crack, there’s no coming back from hitting the cutest Star Wars thing since… well, maybe ever. Just when we’ve had enough of these guys, IG-11 shows up fully intent on carrying out his mission to protect the baby. He takes out the two stormtroopers, grabs the kid, hops on the speederbike and drives straight to the city, shooting every stormtrooper that crosses his path on the way. IG-11 became the coolest character in this show. Which we all know almost certainly means he’s not going to make it through the end.
This episode was directed by Taika Waititi, and it shows. You know how Waititi completely revitalized Marvel’s Thor series with humor and a ton of heart? Well, The Mandalorian didn’t need revitalizing, but those elements are clearly present in this finale. IG-11 comes into his own as a character in this episode, and we really feel for him. When he gets to the rest of the crew, The Mandalorian runs out to protect him and the baby. He gets some good shots in, but gets shot up pretty bad too. That’s another thing this series has done super well. The Mandalorian isn’t an unstoppable badass. He’s not even a better fighter than most people he’s come across. He just has better gadgets. Those have gotten him through most episodes, but even his expensive armor has a weak point. He gets shot in the neck, and things don’t look good for him. IG-11 gets everyone out of the room, and convinces The Mandalorian to let him take off his helmet. No living thing can see under his helmet. The droid comforts him, saying he’s not a living thing. In a short few minutes of episode, he’s become my favorite character on the show. Now I just wish he’d been here all along.
The crew escapes through a sewer grate and they make their way to the Mandalorian outpost. All the Mandalorians who helped get the baby off the planet back in episode 3 are dead. The scene that follows feels oddly out of place. We did need a quiet dialog-driven scene after all the action, but we didn’t learn anything new here. The surviving armorer tells the group that warriors called Jedi used a power like the baby’s. Yes, it’s important that The Mandalorian gets that information, but it doesn’t tell us anything new. For the first time all season, I found myself waiting for a scene to be over, rather than watching with rapt attention. The only important thing to come out of this scene was The Mandalorian’s new mission. Baby Yoda is a foundling, but they don’t have the strength to train him. Until The Mandalorian can return him to his own kind he must act as the kid’s father. Even though he was already doing that from Episode 4 on, having someone say it out loud is still the cutest thing ever. Oh, and The Mandalorian also gets a jetpack, but he can’t fully use it until he practices more.
(Via Lucasfilm/Disney)
The crew escapes through a river of lava, which… Sure, why not? The blatant symbolism is so over the top, you have to laugh. They even have to cross the river in a canoe piloted by a little R2 version of Charon. The river takes them toward the mouth of the cave, where a platoon of stormtroopers are waiting in ambush. Unable to stop or turn around, IG-11 sacrifices himself just as we knew he would. He makes The Mandalorian promise that the baby will be safe with him, then reverts to his most basic programming: That he cannot be captured. He walks out into the middle of the ambush and self destructs. Damn, Taika Waititi only needed one episode to make me sad about the life of a faceless droid.
The show leaves us with one final action scene. Moff Gideon pilots his TIE fighter and attacks the group. His first shots miss, but The Mandalorian points out that his second attack won’t. What I love about this fight is that the show understands that The Mandalorian relies on his gadgets more than any raw skill. So the final scene is the best gadget spectacle it can deliver. The Mandalorian grapples onto the side of Gideon’s fighter and sticks as many grenades as he can onto the thing before he’s flung off. He can use his jetpack well enough to land safely, which can’t be said about Gideon. He can’t shake off the grenades, which explode and send his ship crashing to the ground. It’s an awesome visual and the perfect sendoff to a great action series.
Pedro Pascal, Carl Weathers, Gina Carano (via Lucasfilm/Disney)
The finale ends exactly the way I hoped it would: With one last unapologetic western homage. Greef Karga and Cara Dune decide to stick around and build a better bounty hunter guild in town. They offer The Mandalorian the chance to stay. He’ll have a lucrative career and protection for the baby. He refuses, of course. The Masked Man has a mission he has to complete before he can settle down anywhere. He needs to deliver Baby Yoda to his own people. Wherever they are. And there will be plenty of conflict along the way next season. In the final scene, we see Moff Gideon still alive. He cuts his way out of the ship with a strange-looking black beam saber. What could that be? The Darksaber? Now I’m sad we have to wait until next season to find out.
This finale was the perfect end to a season that turned out to be one of the year’s best surprises. Each episode of The Mandalorian was fun, action packed and the show never outstayed its welcome. What could have been a quick cash-grab to get us all to sign up for Disney Plus turned out to be a Star Wars story that can stand up with the movies. The western homages were done with such love and appreciation for both Star Wars and its influences that they felt organic and necessary to the show. The Mandalorian always left us wanting more, which is the one downside in the end. We don’t get another episode next week, and it’ll be a while before The Mandalorian comes to town again.
The Mandalorian is available to stream on Disney Plus.
Previously on The Mandalorian:
- The Mandalorian Season 1 Episode 7 Recap
- The Mandalorian Season 1 Episode 6 Recap
- The Mandalorian Season 1 Episode 5 Recap
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