To judge by the streaming charts, there’s nothing off about the just-concluded Season 3 of The Mandalorian. While the season premiere saw a significant dip in viewership, the latest Nielsen report tells us the show is the third most popular series you can stream right now. And that was before the season wrapped a two-part finale full of pew-pew, boom-boom, and the clanking of Beskar armor on Beskar armor. The visuals of Season 3, certainly, have been top-notch eye candy throughout.
So why did the story leave me, and many TV critics, stone cold? (Some recent reviews you won’t see on a Season 3 poster: “burdened by backstory” … “has an identity crisis” … “goes nowhere“.. “worst episode of the show.“) What led my love for Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) and Grogu to wither?
Because this isn’t a review from a hater. I’d been pulling for this show from the series-opening surprise reveal of the Child through the stunning Season 2 finale, which ended with an incredibly earned emotional one-two punch (Din gets the Darksaber, meaning his ally Bo-Katan (Katee Sackhoff) must fight him for it; he must also say goodbye to Grogu when none other than Luke Skywalker comes to retrieve the Jedi youngling). What happened?
Short answer: story is everything. Slightly longer answer: Mandalorian‘s motley crew of producers and directors, led by Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni, squandered the dramatic tension they had spent two seasons building up. No spoilers for the finale here — I’ll keep those till the bottom of the story — but it’s fair to say that a lot of the fan theories about how the season might end were a lot more interesting than what we actually got. Favreau and Filoni chose to defuse every last bit of the show’s potential, over the course of a season, while leaning hard into its least believable aspects.
Did you wonder why, if it was that easy for Din to land on Mandalore, millions of its inhabitants hadn’t tried it already? Me too. Did you only really understand the deep differences between the Mandalorian factions after they had suddenly united, implausibly fast? I feel you. Did you feel deflated when Din and Bo-Katan got out of their Darksaber duel on a technicality? Did it seem like the Mandalorians were tactical idiots for walking into an obvious Imperial trap? Did you struggle to care about Paz Vizsla (Tait Fletcher), even while admiring his all-guns-blazing self-sacrifice? Same, same, and same.
Part of the problem was the legacy imposed by 2022’s The Book of Boba Fett — a Frankenstein’s monster of a show that couldn’t decide what kind of fan service it wanted to be, and settled halfway through on becoming The Mandalorian Season 2.5. Among other curious storytelling decisions, Book reversed Grogu’s well-earned departure so hastily, you’d be forgiven for thinking a thousand Disney executives had cried out about not being able to put Baby Yoda on billboards.
Still, it was natural to presume that The Mandalorian Season 3 would get its tale back on track — especially after Andor Season 1 delivered a masterclass in how to make audiences care about a whole swathe of characters while ratcheting up the tension. Sure, Grogu’s potentially perfect exit was undermined, but Favreau and Filoni had to have found some good storytelling reason for him to return, right? Perhaps a first word or two, or some fresh mystery about his origins?
Credit: Lucasfilm
In fact, what we got from the Lucasfilm lottery this time around was less The Mandalorian Season 3 than Book of Boba Fett Season 2 — in the sense that the show lost interest in its title character and bounced between disconnected stories like a kid on a pogo stick, with only minimal grudging interest in tying it all together. We got a tiny sliver of Grogu’s backstory, but mostly the show only seemed interested in keeping him around so it could give him the droid shell of the late IG-11 to play with.
One constant of the first two seasons, a major reason why the Child was so compelling that we dubbed him “being of the decade,” was the feeling that he was in potential danger. Now, knowing there is literally nothing that can happen in this story to take him out of it permanently, I struggle to remember what that felt like. This is the first mild spoiler for the finale, so proceed with caution, but Grogu literally ran rings around some of the most fearsome guards in all of Star Wars. If they’re no threat to him, why should they seem like it to us?
Credit: Lucasfilm
Oh, and by returning IG-11 to life when he was literally a statue, negating his sacrifice in the process, the show doubled down on this message: No one you actually care about will die in The Mandalorian. (Before you say “but it’s for kids,” contrast the original Star Wars, also intended for kids, where Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru were burned to a crisp, and Obi-Wan was disappeared, along with millions of Alderaan and Death Star inhabitants.)
To be fair to Filoni and Favreau, they seem to have found a “fix it” solution already: a hard reset. The entire story so far has been wrapped up with a bow so neat, you could almost call it the end of the show. Moff Gideon (Giancarlo Esposito) and his Beskar-armored supersoldiers died surprisingly easily, with no post-credits scene providing a sting in the tale.
With a sound like chess pieces clunking, Mando and Grogu were manoeuvred into position for a Season 4. They will be traveling the galaxy, conveniently separated from the helmeted cultists on Mandalore, doing off-the-books work for the New Republic. Maybe the cloning storyline will bear more fruit, we’ll see more of the hapless former imperial cloner Dr. Pershing (Omid Abtahi), and the show will continue hinting at the reasons for the founding of the First Order in the sequel trilogy. But hopefully the show will simply go back to its roots as a space western, and start slowly ramping up the dramatic tension all over again.
