‘The Mandalorian’ Gives Us A Great Series Finale, That Isn’t One

The Mandalorian concluded yet another eight episode season today, one that didn’t just wrap up current storylines pretty conclusively, but it’s an episode that genuinely could have served as a pretty solid series finale.

If this was a different story. And a different IP. And not Disney trying to take its few hits and stretch them as long as possible.

Of course this is not The Mandalorian series finale. Jon Favreau has said that he essentially sees no end in sight for the show, and while it’s also been said that “The Mandalorian” can now be anyone, or really the entire people as a whole, it seems extremely unlikely the show will return for season 4 without Din and Grogu. Sorry, Din Grogu. Spoilers follow.

As expected, Din did not stay captured for very long. One of the highlights of this episode was absolutely the choreography of Din’s fight scenes against a number of Beskar-armored Death Troopers. It reminded me a bit of when in John Wick 4 he kept having to fight those guys clad in head-to-toe bulletproof armor, and still had to find a way to kill them. We are a long way from stray shots hitting Stormtroopers in the shoulder and offing them instantly.

One of the biggest surprises of the episode was that after an intense amount of speculation that there was a Mandalorian spy in their midst, with theories ranging from Axe Woves to the native ragged Mandos to The Armorer, none of that panned out at all. Axe crashed the capital ship into the base, destroying it (thankfully they did not make him sacrifice itself because they did in fact realize he had a jetpack). The ragged Mandos were who they said they were. The Armorer…did nothing wrong, and demands an apology from you doubting her. She got the reinforcements and whacked a bunch of Death Troopers with her tools. No spies. Mandos don’t snitch.

Finally, the full scope of Gideon’s plan was revealed. His combination of Mando tech, cloning and Jedi turned out to be a bunch of clones of…himself (who else) who no doubt would have worn his Mando Darth Vader beskar gear, and the final piece was to give them the Force, a process he believes could somehow be scientifically extracted and implanted in another being, hence his initial Grogu research. This has not really been proved to be true, even if maybe with George Lucas midichlorians, that could happen. When Palpatine is cloned for the new trilogy, he already had the Force in the first place, so I don’t think that counts. So right now, there’s no actual cases of someone without the Force getting it through science.

It appears Moff Gideon has finally died, blown up by the capital ship explosion which Grogu used the Force to create a protective bubble around Din and Bo-Katan, a very cool moment. Din goes on to adopt Grogu even though everyone has been referring to him as his kid this entire time. Now he’s called “Din Grogu.” I don’t really get how Mandalorian names work.

What ends up happening is essentially every storyline wraps up in a neat little bow. That’s why this really does feel like this could in theory be the series finale of the entire series, even though we know it’s not. Bo-Katan restarts the great forge and reclaims Mandalore in full. IG-11 is rebuilt and Cara Dune gets fully replaced by a Marshall robot. Din adopts Grogu and makes him his apprentice, and the two have a cute little cabin together with a wide range of bounty hunting adventures ahead of them.

Again, this could have been the end of the series but instead we will no doubt see a bunch of those specific bounty hunting adventures next season. Din’s story will inevitably re-intersect with Ahsoka and Thrawn’s storyline. I doubt we’re done with Bo-Katan either, but I do wonder if she’ll feature prominently next season, given that she was essentially the star of this one. Hell, they may just give her a full spin-off.

It was an uneven season, but by the end, I came around to it. I don’t think this show should last an infinite amount of time, but if it jumps the Mythosaur later, maybe we can pretend it ended here, on a good note.

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Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2023/04/19/the-mandalorian-gives-us-a-great-series-finale-that-isnt-one/