Star Wars: The Mandalorian - Season 2 Review

This week's Sci-Fi Adventures just happens to land on May the 4th so I figured I'd go with something Star Wars flavoured this time.

I wrote about The Mandalorian's first season last year and I generally liked it. There was one small issue I had with it though: I felt like I was missing pieces of the backstory because I hadn't seen The Clone Wars or Rebels and I knew they had a lot of Mandalorian drama in them. I did have a good reason for skipping them though: I was a big fan of the original Genndy Tartakovsky Clone Wars cartoon and I was kind of put off when it was replaced with ropey-looking CGI series apparently aimed at younger kids. Plus the reviews said that the movie was terrible and they'd given Anakin a teenage sidekick that calls him 'Skyguy'!

Anyway, I decided to try to make an effort to get through The Clone Wars to prepare for The Mandalorian season 2 and it turns out that I was an idiot for writing the series off so quickly. You just have to skip the episodes with Jar Jar Binks in them and it's great! It does a good job of rehabilitating the character of Anakin Skywalker, and his relationship with his apprentice Ahsoka Tano works really well. I'm not surprised she pulled a Harley Quinn and made the jump from making appearances in a cartoon to leading her own live-action series.

Though I'm not writing about The Clone Wars here, I'm writing about more The Mandalorian. Well, to be honest I actually wrote these reviews ages ago, right after watching the episodes. So if I sound like I don't know what's coming next, that's because I actually didn't at the time.

There'll be SPOILERS here for the whole series so far, and maybe a few of the movies and cartoons, so I recommend you stop reading here if that's going to be a problem.

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Note: I rate episodes on a 1-9 scale, with 5 being around the point where my notepad started becoming a real competitor for my attention.

The Mandalorian - Season Two
2-01	The Marshal	8
Mando follows a lead that takes him back to Tatooine, where he finds himself solving a town's dragon problem in exchange for the Marshal's set of iconic Mandalorian armour. Along the way he helps them make peace with their Tuskan raider neighbours and gets eaten, but he eventually prevails and gets his armour... but Boba Fett is watching and I think he wants his clothes back. The Mandalorian's first season was exceptional, but I was a little worried about this episode. My expectations are much higher now, so it's got a high bar to reach. It doesn't seem they've made any real changes between the seasons; I guess they figured that the series wasn't broken so there was no need to fix it. Though it did look a little more expensive here maybe, and taller too when the aspect ratio changed during the dragon fight. The episode doesn't have the most interesting story but it's elevated by the insane production values, plus the fact that the basically stars Timothy Olyphant as The Marshal. The guy was a real idiot for getting into a quick draw with an actual Mandalorian without putting his blaster-proof helmet on, but once the two of them teamed up it was fantastic seeing them flying around with jetpacks and getting shit done. In fact I really expected the Mandalorian to find a loophole in his code to let him keep the armour, like by making him a deputy Mandalorian or something, especially after he turned out to be really good with it and he told his story about how he uses it to protect the town. But nope, the episode subverted my expectations at the last moment. Well, the last moment before the actual last moment where Boba Fett appeared I mean. I'd already heard that Boba Fett was going to be appearing this season and I'd been preparing to be annoyed by it. His resurrection definitely seems like something I should hate, considering it's basically retconning something that's been true for 37 years (unless you read the books), and they already pulled this crap with Darth Maul and Emperor Palpatine. Is it too much to ask that people who fall down bottomless pits actually stay dead? But when Boba Fett eventually appeared on screen I found that I was actually okay with it. A bad ending can really ruin an episode, but after 50 minutes of great television I was willing to accept the possibility that this could be a good thing as well. It helps that they kind of justified it by showing Mando himself getting eaten and then breaking free with his gadgets. You can get a lot done with jetpacks and electricity. The interesting thing though, is that they never once mention that it's Boba Fett's armour or give any clue who we're looking at in that last scene. You have to bring in that knowledge from the first two trilogies. There's a difference between pandering to nostalgia and living in an established universe, but that doesn't matter here as The Mandalorian's happy to do both! The pacing's still slow enough to let Baby Yoda take it all in and really show off all the work that's gone into making these worlds, and the effects are so good I still can't tell what's a set and what's a backdrop. In fact there wasn't much I didn't like about this story. No one really grows or learns anything, but that worked for me. The Tuskans weren't misunderstood, they really were raiders, so the townsfolk were totally justified in what they did, and the Mandalorian wasn't there to show them the error of their ways. They just had an opportunity to come to an arrangement and he did what was necessary to get them to do what was necessary for the ideal outcome. Other episodes have taken a moment to make the Mandalorian seem outmatched, foolish, or straight up wrong, but here he's the wise one who uses his flame thrower to calm people down during negotiation instead of set them on fire, and he seems in control of the situation at all times. Well, as much as you can be while fighting a Krayt dragon. Mando's probably kicking himself that he didn't wait a little longer to get his crest, because a Krayt dragon emblem is pretty much top tier. In fact it kind of feels like we've reached the end of a 'Mando vs wildlife' arc here, because where do you go from here? The episode also makes a point of illustrating his character growth during the last season by showing how he's cool with robots now. Mostly. I can see why some people would be put off by the episode basically being standalone (aside from the Boba Fett tease), especially as the arc episodes were by far the strongest stories last season, but this was rock solid I thought. It's great Star Wars.
2-02	The Passenger	7
Mando has a bit of a trouble while riding back to his ship when his speeder bike hits a rope tied across the road by murderous thieves. But he trades his jetpack for the Child's life and then flies the thief straight into the air by remote. Which was funny. He needs another lead to find more Mandalorians so he agrees to take a passenger to a neighbouring sector without FTL (which apparently kills eggs), but a run in with X-Wing cops leads to his ship getting wrecked and then besieged by spiders. Fortunately the X-Wing cops save them and Baby Yoda hasn't eaten all the eggs so they're able to continue their journey. The Marshal showed us a wiser and more experienced Mando, who had more control over his universe. But here the universe strikes back, hard, and every choice he makes just digs the hole deeper. And fills it with spiders. Man, I really thought that it was it for Mando's jetpack at the start of this story. It really seemed like the writers intended to get rid of it, because it was too bulky for the actor to wear all the time and too expensive to depict him flying, or whatever, so it was a nice surprise when it flew back over to him. Shame about that speeder bike that got destroyed, but hey it was the uglier of the two we already saw back in The Gunslinger (it was the one the Gunslinger rode in that episode). I've always felt like canyon chases are a Star Wars tradition, but now that I think about it maybe they only really happened in the video games. Here we got a good demonstration of why they're not a good idea, as Mando really smashed up his beautiful ship. Again. It's becoming a Mandalorian tradition that the Razor Crest gets absolutely wrecked in episode two each season. The guy's going to have to start shopping for a new spaceship if he keeps this up, because it can only take a finite amount of punishment. At least for now it's still space-worthy enough to make it to another sector in the time between bathroom breaks... without FTL. However that works. This is perhaps the first Star Wars story where being able to go the toilet has been an issue, though it's not the first where the heroes hide their spaceship in a cave and get attacked by a creature. It got a bit Empire Strikes Back there for a while, except much much worse. It's lucky those X-Wing cops never gave up looking for the Razor Crest! It was a bit of a dick move though to just leave Mando there on some frozen uninhabitable world with an obviously beat up spaceship, what the hell guys? I know people say that Clone Wars producer Dave Filoni has for a lot of good for the franchise, but he could've done more here than just shoot the bugs off the Razor Crest's windshield and then fly off in his X-Wing! At least we got some consequences here from what seemed like a standalone season one story, with Mando's raid on a prison ship coming back to haunt him. Also the robot from that episode came back as well for two seconds, which was weird because it felt like the story was setting something up that never happened. Chekhov's assassin droid. The episode also spent a lot of time staring at Boba Fett's helmet and that never came to anything either. Overall this was a decent episode I thought, though not one of my absolute favourites. Especially considering I was trying to eat! Beautiful effects, but eww. Speaking of eating, they really need to do a better job of keeping Baby Yoda away from babies. I know they were unfertilised eggs, but damn kid. It was a real 'why am I laughing at this, this is terrible' situation. An interesting blend of black comedy and horror... leaning more towards the horror when he started munching on a spider. Still, it could've been worse. For a moment there it looked like a facehugger egg.
2-03	The Heiress	7
The Mandalorian manages to get the wrecked Razor Crest to Trask and reunites the frog lady with her mate. In return he gets pointed towards the Mandalorians but his guide lures him into a trap for his shiny beskar armour. Fortunate the Mandalorians turn up and after a bad first impression they work together to hijack a ship full of guns. For his help the Mandalorian gets his next clue: he needs to go find a woman called Ahsoka Tano. Now it's Baby Yoda's turn to get eaten in an egg. In fact both main characters have been eaten now and it's only three episodes into the season! Turns out that when I guessed that 'Mando vs nature' was over now I was way wrong. Poor Mando only got one episode to be an unstoppable badass before everything started going badly for him. I liked the heart-warming conclusion to the eggs plot, where one of them hatches and Baby Yoda doesn't immediately stick the baby into his mouth. He's starting to learn there's some things he shouldn't eat! It's a bit weird though how it grew into a tadpole overnight though. I think time might just move faster on this planet, as the Mon Calamari 'fixed' the Razor Crest pretty much overnight. He even threw in a bit of netting and seaweed in the cockpit even that though that's the only bit that hadn't been flooded and didn't need fixing. I guess the ship's unexpected bath flushed out the spiders at least. I just hope it hasn't flushed out Boba Fett's armour as well, along with the rest of his gear. We've seen a water planet in Star Wars before, but I don't think we've ever seen a boat before (unless one showed up in the cartoons). Spaceships are everywhere in this universe, but that ordinary fishing trawler felt like something new and exotic. And man the water effects were amazing in this story. At this point in season one I was wondering how long they could keep up the big expensive effects-heavy action scenes they'd been throwing into every episode. Well, they haven't stopped yet! We're getting something new this season though: characters returning from earlier series and movies. This time it was Bo-Katan Kryze from The Clone Wars and Rebels, a character I haven't seen before and knew nothing about! I haven't watched that far into either series yet. All I knew is she looks like Katee Sackhoff and is good at shooting people. I have seen a few other Mandalorians show up in the cartoons though, and they've had absolutely no issues with showing their faces, so I was interested to see how The Mandalorian was going to reconcile that. Turns out that The Marshal was designed to set up Mando's reaction to Bo-Katan's team taking off their helmets in this story, and again he assumes they're not true Mandalorians. They know exactly what he is though: a religious zealot. Fortunately they were able to work together to take over a Gozanti-class cruiser from Titus Welliver, which is something I have seen in Clone Wars and Rebels already! I expect that Bo-Katan's plans to reclaim Mandalore are going to turn out to be a major part of the series, seeing as they're tied in with the Darksaber and Moff Gideon, so this is hinting that there'll be more to the story than just taking Baby Yoda to the Jedi. Which is good, because it seems like Mando is going to be meeting the Jedi very soon if he Bo-Katan's directions actually take him to Ahsoka Tano.
2-04	The Siege	7
The Razor Crest is about to fall apart, so Mando pays a visit to Greef and Cara to get it fixed and finds himself roped into an assault on an Imperial base while he's there. It ends about as well as you could hope for, with everyone alive and TIE Fighters raining from the sky. But someone's secretly planted a tracker on Mando's ship... Cara Dune is making a habit of showing up in episode four of a season, though I was less happy to see her this time. It's a bad sign when the annoying comic relief guy isn't the least likeable person on the team, not that it's the character's fault at all. We learn a few things in this episode. We learn that Greef's engineers can completely rebuild the Razor Crest so that it looks exactly as it did in episode 1 in less time than it takes Baby Yoda to finish his first day at school... in fact I'm not sure he'd even finished that pack of biscuits. We learn that Baby Yoda does not have the engineering skills to complete this task himself, but he can survive a small electric shock. We learn that Carl Weathers is actually a pretty decent director. And we finally learn why Moff Gideon's so keen to get his hands on the baby! I think 'wants to give someone (possibly himself) a midichlorian transfusion' had to be high up on the list of guesses, so there's no big surprise there, but an unsurprising answer isn't necessarily a bad thing. That just means the answer makes a lot of sense. The biggest shock for me this episode was the fact there was no siege in an episode called 'The Siege'. That really threw off my expectations about where the story was going. It also seems like Gideon's got some Dark Troopers from the game Dark Forces stashed away on his Millennium Star Destroyer, which has given me renewed hope of someday seeing Kyle Katarn turn up. And get his own spin-off series. No sign of Ahsoka Tano this episode, but that's good as I'm still watching through Rebels and I don't want this to spoil where she ends up. I just finished The Clone Wars and bloody hell that series has a good ending. My biggest question about Clone Wars from the moment I heard that Anakin was getting a padawan was 'What's going to happen to her during Order 66?', and they very thoughtfully produced a new season of episodes to tell me. In fact the last episode aired exactly this time last year, finishing a run of episodes that got rated 9.9 on IMDb. That's even higher than The Rise of Skywalker! To be honest, the Clone Wars finale kind of made this episode of The Mandalorian feel a bit tame by comparison, despite the movie-quality speeder bike/TIE Fighter chase scene. Mando's increased his kill count to 4 TIE Fighters now, which either means he's a great pilot, or those TIE Fighter pilots were terrible. It's definitely not because he has supernatural awareness or reflexes as he went and got himself shot a few times in this story. It's fortunate the others made it out without a scratch really.
1-05	The Jedi	7
Ahsoka Tano wants information from a cruel magistrate and Mando wants to find Ahsoka. He lets the magistrate believe he'll hunt Ahsoka down for her, but after the mandatory good guy fight they team up! First they test Baby Yoda (real name Grogu), then they take down the magistrate. Afterwards Ahsoka says she can't train Grogu, he's too attached to his adoptive space dad, but she knows a place Mando can take him to hopefully find other Jedi. This episode had a lot of tension hanging over it for me, because of that metaphorical bomb under the table: the tracker placed on the Razor Crest during the last episode. Every time the characters were just hanging out in the forest I was waiting for it to cut to someone watching them from the trees. And when Mando went back to the Razor Crest to check on Baby Yoda I was expecting him to be gone. Oh, I can't call him Baby Yoda anymore, as he's got a name now. You can tell it's his real name as his head whips around whenever anyone says it. Grogu's not the name I would've picked for him, it makes him sound like a drunken ogre pirate, but if that's his name, that's his name. We actually got a lot of information about the kid this story, about how he was raised in the Jedi Temple at first, and how he's shy about using his powers because he knows they put him in danger. He's also formed an attachment to Mando so strong that guest star Ahsoka Tano doesn't dare train him. She's perhaps the last surviving Force user to be have been raised and trained in the actual Jedi Temple so I suppose it makes sense that she got more old fashioned views about attachment than Luke Skywalker, especially considering happened to her master. Though ironically, despite the title, she's not actually a Jedi. This is Ahsoka's first appearance in live-action and I'm glad I was able to finish watching all of Rebels just in time as it helped me understand what she was up to these days. Especially when she mentioned Thrawn at the end. Is this season leading up to a live-action resolution to Rebels' (deliberately) loose threads? Or maybe a new cartoon? Or is it just checking in with the character without pushing her story forwards? Either way it was nice to see her, even though she wasn't quite the same person that I've been watching in the cartoons. Seems that casting a new actor for a character leads to a different performance... plus she's 8 or 9 years older here. Still, I thought Rosario Dawson was fine in the role and it was nice to see her kicking ass with her two lightsabers in live-action. Plus we got a cameo by her mysterious owl as well, as well as a loth-cat (or a tooka, whatever it's called). Overall I thought this episode was mostly just alright. It looked great and had good action as always, but the slow pacing wasn't quite working for me. I guess I don't have the patience for samurai movies. Plus it was strange to me how the villagers barely existed as characters when the story was all about their village. Even Michael Biehn's henchman character barely existed as a character!
1-06	The Tragedy	7
The Mandalorian takes Grogu to the Jedi signalling device and is surprised by the arrival of Boba Fett and Ming-Na Wen in Slave One. Mando manages to knock himself out by repeatedly trying to take the baby out of an energy beam, but Boba and Ming-Na fight off the waves of Stormtroopers until he can wake up and join in. Fortunately he left the Razor Crest's door open again, so Boba was able to walk right in and get his armour. Unfortunately Gideon blows the ship up from orbit and snatches Grogu away with his Dark Troopers. I can't believe they blew up the Razor Crest! Mando only just got that thing fixed! For a time it looked like it was going to be trashed beyond repair by his misadventures, so I was starting to suspect he might need a replacement by the end of the season, but it looked good as new when that blaster bolt atomised the thing. It was probably for the best though, as they would've never gotten the smell of fish and burned spiders out of it. Same goes for Boba Fett's armour, unfortunately. That's the 'tragedy' the title refers to I suppose. When Mando was making his deal with Boba and Fennec Shand I was thinking 'it's a good job he actually locked his ship for once', but nope. Boba must have felt like a real idiot when he realised he could've just walked into the Razor Crest and taken his armour back at any time (and it's lucky someone else hadn't already, considering how valuable it is). I'm glad they confirmed that it was his dad's armour and his dad was a proper Mandalorian by the way, just because I've never been clear on that. It was nice to see Boba and Fennic in action, mowing down waves of Stormtroopers, and that's good as it felt like most of the episode was just that. Mando was too busy repeatedly walking into an energy field and getting thrown back out over and over, so they had to do all the work for this one. They didn't really have the time to actually explain who they were though, or talk about much of anything, so it was just 'that guy who got thrown into a pit in Return of the Jedi' and 'that character from last season who was maybe an assassin or something?' jumping around rocks on the California planet and breaking Stormtrooper armour. I was trying to decide if the way they deciding to help Mando save the kid was out of character and I'm not sure we know enough about them yet to say. We can at least be sure about one thing: Boba Fett really was aiming for the other ship, as for perhaps the first time in the history of that joke we got to see through his scope as he took the shot. It was a bit of a strange, repetitive episode really, and I definitely wouldn't have called that it was directed by Robert Rodriguez. It did have some nice moments with Grogu though, with Mando encouraging him to grab the ball at the start like a proud dad, and the kid wrecking Stormtroopers in his cell at the end. Now Mando's going to have to get a team together (again) to rescue him (again), which means more returning characters! And maybe a surprise Jedi if the kid's signal got out. Who could it be though? Cal Kestis, Ezra Bridger... Luke Skywalker? If they're going to be taking on Dark Troopers I'm thinking the Jedi they really need is Kyle Katarn, and if he shows up in the finale I'm going to go nuts. They wrote him out of canon by having someone else steal the Death Star plans in Rogue One, and I want him back! I'm a bit concerned though that Mando's going to have to break an Imperial out of a New Republic prison next episode. I don't want to see him going against the New Republic! I like those guys! Even though they were jerks for leaving him on that ice planet.
1-07	The Believer	8
Mando's team recruits Mayfeld from prison for an undercover mission to get the location of Moff Gideon's ship. The two of them drive a truck full of explosives to an Imperial base, fighting off waves of pirates along the way, but to get the data from the base Mando has to take his helmet off in front of others. Mayfeld helps him keep his cover at first, but eventually decides to take his revenge on the Imperial commander, before blowing up the whole damn base. Impressed, Mando and Cara decide to let him go. I read somewhere that The Mandalorian is a series about a man who can't help but make best friends wherever he goes, and that seems to check out. It also seems like if a villain survives until a second episode, chances are they're going to become a firm ally. Greef, IG-11, Fennec Shand, Boba Fett... I suppose Mythrol wasn't much of an enemy or an ally, but even he was on his team a few episodes back. And now former Imperial Migs Mayfeld has been sort of redeemed as well! He's also the only man alive to have seen the Mandalorian's face. There were a lot more guys, but he shot them all. This has been a good season so far, but this episode worked a little more for me than most because it's actually about something. One of the themes of the episode is about how people will break their own rules and go against their beliefs when they're desperate enough, and it turns out Mando's desperate enough to bend his rules by covering his face with an Imperial helmet. He's also desperate enough to remove the helmet in a room full of Imperials, and to turn around and face them when one talks to him. He refused to do it to save his own life last season, but he'll do it for the kid. That's it now, he's broken his rule, by his beliefs he's not a true Mandalorian anymore. But he's been forced to question his beliefs after meeting Bo-Katan Kryze and Boba Fett, so he may be able to deal with it better now. A little better. He was really obviously freaking out when he took it off though, that was some excellent no-helmet acting by Pedro Pascal. Not that Bill Burr wasn't also doing a great job as Mayfeld. We also saw where Mayfeld is with regards to his beliefs, and it's fair to say he's not entirely pro-Imperial these days. In fact he couldn't hold himself back from murdering a base full of them after one offered him a drink. Turns out he reached his own point of desperation a while back that got him questioning what he believes in as well. We only get a hint about Operation: Cinder here, and it doesn't sound like it was much fun for anyone. Well, except for the Imperial commander in this story, who was hyped to cause more chaos and get an Imperial boot on people's necks again. Fortunately Mayfeld's reputation as a sharpshooter was well deserved and he took the whole operation down with one shot. Then Boba Fett took down the TIE Fighters with an Attack of the Clones sonic mine! That's the kind of reference I want in my Star Wars shows. One of the other themes in the episode is how who the heroes and the villains are often depends on your point of view, with heroic Mando fighting to protect a shipment of explosives and getting applause from the Imperials, and the villainous TIE Fighter pilots swooping in to save him. Plus the heroic(?) New Republic is sentencing villains(?) to decades of prison labour and threatening violence for non-compliance. But it also rejects the 'everyone's as bad as each other' philosophy pretty firmly, making it clear that the Empire really was terrible, and the Imperial Remnant is made up of the true believers who stuck around, even after atrocities like Operation Cinder. I'm not so sure about the pirates that were trying to blow up their explosives though. The episode made a point of showing us the locals first and making it clear that the pirates don't look like them, so I suppose we're not supposed to see them as heroes, but I did get a bit concerned when Mando was killing them all. It was interesting seeing him have adapt to fighting without his Mandalorian superpowers though. He had no gadgets, rubbish armour, and even his gun didn't work. Speaking of armour, it's nice to see that Boba Fett's taken the time to give his a repaint. It really needed it. It's also nice to see Slave 1's interior rotate as the ship takes off, finally explaining how that works! The episode's theme of heroes and villains being inverted runs right through to the ending with Mando literally flipping the script on Moff Gideon, sending his own lines from The Reckoning right back at him. Except he calls Baby Yoda 'he' instead of 'it'. It might not be the wisest move to announce that he's coming, but I'm sure it's all part of the plan. Probably. I believe this is the only episode so far without Grogu by the way, but I expect we'll see him soon.
1-08	The Rescue	8
Team Mando recruits Bo-Katan and Sacha Banks (but not the other one) and together they attempt to seize Gideon's ship, his sword, and the baby. Team Mando slaughters everyone on their way to take the bridge while Mando goes on a solo sneaking mission to eject the Dark Troopers and save Grogu. He gets into a bit of a fight with a Dark Trooper and then has to take on Gideon himself, but he's successful... to Bo-Katan's annoyance, seeing as she wanted to fight Gideon for the Darksaber. They're soon besieged by the remaining Dark Troopers, but then then a Jedi comes and slaughters them all. It's Luke Skywalker! Mando takes off his helmet to say goodbye to his son as he's taken away to be trained, the end. They changed the Mandalorian's line in the 'previously on' clips! In the last episode he told Gideon "He means more to me than you'll ever know, " but here he says "It means more to me." That ain't right! Oh plus it turns out that his speech to Gideon wasn't a key part of an elaborate plan, he just wanted to give away that he was coming for him. Because it would make a cool ending to an episode I guess. I was pretty sure a Jedi was going to show up in the finale and that was basically confirmed by the reminder in the 'previously on' sequence, but I didn't know which one. It wasn't going to be Ahsoka, and she's currently on a quest to find Ezra Bridger from Rebels so it wasn't likely to be him either. Some people thought it might be Mace Windu, seeing as being thrown down a hole doesn't kill anyone these days, some people thought it might be the guy from the Fallen Order game. Luke Skywalker would've been the most obvious choice, except that would mean more expensive uncanny valley face replacement and that didn't get the best reception in Rogue One. Personally I was hoping for Kyle Katarn, seeing as wrecking Dark Troopers is his speciality. But no it was LUKE SKYWALKER! They actually did it. And they did it... fairly well. His face was still a bit uncanny valley, but everything before the hood came down was amazing. The episode gave people what they wanted from the sequel trilogy: Luke Skywalker wrecking his enemies like Darth Vader at the end of Rogue One, taking care of a ship full of robots that our whole team of heroes couldn't hope to fight. Though it's careful not to give away who it is at first. First we see the X-Wing, then his Darth Vader looking cape and hood, then his gloved hand holding a lightsaber, then his face... and then finally his R2 unit just to make absolutely certain that this is Luke Skywalker. The scary music made the whole scene a bit unnerving, matching the feeling the people in the room were having, but it was all okay in the end! He's just come to take Grogu away forever is all. I was really surprised that he did actually take Grogu, and that this seems to be the end of the Lone Wolf and Cub arc. Now we've entered the 'Bo-Katan has a light cruiser and she wants her planet back' arc... either that or it was the series finale and it's all over. Mando's lost his kid, his ship, his mission, and he's even revealed his face, so he seems kind of done for now. Well, except for the fact that he has the Darksaber. To be honest, I didn't really get what the issue with the Darksaber was about, as Bo-Katan had no trouble just accepting the sword from someone without a fight in Rebels. Maybe she learned the hard way the blade has to be earned in combat. It's interesting though how a season about Mando questioning his Mandalorian beliefs and moving beyond them when appropriate has ended with him having to deal with Bo-Katan's Mandalorian beliefs and traditions. The episode was mostly about a bunch of women with very little character development shooting lots and lots of Stormtroopers (Sasha Banks' character can be summed up by 'does rocket kicks'), but I liked watching them shoot all those Stormtroopers, so that's fine with me. All the emotional character moments came at the end when Mando had to say goodbye to the kid and chooses to take his helmet off so he can see his face before he goes. It might have had more impact if he hadn't taken his helmet off last episode as well, but that episode also made it clear how much of a struggle it was for him to do that. Plus it was similar to the scene in Return of the Jedi when Darth Vader took his mask off to show his son his face, and that's fitting considering how much this episode called back to the movie. There's a post credits sequence with another Return of the Jedi character making a surprise appearance: Bib Fortuna! In Jabba's palace! With Jabba's subtitles! And they couldn't resist throwing in a "maclunkey" as well just for extra fan service. Though I guess it's Boba's palace now after that ending. He was just waiting until he got his armour back before seizing the place apparently. I suppose this also means that Fennec Shand is going to be in The Book of Boba Fett series too, which suits me fine. She might be an interchangeable member of the Violence Buddies right now, but she could get some more development in her own series and I always like seeing more Ming-Na Wen. Overall I thought the episode was pretty good for what it was, but not as amazing as the first season's finale. And it didn't have the depth of the last episode either. The episode's got 9.8 on IMDb so I realise I'm in the minority here, but I was a little disappointed, especially by how weak Gideon's plan was (though only because the standard has been set so ridiculously high). Speaking of Gideon's plan, we still don't know what he was going to use that blood for. Except that it was to 'bring order', and that he had cloners working on the project. Can we look forward to an army of fascist Baby Yoda super soldiers in season 3? Anyway I suppose the moral of the story is that if you're going to fight against a Darksaber or a Dark Trooper you should always wear the appropriate safety equipment. Also don't forget to bring your indestructible spear.

CONCLUSION

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The second season of live-action Star Trek is about 1313 minutes long in total, while this second season of live-action Star Wars has barely managed 318 minutes. That's less than a quarter of the running time! Once again Star Trek proves its superiority over its arch-rival franchise.

Personally though, I think The Mandalorian season two is exactly as long as it should be. It never tested my patience, leaving me waiting for plot points to finally get resolved and mysteries answered, it just got on with it. It feels like they must have had the VFX budget of a series four times as long however, as bloody hell this series looks good. I was able to spot the back wall a few times in season one, but here I had no idea what was filmed on a set and what was filmed in their LED cave. Plus the action scenes have gotten much more elaborate, with an APC getting chased down a canyon by TIE Fighters, and a truck full of explosives under siege from 'pirates'. It's like no one's had the heart to tell them that they're not filming a movie, so they keep doing it.

The first season did show a lot of restraint however when it came to Star Wars canon. It told a very contained story that didn't intersect with anything going on in the movies or cartoons, and I liked that. I thought it was great that it was focused on a Mandalorian and a baby, and they'd decided to use 40 years of accumulated Star Wars mythology as a setting for them walk around in. But when the season finale gave Mando a quest to find the Jedi and revealed Moff Gideon to have the Darksaber, it was inevitable things were going to change. Since then it's been non-stop Boba Fetts and Bo-Katans, with Luke Skywalker himself showing up at the end!

I'm not going to complain about the fan service and how much the season ties into previous stories though, especially as it got me to watch through Clone Wars and Rebels, and it turns out they're both really good. Plus now I know that those series deliberately left these plot threads unresolved for later series like this to pick up and run with. Trouble is it's hard to know what's part of The Mandalorian's own story and what's going to be continued elsewhere. It doesn't feel like an exaggeration to say that half the characters this year were being set up for their own spin-off series (Ahsoka and Boba Fett definitely were), and it's not all that satisfying when an episode turns out to be an extended teaser for another show. Especially when the strength of season one was the absolute focus on Mando and the kid.

Plus we didn't always get to learn a whole lot about these people besides their affinity for violence. I want to like Fennec Shand and Koska Reeves as characters, but they're basically just Player 3 and Player 4 at this point. The characters in this show are defined by their actions, and their actions have been to shoot a lot of people. Though Migs Mayfeld came off a lot better this year, partially because he never shut up.

The series isn't called The Bounty Hunter, or The Guardian, or The Quest, it's called The Mandalorian and we're still learning what exactly that is. Season one taught us what a Mandalorian is and the rules they live by, but season two was all about showing us it's not as simple as that. We meet three other kinds of 'Mandalorian' here: Boba Fett, a clone who inherited the armour but was never part of Mandalorian culture, Bo-Katan Kryze, who's genuine Mandalorian royalty, and Cobb Vance, who just bought the armour and has nothing to do with the Mandalorians at all. Bo-Katan in particular gave Din reason to reassess his understanding of Mandalorian culture and the rules they follow. The season starts with Mando as his most invulnerable, capable and confident, and then it wears down his ship and his beliefs until he's left with nothing, not even the kid. Well okay he's still got his armour, his jetpack and a cool spear. And a Darksaber. In fact he's got a claim to being the leader of the Mandalorians right now, which would definitely open the scale of the show up a bit.

They could've had Din start quipping like Han Solo whenever the helmet came off, but they actually played it relatively realistically, as he's really not comfortable without his mask and has no practice at emoting like like a human being. We've got a lot of masked superheroes these days, but it's really unusual to have a series about a man who keeps his face hidden for religious reasons and struggles to cope when his helmet's removed. It could've seemed kind of ridiculous as well, but it really doesn't play out like that. In fact it adds a lot of emotion to the moments where he does take it off. He even has to cope without his armour for one episode and it's clear that's something he struggles to adapt to as well. They're taking the character seriously and it works, plus it helps that Pascal Pedro does a fantastic job in the few moments we do get to see his face.

It seems insane for them to drop Grogu for season 3, considering how he's the series' breakout star, but this is the series that went and blew up the hero ship right when the expensive model of it was available for purchase, so who even knows what it's going to do. It won't surprise me if Mando's back to travelling with his kid 10 minutes into the first episode next season, but I'll be equally unshocked if he only drops by to visit a couple of times.

Anyway, did I mention this season was really good? Because it was. Maybe even better than the first season.


My top three season 2 episodes:

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1. The Marshal (8)
2. The Believer (8)
3. The Rescue (8)

Season two was great overall, but the individual episodes didn't quite match the peaks of season one for me sadly. Maybe that's just because I'm too familiar with it now and harder to impress. Or maybe it's because I binge-watched all of The Clone Wars and Rebels and now I'm comparing it to the best of them as well.


Bottom three season 2 episodes:

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6. The Siege (7)
7. The Jedi (7)
8. The Tragedy (7)

None of these episodes were as bad as the three worst from season one, and none of those season one episodes were anything less than 'okay', so this list doesn't mean a whole lot. When 30 minutes of Boba Fett and Ming-Na Wen kicking ass is perhaps your worst episode, you're making good TV.


Next time on The Mandalorian:

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What I wanted from the second season was more of the same, just slightly different. No galactic-scale threats, no unfolding conspiracy, no epic secrets that rock the Star Wars universe to its core etc. and I pretty much got that.

I'm not sure what I want from season 3 though. Maybe I want Mando to have to deal with the other Mandalorian factions as he's dragged into their politics and Bo-Katan's mission to retake their world. Or maybe I just want him to acquire a new ship, get his kid back, and go have adventures again. I trust this team to pull it off either way. Unless they're all stretched thin working on the spin-offs.

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NEXT WEEK

Next on Sci-Fi Adventures, it's the penultimate episode of Babylon 5's fourth season: Rising Star.

If you've got any thoughts about The Mandalorian's second season you should write them below. I'm sure anyone who's ended up on this page will be interested in what you have to say, and even if they're not I want to read it myself!