How many nails can we realistically drive into Star Wars’s coffin before it’s time to give up hope of resuscitation? Seven years have passed since The Rise of Skywalker’s feeble, conciliatory end to the sequel trilogy and the franchise’s subsequent shift to the small screen (sometimes excellent like Andor, sometimes bland like the Obi-Wan Kenobi mini-series). Any return to the multiplex, you would think, should feel declarative, maybe even bold.
Instead, The Mandalorian and Grogu merely stitches together what is clearly three episodes of the previously planned fourth season of The Mandalorian and calls it a day. There’s not a whiff of effort here. As a mid-season arc for the character of “Pedro Pascal’s sultry voice inside a metal bucket” and his tiny, puppet son, this might have been adequate, if uninspired. As a so-called feature film event, blown up to Imax with Sigourney Weaver roped in to deliver a few lines, it’s the dullest and most inconsequential Star Wars film ever made.
