The problem with high profile shows is that people want conclusions to storylines – fast! If you’re on a runaway train of success, the desire to tie up and resolve the major issues – or indeed pressure from studio heads and stan insanity – means you can conclude everything too early. The classic here is Twin Peaks, where pressure from ABC, who were keen to have a ratings climax, forced David Lynch and Mark Frost to reveal Laura Palmer’s murderer early in season two, after which the series was essentially dead – the creators never wanted to reveal the killer and Lynch famously said, “We killed the goose that laid the golden eggs.”
This too has been the worry over The Mandalorian; the adventures of Mando/Din Djarin (Pedro Pescal) and Grogu (Baby Yoda) had seemingly been resolved at the end of Season 2. Bad guy Moff Gideon was captured and his darksaber taken by Mando, who completed his mission to rescue Grogu and get him to safety (helped by – spoiler alert – a thrilling appearance by Luke Skywalker played by a de-aged Mark Hamill).
Job done.
Except, no way – in a great twist, an associated series, The Book of Boba Fett, suddenly turned into The Mandalorian Season 2.5 halfway through, as Mando returned to the screen, got himself a sweet new ship, and went off to see Grogu and Luke. Grogu ultimately decided he was better off flying around in a Naboo N-1 Starfighter having adventures with Pedro Pascal, rather than sit around in a forest with a digital-faced Luke lifting rocks with his mind.
And so things are set up for Season 3, they’re back together… but what now? Well, the new hook is that Mando is no longer a Mandalorian because he took off his helmet to say a proper goodbye to Grogu at the end of S2, thereby breaking the Mandalorian code of honour. The only way he can redeem himself and become a Mandalorian again is to bathe in the waters of the mines beneath his home planet of Mandalore. Which unfortunately has been poisoned.
Ok, great. New mission ready, and who cares if it’s a bit of undramatic (like, the only good bit about being Mandalorian seems to be saying ‘This is the way’ every five seconds, the Star Wars equivalent of Love Island’s ‘It is what it is’). It’s merely an excuse for the fun to begin. Because the reason The Mandalorian is such a successful TV show is because creator Jon Favreau created it to mirror the key Fifties TV serials that inspired George Lucas’ original Star Wars film, like the Lone Ranger and Flash Gordon. Meaning you get plenty of action and cliff hangers and self-contained episodes within an overall arc, on the understanding that there’s no mega rush here to end the thing – indeed, the crucial bit is to keep the whole thing going.
And so episode 1 of season 3 kicks off with Mandalorians fighting a giant crocodile, it features a nice quick of the draw shoot-out in a town, and a very pleasing space battle in an asteroid field between our heroes and some dastardly pirates.
Unlike JJ Abrams’s really quite bad trilogy, which was so neurotically hyped up and desperate to please it was simply irritating, confusing and cold, it all feels very easy in The Mandalorian. It’s confident, relaxed, cool. Hitting all those notes of the other inspirations behind the original film that Favreau wanted to hit: Samurai films and Westerns. It’s about loners forming alliances to fight the corruption of officials in towns, growing authoritarian evil exploiting working people, the bandits and bounty hunters making a fast buck in chaotic times, and the rare innocents that must be protected.
And there has never perhaps been an innocent so cute and funny as Grogu. My kids squeal every second he’s on screen. If he turned up in our house, I’d probably choose him over them too. In season 3 his Jedi powers are growing, which may come in handy as Mando takes him on his mission.
But really, its Favreau who is the Jedi here. Already in season 3 we have action, humour and peril, and every week is going to be a treat. Favreau has created a fun for all the family TV show that has a little of The A Team and Knight Rider in it as well as those Fifties serials. That it is also the best Star Wars creation since The Empire Strikes Back is almost too obvious to state. In actual fact, The Mandalorian is perhaps the ultimate expression of what George Lucas was getting at all along… Star Wars should never have been a set of films, it should just have been a TV show. Thank the Maker we finally have it.
