‘The Mandolorian’ Season 2 hits Disney+

By Zach Hagadone
Reader Staff

It’s already well established that The Mandalorian is a better addition to the Star Wars universe than the prequel trilogy, the standalone Solo film and even the final trilogy that supposedly ended the Skywalker saga with The Last Jedi in 2019. For most critics, the original trilogy and Rogue One are the only other best/comparable big-budget efforts to add to the universe created by George Lucas in 1977 with Star Wars: A New Hope.

Courtesy photo.

Since the Disney takeover of Lucasfilm, and acquisition of all Star Wars commodities, Disney+ has been the streaming home of “the galaxy far, far away.” That includes The Mandalorian, which saw its second season air Oct. 30 with an episode filled with callbacks to its long pedigree.

In it, we see the titular bounty hunter-turned-armored nanny escorting his adorable powderkeg “baby yoda” charge through the most unsavory parts of the Outer Rim. Soon, he’s back on Tatooine, home of both Anakin (a.k.a. Darth Vader) and Luke (his son and galactic savior) Skywalker. 

Mando is on the desolate planet to find a fellow Mandalorian, who he hopes will help guide him to the baby yoda homeworld. He finds a lot more than he bargained for, though, with a character who’s not all that he seems at first (yet maybe more), brokers an unlikely alliance and helps fell an enemy whose existence has haunted the Star Wars universe since Obi-Wan Kenobi saved a wayward Luke from Tusken raiders out beyond the Dune Sea.

All the while, viewers get a bantha-load of hints and Easter eggs that fill in some of the lore surrounding the fall of the Galactic Empire after the destruction of Death Star II in Return of the Jedi. 

But let’s be real: So much of this is profoundly dumb. Lucas, for all his trend-setting foresight and technical brilliance, has never been much of a storyteller. The Star Wars canon is the most convoluted, ass-backwards ever created. Marketing and salability have always been the driving forces behind The Force, and through all the spin-offs and pre- and post-quels the tiniest nerd-gastic detail is often fuel enough for an entire half-billion-dollar project — continuity be damned.

The Mandalorian, for all its awesome sci-fi western gunslinger glory is indeed another money grab by Disney — the titular character being a spin-off of Boba Fett, who was himself an after-thought character thrown into the infamous Star Wars Christmas Special between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back. Despite Fett’s character appearing as an animated aside in the otherwise live-action (and truly horrendous) Christmas special, someone with pull back in the late 1970s-early-’80s thought the helmet looked cool and Fett got to be a full-fledged character. He had a handful of lines and a secondary role in the events of Empire and Jedi, but he met his unceremonious end being eaten by a big sandy butthole with tentacles on — you guessed it — Tatooine. 

Since then, the marketability of the helmet has really been what matters. The disastrous prequel trilogy shoehorned the Fett/Mandalorian storyline into an absurdly central part of galactic politics, making Boba’s dad, Jango, the genetic template for every trooper in the Grand Army of the Republic — thus the precursor to the rise of the entire Empire and making Vader’s master-client attitude toward him more than a jerk move. 

Alas, that kind of retconning and ham-fisted fan service is par for the course with this grand-daddy of all film franchises. Regardless of all that, The Mandalorian manages to capture something of what made the original trilogy such a sensation: it’s gritty, funny, fun, exotic and quick on its feet — if a little low on intellectual caloric intake, even for Star Wars. 

As such, this second season is one to keep up on — new episodes every Friday on Disney+.