MAJOR SPOILERS ahead. Consider yourself sternly warned.
They did it. They finally did it!
In the Season 2 finale of Mandalorian, entitled "The Rescue," we got just the right amount of closure to the story of Din Djarin and baby Grogu, and we got some fun teases and allusions of what's to come in the future on Disney+. And holy cow, that cameo rules! They finally brought in that character for some of the most awesome Star Wars content we've seen since Disney bought Lucasfilm.
The episode wastes little time getting ramped up. Din, Boba, and Fennec track down Bo Katan and her compatriot, Koska (much more screen time is finally given to Sasha Banks) so they can recruit them. After a power squabble between Boba and Koska, they all make nice and team up to hunt down Gideon for the final showdown of the season, with the Darksaber and Grogu's life hanging in the balance.
Most of the episode was action, which was shot beautifully considering the tight spaces the sets allowed for some of the combat scenes. While the rest of the crew members blast their way to Gideon's bridge (more on that in a moment), Din goes stealth in an attempt to recover Grogu. He comes across the platoon of deadly Dark Troopers (confirmed to be completely droid), and cleverly locks them in their loading bay. Coincidentally, one gets through the door first, and they engage in an awesome 1-on-1 battle. The sheer weight to the Dark Trooper's strength can be heard with every punch as screeching metals clash (a fine bit of work by the sound team). Din clearly has met his toughest foe of the show thus far, but he shows off some great moves and tactics to finish off the droid.
Even the space scenes were shot incredibly well. As Din and his crew initially try to sneak aboard the Star Destroyer, Gideon launches TIE Fighters; they rolled out of their docking port like it was a roller coaster ride, with one car right behind another as they sped out into space. The camera work made the TIE Fighter feel bigger and more threatening than maybe any other time throughout the franchise.
Okay, so the rest of the group included Bo Katan, Kaska, Fennec, and Cara Dune: all women. Watching the four women running (or flying) across bridges and through tunnels of the ship, all while taking out squads of troopers, was awesome. It was great to see a team of women showing some girl power so naturally without it being shoved in our face in such a forced scene like the Endgame's all-women scene (don't get mad at me, ladies, I'm on your side, but if they want to make a statement, this is the way).
Back at Din's battle, in a bit of an eyeroll moment, he unlocks the airlock to dispatch the rest of the Dark Troopers locked inside. Seriously, who builds the droid's bay right by an airlock like that? Of course, if you remembered what they can do in the previous episode, you knew they wouldn't be gone for long.
But there's no way Din and the four ladies stand a chance against an entire legion of Dark Troopers.
This is when the magic happens.
A lone X-Wing emerges from hyperspace. A lone hooded figure starts working his way through the Imperial ship. Suddenly a green lightsaber flashes on. Our figure is wearing a glove on one hand as he fights....could it be?
A resounding yes! Luke Skywalker appears and completely thrashes and dispatches one Dark Trooper after another in an homage to Darth Vader's great Rogue One scene. He has heard the child, and he has come for him. Luke was played by Mark Hamill in this episode, but CG work made him look the correct age. It wasn't perfect. His mouth didn't move all that well when he said "May the Force be with you" to Din at the end of the episode. I don't want to see them try too hard to bring back this character, but it was still a jaw-dropping moment deserving of a finale.
We get an incredibly poignant, satisfying moment between Din and Grogu as the "wolf and cub" duo finally have reached the end of their journey together. Pedro Pascal gets to show some acting skills as he takes off his helmet for one final look at the kid. The moment is totally earned from the two seasons' worth of special moments these two have had.
The season as a whole concludes quite nicely, too. Gideon is defeated (though not dead). In an awkward (and clumsily written moment), Bo Katan is convinced she has to fight Din for the Darksaber, though this goes against the events of Rebels (when Sabine simply hands Bo Katan the Darksaber in that moment). Either way, the Mandalorians are together, and Grogu and Luke will be out there somewhere doing Jedi stuff. At the moment, all is right with the Star Wars universe.
Always in motion is the future
So what next? Well, we got the Marvel treatment with an incredible post-credit scene. Boba Fett, who flew away from the mission near the beginning of the episode, returns to Tatooine. Where is he heading? To the former palace of none other than Jabba the Hut, of course! Revisiting that palace was a great nostalgia trip, but apparently we'll see a lot more of it. Boba shoots down a fatter, older Bib Fortuna (how he took over for Jabba is probably best left to the imagination), then Boba, along with Fennec, sits on the throne. Then we get the bombshell news drop of another new show coming in December, 2021, called The Book Of Boba Fett. An educated guess might lead one to think that Boba now will run Jabba's crime syndicate. The way-out-of-left-field hope/theory I have for this is a return of Crimson Dawn, from the movie Solo among other places in Star Wars lore. There's a lot of unresolved story there, and it wouldn't be too far-fetched to think that they're still around (that's one lesson Mandalorian has taught us all too well, at this point).
Looking ahead to Season 3, the writers can focus on the Mandalorians' incomplete story. Will the two sides of the same faction be united by Bo and Din? Will they end up in another civil war? They have such a clear path to take going forward, yet they could ignore that and do something completely unexpected, and that would make sense, too. As much as the Internet loves Baby Yoda, his time should be over. We've followed Din and Grogu enough; it's time for some new adventures.
As for Grogu and Luke, I wouldn't be surprised if we don't see much from them. It wouldn't really make sense, to be honest. Luke never mentions anything like that in The Last Jedi, so to suggest that Luke and Grogu accomplish a lot is kind of a stretch. I suppose they could still show Luke training him a little bit, but I don't know how much they can really get away with considering how much CG work was in play here.
Notes:
-The Dark Trooper's techno metal soundtrack when they were first activated was so out-of-place for Star Wars, yet so fitting and awesome, anyway. I loved it so much.
-Speaking of their activation, for a group of futuristic droids that are incredibly deadly, they sure did have a long boot-up/loading time before getting started, huh?
-Cara Dune's "Skank in the scud pie" line was a fun reminder of the creativity at work with this show (and franchise, in general). It's nice to hear Star Wars lingo every once in a while.
-I did not love how they felt the need to completely spell out to the audience why the Beskar is so important in the fight against Gideon and his Darksaber. Seriously, we all picked up on that a long time ago.
Editor's note:
Thanks for reading my Mandalorian blogs. I'll be writing plenty more on shows in the future, with a heavy focus, of course, on Star Wars and Marvel shows. I'm excited to write about WandaVision next month! In the meantime, I'll be getting some other types of blogs posted to my site in the coming weeks, so keep checking in!
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