f13.net

Surprise, surprise.
https://www.polygon.com/2018/10/4/17939032/star-wars-tv-series-mandalorian-first-photo-directors

Please don't ever link anything from Polygon ever again.  Thanks.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/entertainment/star-wars-show-the-mandalorian-receives-first-image-directors-list-1.4122992

Maybe it is Snoke in the mask.

Can't be worse than TLJ and the prequels.  :why_so_serious:

I haven't been able to get Fett's Vette out of my head since i heard the title.

Good luck with that.

The Disney streaming service is going to be a monster.

a monstrous pile of garbage

yeah, it'll be popular and yeah it'll get huge subscriptions, but it's going to be unequivocal shit

it is something that simply needn't exist.

"Some people call me the Space Mandalorian..."

Nope, that lyric does not really roll off the tongue.

They own like every piece of content in the world. They'll stick all the PG stuff in there once all the Netflix licenses drop off.  If they're smart they'll put all their Disney Jr stuff on there which is amazingly popular with my kids. Toss in all the Disney movies (that aren't on Netflix), all the old school mickey cartoons. Any of the FOX stuff they want to put on there.

Yeah Disney owns anything that is worth a damn, if they are serious about this Netflix is going to have to survive on original programming. At that point it would just be HBO or something.

As long as they don't pull that Disney Vault bullshit and stop streaming individual movies for years at a time.

Saw an article yesterday stating that Netflix basically gives zero fucks about holding big movie licenses anyway.  They claim their money is better invested in original content...something like 2/3rds of their viewership is the serial stuff, and that doesn't change regardless of how much they invest in movies.  And I, for one, am just fine with that.  Their original content is, on the whole, quite good and they are very prolific with it.

So let Disney carve out their little kingdom.  It might not go as well for them as they expect.

Confusing frequency with importance is a mistake. I watch a lot of shit on Netflix just to put something on the screen in the background. The reasons I subscribe to Netflix are access to a small number of their shows and access to some good movies for the occasional Friday night with the wife.

2/3 of basic cable is sustained by people having it on "in the background". Point is, you pay them, you watch, you keep paying. I have watched *so* many documentaries just to have something vaguely interesting happening while I read or play games.

--Dave

And what they themselves are saying is that it doesn't seem to change their numbers whether those movies are huge expensive blockbusters, or cheaper licenses.  They still get 1/3 from it, and it therefore makes more sense for them to invest in their (very good) own content.

They still need to have movies.  Just not necessarily the biggest and best.

Trailer. Ugh. I like it, yet don't want to give Disney money. I mean, $10/mo for Carl Weathers is worth it, right?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOC8E8z_ifw

Yeah, that looks pretty swanky.

TIL I learned that Carl Weathers is not dead.

--Dave (If you die in a movie, you die in real life, right?)

IG 88 is a lot more agile than i pictured him lol

Um. Well. That looks pretty fucking good, actually.

Sigh. One more streaming service to add to the pile, I guess.

Yeah, hope meter dialed up to high.  That looks the business.

It's getting bundled with Hulu and ESPN for what I'm already paying for Hulu so I'll be getting it. They had me at "Ewan McGregor Obi Wan series."

That one hasn't been confirmed has it? I thought it was at the "in talks" stage.

It was confirmed yesterday.

I agree with Freddie Mercury, but I might watch this.

Being that I already subscribed to ESPN+, already have Hulu and am such a sucker for Marvel properties that I have no choice but subscribe to Disney+ anyway, getting the 3 bundled together is just a no-brainer.

Fine. OK. Just don’t let me down.

(https://media.giphy.com/media/hUVybAnJlnp7O/giphy.gif)

IG Droid voiced by Taika Waititi, who is also directing some of the episodes.

Yup. Take my money.

And the Mandalorian is Pedro Pascal (Peña in Narcos).  :why_so_serious:

/violent_laughter

You mean the Red Viper.

Disney+ is actually $7 a month or $70 a year.

That seems reasonable for all the shit they're gonna be churning out

Apparently it's written into the storyline that people will confuse IG-11 for IG-88 as well.

Edit: source: https://ew.com/tv/2019/08/25/the-mandalorian-character-details/

Well of course it had to be a different robot that looks damn near identical, so you can sell a different action figure.

Or for $13/mo you can get ESPN+, Hulu and Disney+

ESPN+ looks to be useless unless you want to watch soccer/ufc/golf.

Or dodgeball, don't forget dodgeball.

We get espn+ for rugby.  :drill:

I wouldn’t sub to ESPN+ for it, but every 30 for 30 (documentary series) I’ve seen has been pretty good, even when I didn’t necessarily care beforehand about the subject of the episode.

That's The Ocho.

They say that but their best "original content" has come from licensing the Marvel IP.  That said I think they are one of the more self aware companies out there, they realized almost from the beginning that once their contracts for content ran out the only thing they would have left of value was their subscriber base, the question now is are they going to be able to develop premium content quickly enough to hold on to that base.

They do seem to be doing a good job of rotating major movies through as well.  Turned it on for the first time in a few months and was impressed at some of the movie options available.

Anyways, they’ve been pumping out a lot of original content for the last few years.  Far more than any of the competitors.

Final trailer is up. Hope rising further.  https://youtu.be/XmI7WKrAtqs

Yeah I joined the Dark Side and coughed up ~$150 for the special discounted 3-year offer so I could watch this and the Marvel spin-offs.

Before coghing up for Disney plus, check to see if you have an outlet to get it for free.  For example, if you have unlimited data from verizon, they're giving you a year for free.

I am wondering where it is going to show up in Eurolandia, because I don't think Disney streaming is even a thing.  A quick google search has me thinking that this will have to be obtained and consumed via alternative, sub-legal methods.

In large parts of Europe, Disney have a long term contract in place for first runs with Sky-now-Comcast.

Disney+ won't arrive till that is dead. They are promising 2020, but who knows.

So the first episode is good. Feels like they are working some of the more entertaining story beats of Rogue One and Solo (specifically droid who is funny in a deadpan way) but overall more worth watching than Last Jedi.

Here in Italy Disney+ will launch on March 31st. Not so patiently waiting.

There is a lot of "Hey, here's some stuff you know from Star Wars!" in it - but that is true of all the Dave Filoni Star Wars stuff.  And it all works.  

I get the idea of him being a loner, but I wish there were more of a regular cast of characters on the show.  It looks like he'll be the only real mainstay in the series...  I know there are folks cast for multiple episodes, but it really has the feel of a one character centric show.

Pretty classic template for a Western-derived show--think of all the classic TV Western shows that were basically a loner going from town to town.

I did not know this was a weekly show.

Fuck.

They really need to do away with them.

I'm glad I found out before I watched episode 1. Do we know how many episodes it's going to run for?

8 episodes, most releasing on a Friday (some jumbling around the release night for the new Star Wars movie).

Episode 2: Friday, Nov. 15, 2019
Episode 3: Friday, Nov. 22, 2019
Episode 4: Friday, Nov. 29, 2019
Episode 5: Friday, Dec. 6, 2019
Episode 6: Friday, Dec. 13, 2019
Episode 7: Wednesday, Dec. 18, 2019
Episode 8: Friday, Dec. 27, 2019

Season 2 is already filming.

I thought it was pretty decent.

I liked it too.  They spent a shitload of money on it.  I wonder if they can keep it up?

This was good.

Episode 2 is out now.  Also very good.   

I’m happy. Will watch more.

All I can say is that based on the rate of jawa murder, I cannot wait for him to have a mission on the forest moon of Endor.

I really like the mix of "he's a badass" and "he's making it fuck up as he goes". That is 100% Man With No Name territory, so good that Favreau understands the template.

The 2nd episode was fucking hilarious. I was constantly giggling, all in a good way. I cannot believe the same producers that brought us Last Jedi managed to bring us something that's this good.

Putting aside the nostalgia: Is this the best hour or so of Star Wars we've ever had?

I'm not a fan of Mandalorians. I think they have cool armor but most Mandalorians not named Sabine have been complete tools in Star Wars and their more extreme fans are obnoxious. Like...talking in Mandalorian online obnoxious.

That said, this show is damned good. It really is the Man with no Name in Star Wars and I like it. I like that he can sometimes be a total bad ass and sometimes get his ass handed to him and get his armor damaged. Sometimes in the same fight.

IGN compared it to (spoilered just in case)  and I think they may be right on, especially as George Lucas was influenced by Kurosawa when he made the original movie.

That’s because it’s not the same team — this is Jon Favreau’s baby. He is the creator and showrunner. Yes Kathleen Kennedy is an Executive Producer (as is Favreau) but she’s an Executive Producer on anything Lucasfilm movie Star Wars live-action related.

Lone Wolf and Cub is a good comparison.

I don’t know what the fuck I just watched, but I liked it whoooooole lot.  They should stop all the other shit they are doing and focus on stuff like this instead. 

That's kind of my point though. Kennedy apparently looked at shit like Last Jedi and thought "Yeah, that's fine, let's continue a billion dollar franchise with this" so her judgement is clearly questionable as hell. So I'm not sure how something that's this level of quality got through her moron filter.

It might not have been her decision. E.g. it could've been Bob Iger telling her "we want Jon Favreau to do one of our live-action Star Wars streaming shows -- make it happen".

What's questionable about this? TLJ made 1.3 billion.

Can we just stop talking about The Last Jedi? Because I still think it's a good example of what the franchise needs. Let's just stick with what everyone seems to agree on: this is good.

At least keep the TLJ complaining in it's own thread (or the Ep. 9 thread, if necessary).

This is awesome, and if there is any justice in the world it will get at least 221 episodes.

--Dave

Yes this truly rocks.

Very Lone Wolf and Cub feel.


Please let it continue and not suck,

I'm floored how good it has been so far. Really hope they can keep it up.

Just caught up and this show is amazing.  The only way you could improve it is if Disney hired Ennio Morricone to score it and resurrected Kenii Misumi to direct.

Just watched it last night, really solid. What a difference when they still have the budget for quality production but are just trying to make some solid, steady long term story compared to a flagship movie where you have all these executive committees interfering because they are under tremendous pressure to jam all kinds of wizzbang crap together so it will appeal to a massive enough audience of adults, children & foreigners so it will generate gate of 1$ billion +. The slower pacing makes it less of a theme park ride, lets you sit back and enjoy the aesthetic like that cool forge scene which probably would have been cut down to 10 seconds in a movie.

Yeah, the great thing about it in part is that for once you're not sitting there watching an SF-themed show on a premium channel and thinking, "So here come three scenes of pointless talking so that they didn't have to spend money on decent effects or complicated location shoots".

Fixed that for you, HBO Style.

Yes it was.  Someone finally got it right.

Enjoyed by all three of us. My tastes are suspect, of course, especially when we are talking about Star Wars. However I was very impressed with the level of investment done here, after being completely unimpressed with the Star Wars area of WDW. Clearly they consider this the Disney+ flagship and intend to use it to keep subs.

Honestly if all episodes were released at once, you'd see VERY CANCEL after the first month. This will keep people on until at least January, after which maybe they can come up with something else.

I did also watch the first episode of the 1997 Silver Surfer show and am convinced this will be the plot for the next mainline Marvel movie.


Interesting you say this because I feel like the music is the weakest part.

Yeah you can tell Disney is very worried about cancelers cause the episodes are so short.

Didn't 7 million of you sign up for 3 years?

--Dabe

Dunno. The only subscriber number I've seen is the total of 10 million as of Nov 13.

They're not releasing anymore numbers until their next earnings report.

I have no reason to cancel. I am free through Verizon for a year.

I've also enjoyed the Mandalorian. The scene at the top of the sand crawler had me laughing for 5 minutes straight.

I also like that he is a bad ass, but that he is human and isn't perfect and takes a beating. His armor gets torn up and he loses weapons. He doesn't always seem to be super prepared for fights, but he has no compunctions about killing or violence when necessary.

My only nitpick in the last episode and I admit it is very small, but neither he nor the child ate anything for at least two days.

I found the first episode of Imagineering was awesome.

I agree with all of this. Too much of the fandom wants Mandalorians to be super warriors who swat Jedis aside with one hand while gunning down rival bounty hunters with the other. It's good to see a more grounded take on a Mandalorian.

Child definitely had a large meal earlier before he passed out  :awesome_for_real:

There's a frog that disagrees with this.

Definitely 100% approve of the decision to make him a vulnerable improviser rather than a one-note ultra-badass. I'm sure pretty soon there are going to be basement-dwelling incel fans who complain that he isn't badass enough etc.

Totally forgot about that, it was awesome.

oh damn, me too. He pretty much shows no concern as to whether the child eats or not and then, chomp, swallow, the kid takes care of himself. Good catch!

In his defense probably doesn't know anything about the child's physiology and what sort of food intake it requires to survive. As for the actual incident he was concerned about what the child was eating but by then it was too late.

I don't think he was concerned like "I am your guardian, young one" but more like, "Um, well. Do I need to lock the little mofo up when I'm sleeping?"

3rd episode:

Just caught ep 3.  I'm loving this.  It's not deep, but it's fun and it feels star-wars-y in an original trilogy way.

I really like that it's set post-original-trilogy and not following characters we've seen before.  Nice to see some new people and places.

This show just keeps getting better and better.  As for the plot, I have no idea what he does now.

This is how much I am loving this show, I woke up in the middle of the night to order a Mandalorian action figure from a Japanese import site. Then I watched the third episode as soon as I got home from work... in which he gets a completely different look. That's what i get for nerding too hard.

I'm intrigued about what the Mandalorian might mean for Star Wars in the future.  In a way, they sort of put a hold on everything they've been planning for the films recently after Episode 9.  I'm wondering if this series could do for Star Wars what Favreau did for the use of Marvel Comics characters...

That's the rumor:

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/star-wars-uncertainty-extends-kathleen-kennedys-disney-future-1256357

(http://www.theallium.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/TearsOfJoy.jpg)

Kennedy's future is probably directly linked to Episode 9. If it causes a bunch of fan backlash she may be shown the door even if the movie makes a lot of money.

This show proves that the Star Wars universe is big enough to incorporate stories that are not focused on original trilogy characters or their offspring. You just have to, you know, have an actual plan rather than just throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks.

Heh, I like that they are making some solid narrative episodes that are entertaining as hell but also throwing A LOT of Easter Egg bones to the nerds. They fucking used the ret-con of the Ice Cream Maker-Man for the beskar safe. I mean, come on.  :awesome_for_real:

There's also been at least two nods to the Holiday Special that i caught.

I think the second half of what you said is far more important the first half.  If DF and JF were given the keys to the Skywalker story, I'd be excited to see what they did with it.  If they did a series after Mandalorian about the bastard/clone Skywalker, I'd have high hopes that they had a good story to tell.

This is the type of story "A Star Wars story" should have been. Not "Here's how Han Solo got his pistol and his last name!!!"

I know, I was laughing my ass off about that. I spotted it immediately because one my RL buddies had shown me the whole Willrow Hood thing. Favreau knows how to both produce good stories AND pander to nerds.

Yeah, exactly that.  Hoisted the black flag until I can get Disney+ to play nice with VPN's, and really like it.  It's the exact opposite of everything TLJ was, and really refreshing.  It's Starwars given the Marvel treatment, and proves Favreau just knows what he's doing.

They should just hand the entire IP over to Marvel at this point, declare it in universe (maybe have a wormhole connect the two galaxies somehow) and stop trying to treat it like it's own special thing.  They've fucked the whole thing up since getting it from Lucas (who also fucked the whole thing up), so just hand over creative control to that organization.

j

He mentioned Life Day in the first ep but I must have missed the other one.

This is the dumbest shit ever.

The little pig guy telling him his ancestors used to ride mythosaurs.

His gun is also the one from cartoon Boba Fett from the Holiday Special I think.

What I love about the third episode is:

1) it opens the door for the character to be entangled in weird Mandalorian religious/cultist/political plots, which he is obviously a bit ambivalent about already (he didn't ask for those guys to show up; they showed up partly because he got the beskar and forged the armor)
2) it opens the door for a long plot arc about why the Imperial remnant wants Yoda baby that could lead us into all sorts of non-Jedi Force shenangians
3) It opens the door for "there are mercenaries and bounty hunters who don't do the Code thing and there are those that do". I'm seeing Nar Shadaa somewhere in the near-term future, aren't you?

I don’t think the Imperials want the kid.  The scientist absolutely does want him alive (is he affiliated with the cloners?  My friend thinks so) but someone turned loose a whooooole bunch of bounty hunters with “kill on sight” orders and also paid in beskar.  See also: the Imperial guy saying “dead....just as good” over Mr. Science’s protests.

Werner Herzog's character at the least *cares* about the kid being dead/out of action for some overwhelming reason. Given how valuable and motivating beskar seems to be (and how expensive paying off an entire army of bounty hunters would be in turn) the mystery of "why does this matter so much" is very juicy and a plot engine that can go on for a while. It can't just be "because Force powers!" given that at this very moment (we presume) Luke Skywalker is starting up his earliest attempts to revitalize the Jedi Order.

I wouldn't say he wants him dead so much as there is something "inside" the kid he wants and he is just as happy to get it regardless of what it does to the kid. If I had to guess I'd say it's midichlorians or something else related to the Force. I hope they never use the M-word in this show though.

If anybody anywhere in Star Wars ever mentions midichlorians again except to snort in derision as if the weirdos in the Jedi Order who thought that were the equivalent of anti-vaxxer nuts, the whole franchise is dead to me.

This show is amazingly good, and does a great job of making it feel local and not so "over arching the galaxy is in peril" type of thing. If Solo had this feel it would of been a much better movie and I loved Solo.

As for the new movies, if they are going to start a new series of movies and do the Marvel treatment of it (stand alones that attached and built of the Avengers backbone), they will have to make it a big story with force users and galactic storylines. Star Wars is as much about the ships and weapons and the force as it is about the characters.

If they do it Marvel style and not just Episode 1-9 again, they have a lot of room to do stand alone movies that also add to the story and background. I love this approach. I have Disney is smart enough to get it done. They really need someone to create a story and a loose plot and steer the damn thing.

Also put it 1000 years in the past or future.

Episode 4 is also very good.  It may be my least favorite so far, but daaaaaamn.

Fuck me, but I love this.  It’s like what I have wanted out of Star Wars forever, but would never have been possible before now.  Baby Yoda is possibly the best thing ever and they are going to sell roughly a trillion dolls if they ever come out.  And Mando is perfect.  I wonder if Pedro is actually under all that Beskar.  I appreciate that they have kept enough of the lore from the EU and other places to keep a nerd like me happy.  Favreau fucking nailed the Mandalorian thing.

Also....the score is fantastic.  I did not think so initially, but I completely changed my mind.  It is already more memorable than any of the last several movies.

Yes, the music during the end credits of episode 4 is of cinematic quality.  I didn't listen to the very end of the other episodes so I'm not sure if that is norm or not.

They definitely keep hitting the ball out of the park.

I'll be intrigued by where the story goes.  It feels like they've written themselves towars a corner that would be hard to avoid without apparent contivance, but I have a lot of confidence in the fols involved...

Episode 4 was my least favorite because the homage was just too direct: the Magnificent 2.

The series structure so far is basically The Fugitive/The Incredible Hulk etc.--dude wanders from town to town, he's not entirely a good guy in the sense that he brings trouble with him but he also solves trouble as he goes. That's fine and fun but ep 4 showcased a thing they're going to have to do: he's eventually going to have to de-helm and stay de-helmed (mostly). I think they've already hinted at how they're gonna play it: he's not *really* a Mandolorian, but an adoptee. I'm guessing at some point the heat on him and Baby Yoda is such that he goes 'home' and has to decide what he's gonna do; that's going to lead to him taking the helm off/to him getting Worf-discommodated. Something like that. Because eventually the Lone Wolf and Cub/Fugitive plot structure is going to wear out its welcome.

I disagree entirely, I think they could keep it going in lots of ways, and removing his helmet would be a let down. I think the Lone Wolf and Cub thing has lots and lots of legs. Plus, being a foundling he's as Mandalorian as anyone else.

I get the idea that being a Mandalorian isn't a racial thing so much as a discipline - you don't have to be BORN into it, but you do have to follow its precepts.

"Stop touching things."

* Reaches for shiny red button *

I fucking love Baby Yoda.

I'd say it's a story template that has typically shown a lot of longevity. If anything, with a setting like Star Wars where you've got a galaxy to work with and the characters are wandering from planet to planet rather than just from town to town, the diversity they have to work with there could allow this show to go on for a long time if they don't have a finite story they're working through right now. Not every episode needs to follow the same story structure every week of helping someone out and then having to move on when a bounty hunter shows up.

If this first season doesn't have a three-way extended Mexican stand-off over Baby Yoda I will be disappointed, if not outright pissed.  They've brought a tiny bit of Leone into this but they need to fully commit.

The idea that Favreau copies the shit out of whatever Western stuff is completely fine with me.  Give me 7 seasons of whatever the hell it is we have just seen.

I wonder if it'll mostly stick to just the Mandalorian or if it'll ever become more of an ensemble. I half expected Gina Carano's character to travel with him or something.

I really want to see Gina Carano be a series regular.

Yes, that's what I thought too.  He starts solo but then picks up a kid and a partner.  Then a couple of comic relief characters and then finally a real cause to fight for.

I was surprised that Gina parted ways with Mando, and I half expect to see her again.

I was also surprised to find that I find the heavier version of Gina to be kinda hot anyway.

I was hoping for more IG 11 myself. Seems a bit far fetched at this point, but I guess he's a droid so anything is possible.

Any Gina Carano is hot. She even made that ridiculous flat top mullet work in Deadpool. That said, I’m hoping for an ensemble by the end of this too. I also kinda want to know where the widow Annie Oakley learned how to shoot.

There are enough open questions about the episode 4 characters that I expect to see them return before season's end.

I expect we'll see the Mandalorian's face sometime soon, but he will not show it to another person until the end when he lays down his weapons for the last time.

I think the scene where the Mandalorian asks the herder / mechanic to join him as a crew member foreshadows what the show could be for season two now that it's been renewed. I.e. following along similar samurai/ronin/Western themes as this sesason it could become The Seven Samurai / Magnificent Seven.

As for Gina's character, IMDB has potential spoilers on whether or not she'll be back, follow the link at your own spoilage:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8111088/fullcredits

Well, the series trailers revealed (spoilered just to be super cautious):

Did we already talk about the short piece that revealed that Favreau and Filoni were ready to fall back on a CGI Baby Yoda and Werner Herzog confronted them about it?

Close your eyes and hear his voice saying the following to Favreau when he found out:

"You are cowards. Leave it."

Apparently also he kept talking affectionately to the Baby Yoda puppet while they were setting up for his scene with it.

#TRUTH

Gina Carano is very hot, heavier or not. And widow krill farmer was also hot and I really do want to find out how she learned to shoot.

As for the Werner Herzog story about the Baby Yoda, that sounds like the truth even if it isn't. I'm very glad they stuck with puppet Yoda, because I keep flashing back to CGI Yoda flipping around on the floating Senate platforms and just cringe.

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2019/11/the-mandalorian-star-wars-baby-yoda

Baby Yoda is the fucking bomb. I'm not even sure I want to try to dissect WHY, it just makes the whole story work.

At this point its kinda weird more people ask him about the helmet than ask his fucking name.

Hey MANDO! Mando!

Like, that's gotta feel a bit like someone's saying "Hey WOP! Hey NEGRO!"

I wouldn't mind finding out that the surviving Mandalorians think of Boba Fett as the worst bullshit ever, but folks who know the EU better than me (or all of Filoni's oeuvre) may tell me that's already happened.

Boba Fett was not, I believe, ever considered a Mandalorian by anyone, not even himself.  It is a culture, not a birthright.  And while I suppose it could get tiring, being called Mando is more like being called "badass motherfucker who will end your shit and probably gets all the ladies, too".  It is certainly not supposed to be a pejorative.

Favreau's interpretation here where they never remove their helmets is, I think, quite unusual.  It may have been mentioned in lore somewhere, but all other interpretations have them removing their lids occasionally. 

He's converted the "Man With No Name" into the "Man With No Face."  Has to be a payoff down the road for the man who had Tony declare he was Iron Man in the very first MCU movie.

So your saying when he finally takes off the helmet, were going to find out he's played by RDJ?  It all makes sense now!

Pedro might not exactly be RDJ, but on the other hand, he is the motherfucking Red Viper of Dorne and that's not nothing.

I’m pretty sure it’ll be explained at some point why they no longer remove their helmets. David Filioni, who is a co-writer on the show, is also the supervising director on Clone Wars and the creator of Rebels where the Mandalorians do take off their helmets freely. I.e. this is not some sort of retcon by Favreau — something happened in the years in between to make them change this behavior.

There was a fateful night when all the known Mandalorians were killed in their sleep, and after that they only ran around with their helmets on. Obviously.  :why_so_serious:

Love this series. And Baby Yoda is both ridiculously cute and true to form. That red button moments is exactly like mischievous toddlers behave, down to the facial expressions.

Well, the Mandalorians are not one big massive entity. There are clans and it could be as simple as it's this clan's rules. Also, after what happened to the Mandalorians in the Clone Wars (and during the Empire) their numbers are probably very low. This rule might be as simple as a way for Mandalorians to have a way to escape if another purge happens. I could see them being prepared to ditch their armor and simply walk away unrecognized if it means survival of the clan.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taqiya

His third one where he is staring Mando right in the face and not even looking at the button while he does it brought back many memories.

It's also being memed to high heaven with different music coming on when he pushes the buttons.

I don't have a kid but that moment was 100% my damn cat.

Just saw ep4. Holy carp, this show keeps delivering. Such a great vibe to it.

As far as a face reveal, I'm going to always be bummed if it happens because the role and voice combine to make me picture Mando as Timothy Olyphant.

And baby Yoda is awesome because he's basically a cat. With force powers.

Hard to say he does not seem to be going out of his way to tell anybody his name  and he does not seem offended by it so may just be realizing that people need to refer to him as something.

Probably closer to how Amish people call everyone who isn't Amish "Hey, English" (at least if tv and movies have informed me correctly).

Did everybody call him that?  I thought it was just Carl Weather's and felt like a name his character just made up (because Mando probably didn't give him a name).

Regardless, it would fit perfectly anyways considering the Sergio Leone feel we keep pointing out.

"Blondie!  Hey Blondie!!"

Yeah, I think it felt right with the Western vibe to the show and the 'man with no name' approach to the character. The Mandalorians generally seem like an interesting take, they've clearly been impacted by the early Empire clear out and I kind of hope we get a few more hints about them without it being too much of a focus. The scene leaving the planet with baby Yoda was really awesome, 'This is the way' indeed.

Yeah.

It's a classic serial plot structure--sometimes a protagonist who has to leave wherever he's arrived because he's being chased (The Fugitive/The Incredible Hulk) sometimes simply because he doesn't like people very much or is restless. But I think in a serial format as opposed to a few films like Fistful of Dollars/GB&U you have to eventually give the main character some recurring allies, enemies and foils to work off of--say, like Doctor Who. Otherwise you end up kind of trapped with the main character. And it's a real challenge to series writers to come up with new characters each week who are interesting one-off people in an interesting situation for the main character to interact with. I think these guys can do it but I hope they're not afraid to mix up the formula if or when it gets to be too confining or repetitive.

In a Few Dollars More (2nd in trilogy), Clint is referred to as "Manco" in the credits and maybe once in the movie...  guess its Spanish for "one armed" and he only really uses one arm for most things.  It's also so close to Mando you wonder if it is an easter egg or a happy coincidence.

First movie he is either "the American" or called "Joe" (generic name for an American).  Last movie Tuco calls him Blondie.


Aussie, Kiwi, Tommy, Joe, Yank.  Brit was usually regarded as fine as long as it wasn't applied to Republic of Ireland folks, when I worked with lots of British Isles folks. 

There are definitely problematic or outright racist diminutives, but there are plenty that are affectionate or neutral.  For instance, pepper and newfie are both derogatory (for French Canadian and Newfoundland, respectively).

I think it's pretty clear after his exchanges with the bounty hunter in ep 5, "Mando" isn't a name, just a kind of derogatory short hand for Mandalorian.

I'm sure we'll get explanations about a lot of this stuffas time goes by... enjoy the mystery.

At first I thoght they'd gone too far with the fan service in the ltest episode, but.... Who else was looking at the wall in the booth for blaster scoring?

I was. I also hollered out R5-D4! and Gonk! like a dork.  There is also a serious easter egg in the title cards they ran under the credits. 


If this is all fan service, fucking serve me up some more.

I was quite happy to see R5-D4 and for like 5 seconds was like "The Mandalorian could use an astromech droid right?"

I thought the droid serving in that bar was hilarious.

I wouldn't have minded a passing comment on what the situation on Tatooine post-Jabba is like, as long as they were doing fan service.

The whole place looked dead.  I guess after the Empire and the Hutts got purged there was nothing left.

It finally *is* a backwater, maybe.

Republic ruined the economy.  Things use to be booming in this here town when the empire ruled......


Dumb as it was, I think my favorite bit of fan service in this episode was:  "She has the HIGH ground."

I'm a big Star Wars nerd so when he walked in, my first thought was "the droid scanner by the door is gone, that's a mistake." Then the camera panned and I saw droids tending bars and was like "Oh, not a mistake at all! I approve!"

This reminds me of comfy classic television. Also I'm picking up about 66% of the easter eggs.

Thanks for that Baby Yoda turns on music tip.

I'm still watching it and still loving it. Just little things that bother me:

Episode 4:

Episode 5:

Aside from those concerns, I enjoy the stories and baby Yoda and the look and feel of the worlds they go to and the ships and everything else. I nerd out over every episode as soon as I can see them. This is the extension of the live action Star Wars universe I have always wanted to see.

For #4 of Ep 5 spoiler:

And for #3

Thank you for the responses, Teleku and Haemish. Good answers.

Pretty sure he wanted the armor too.

Considering the armor may be worth more than both the bounties on the assassin and Mando combined, yeah, he definitely wanted that sweet, sweet armor.

Though I get the sense that a person not connected to The Way wearing it would have an even bigger target painted on them than the Mandalorian does at present.

I got that same sense as well.  I am not sure why they aren't exploring this angle yet.  Its almost like no one cares about him gunning down their agents/the guild.

I don't think they'd wear the armor, just sell it for the materials.

My head canon on this has always been that the armour is just really valuable as a trophy.

I can't square the idea that mandalorian culture is capable of retaining secret knowledge of how to make and manufacture any form of weapons or materials technology. Mandalorians are continually being splintered and subsumed into other factions to such a degree that neither keeping cultural secrets nor maintaining a complex industrial base could reasonably be within their capability.

But genuine hierloom mandolorian armour can reasonably be rare for exactly the same reason.

Err, then why are bars of Beskar being used as the highest form of payment?  Carl Weathers showed that he had been given 2, and considered himself rich now.  All those ingots came from metal the empire looted and melted down during 'the great purge', they even said.

I mean, what your are saying is totally logical.  But this is also a universe with giant star ships that pull upside each other and shoot laser beams (that can be tracked moving by the human eye) in giant broadsides against each other like 17th century warships.  And the most feared warriors in the Galaxy use swords in a universe full of guns.

It's a reskinned fantasy setting, so anything goes.  Beskar is Mithril and only the remains of this fallen civilization of space dwarves knows how to make it.

Edit:  If this is something they actually decide to address (I doubt they will) my prediction is that only the upper tier smiths (who also basically seem to be major leaders and/or the equivalent of clergy) had the knowledge, and only passed it on to their replacements.  It would be more realistic that this this small group never gave in or gave up the clan secrets, and instead led whats left of them into exile/hiding.

For some reason this conversation sparked a realization for me: I don't want things explained. The explanation is always dumber than the initial 'magic handwaving' (see: midichlorians).

But aren't you one of the ones who hates Lindelof?

That is two different things.  Lindelof creates a "mystery" that is the central plot of his stories, of which he has no god damned idea what the actual resolution is, and it plays out that way.

What he's talking about is over explaining minor things that just work as is, in world.  "Where Beskar comes from" is not the premise of this entire story.  If Lindelof was writing it, it would be.

Nope. Had to look him up, actually. I've only seen the 2 Star Treks and WWZ from his work, and I liked them ok.

But I agree with what Teleku said. I can just accept that Beskar is rare, valuable, and workable by Mandalorians. I don't care why.

edited to add: actually, when actors start to explain the hibbity-jibbity and just chew on pseudo-scientific fantasy nonsense, it takes me completely out of the moment because it's so obviously cheap exposition to satisfy people who need to be given some reason for things being as they are. It's almost always cheesy and stupid.

One thing I kind of hate about a certain variety of nerdery is that it expects that futuristic and fantasy cultures are more relentlessly rational than our own and complains if they aren't. I think that usually just reveals that the nerd in question doesn't understand his/her own society very well either.

Why do people pay a huge premium for "organic" food? For brand-name fashions? etc. It's not merely end-point consumers--companies sometimes pay premium prices because they perceive the supplier to have a higher quality of material (rightfully or wrongly) or simply because the supplier has an established or prestige name in a particular line of production.

Beskar could either not have actual intrinsic value but be valued because it's the hot-shit rare thing that actual Mandalorians and Mandalorian wanna-bes will pay more for or because it's actually better. (Sometimes organic/heirloom stuff is actually better!) Or both! Doesn't matter.

Yay, I got my three-way Mexican Standoff!

To me the easiest explanation is that Beskar is basically Star Wars Vibranium. Which makes the Mandalorian homeworld basically Wakanda. Except instead of using it to make themselves technologically superior, they just made armor out of it because they're space Mongolians or whatever.

I'm more inclined to think that they are more like the blade-smiths who know how to use the steel (like multi-folding japanese smiths who did it centuries before anyone else) better than anyone else. For others it is just currency (a bar of gold compared to a jeweler), but to them it is a vital tool as they have armorers who know how to turn it into plate male that can deflect blaster bolts.

Ok, I may have actually laughed out loud longer than almost anything on screen at the scene where the big angry red guy is lifting the door to the control room, showing Mando's trick didn't work.  And then Mando presses the other button.  Another great episode!

And I really don't want to tangent things away on this Beskar stuff, but hey, dumb discussions are what Star Wars threads are for.  What Khaldun and others have said is very true, they could come up with non-logical reason why people might want Beskar (and I think they HAVE done a good job of things likes that.  Remember the Jawa's and their Egg?).  It's just that they seem to be giving a very straight forward explanation in this.  It's the strongest/best alloy in the galaxy.  It's the only thing you can make armor out of that can deflect blaster bullets, which is a big reasons WHY Mandalorians are great warriors.  I had the exact same thought as Riggswolfe did.  Mandalor is Wakanda and Beskar is Vibranium.  Everybody wants Beskar for the same reasons everybody on Marvel Earth wants Vibranium (or Unobtainium, if you want to discuss THAT movie).  You can make the greatest weapons of war out of it.  Mandalor, like Wakanda, is probably one of the only sources of it in the Galaxy, thus why their civilization developed the way it did (and why the empire decided to wipe out the planet and take all their metal, also just like THAT movie).

Certainly it has to be better than Stormtrooper armor, which actually attracts blaster bolts and amplifies the kinetic damage of rocks and sticks that hit it.

Read a critical review of the show that was way too harsh but which made the point I was mulling over earlier--that the format of the show may need to switch up at some point, that having the Mandalorian just wander around trying to stay one step ahead of the people hunting him and baby Yoda is fine for a while but not forever.

Well, yeah.  I guess we'll see, but I assumed the baby yoda thing was mainly just a "this season thing".  Since it's 8 episodes, I expect we are going to get into an end game here in the next 2 episodes are going to start a story that brings all the previous plot threads to a head.  Then next season it will be something different.  Though Baby Yoda is so popular now, not sure they'll ever give it up now.

I can safely predict they will NEVER get rid of Baby Yoda unless they already wrote him off in the next 2 episodes. He is just too goddamn popular not to be absolutely hammered into the ground by Disney now.

This episode was great - we got Twileks, including hearing the derogatory slang for them, Moss from IT Crowd as a killer criminal droid, the goddamn Kergan, Bill Burr playing Han Solo's balder, dickier cousin, Bobby from Sons of Anarchy - what more could one want? I absolutely fucking loved the dig Mando gave to Mayfield about Stormtroopers and Imperial sharpshooters. Now that's some good fan service.

The latest episode is probably the best one. It was my favorite.

I can't believe it took me awhile to realize the big tough guy was Clancy Brown. I know that voice anywhere but for some reason it bugged me and I couldn't figure it out while watching the episode. It was only later I was like "wait...was that the Kurgan???" You forgot to mention Oola/Nymphador Tonk. She was the Twi'lekk.

Also, I loved Bill Burr in this. I was worried when I heard he'd be in it because I've never seen him act but he was great. He was also a total dick and I kept waiting for the Mando to give him his comeuppance. One thing I wonder about:

He did say that got what they deserved.  :why_so_serious:

Family/all ages show, and recurring character potential.

In story? 

I agree. My favorite one as well and I had no complaints about it. Absolutely great show. Next episode is early and comes out tomorrow!

He was pretty good in a small recurring role on Breaking Bad.

Talk about a roller coaster of emotions.

Episode 7 is really, really, really good.  So dense, and so much going on.

Sorry this one was my favorite episode.

Holy shit.

Yeah, the amount of awesome in this episode was just great and it really sets up one hell of a mountain for the finale episode to climb. I'm pretty confident this team is going to absolutely stick the landing, though.

Grand Moff Fring was boss.

 This is good. I have spoken. I tried to hold out til I could watch all 8 and now I will suffer for 72 hours for my mistakes.

Plenty of time to watch them all over again!

Mandalorian is what happens when you hand things over to Marvel folks. So, is it REALLY the dumbest shit ever?

Is it?

Is Dr. Strange not just a [more powerful] jedi by any other name?

The Marvel people know how to write stories, both self-contained and meta stories that span multiple properties/characters. There's certainly some wiggle room to complain about the formulaic nature of their stories but even their bad movies are better than shit like Rise of Skywalker for no other reason than "they have a plan."

e7 damn

They just need a Feige for Star Wars. I think Dave Filoni might be the guy, though I'm not sure he can make the right choices in terms of hiring directors, etc--not enough evidence for that.

But the Star Wars management job is closer at this point to being handed the reins for DC Comics properties--there's a lot of mistakes to sort out and some housecleaning to do.

Yeah. It is. Declaring Star Wars and Marvel Universe to be happening in the same space is the dumbest shit ever. Yes. GTFOH.

I think it would be incredibly stupid.

But it'd still be better than where star wars has gone for the last 30 years.

You could make Howard the Duck the new Jedi master of the universe with an army of Transformers at his disposal, and it would still be less stupid than Rise of Skywalker.

That's me.

Anyone that isn't loving this series is trying too hard to be a hater.  They're killing it.

This is the best Star Wars we've ever seen.

I hated him too, but he redeemed himself with the Leftovers and Watchmen.

I wouldn't go that far but it is damn good and shows you can do something that isn't connected to existing characters and storylines and have it work. A lesson Lucasfilm desperately needed to learn.

For the record I was joking about that actually being a thing (maybe I should have used green I guess).  Just joking that this series shows Marvel folks and what not can do such a better job than Lucas with this franchise that they may as well declare the various characters marvel heros.

Those two scout troopers might be might favorite Star Wars characters.

I paused the screen when they first appeared. It was such a masterful tableau, capturing the post-Imperial troops lounging at their duty positions like a hybrid soldier/biker ganger. Then the nuance of those two hearing Mando on I'm assuming a recon radio with better spectrum than the avg trooper's was a nice touch.

But the unexpected happy nostalgia surprise was

I still can't put anything ahead of OT because Han and Leia were just that friggin' good (I've been rewatching the 4k versions). But this series and Rogue One have absolutely redeemed Star Wars in my opinion. Whatever else happens in the IP, getting gems like these is something to be excited about. Rogue One shows they are capable of putting together a good movie (though I still prefer the "I rebel" idea over the "Rebellions are built on hope" final cut, tbh), and the Mandalorian is showing that they have formula for longer form stuff.

I'm also happy they went with a traditional episodic release rather than a modern binge release. It's nice to have a new episode to look forward to every week, going to miss it when it ends.

Ahh... that was it you know.

That scene at the start of the last episode - that was awesome.  Loved it.

How long is the wait until Season 2? 

Fall 2020:

https://twitter.com/Jon_Favreau/status/1210652862193098753?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

I haven't seen the final episode yet :)

Star Wars fans so lucky this is part of the MCEU now

One of the scout troopers was Jason Sudeikis apparently, the other was Adam Pally who I've never heard of.

That season could not have gone better.  Awesome addition to Star Wars lore.

Now that's the way to do fan service right. I am going to miss this shit for the next fucking year.

The bit with the biker troopers was great. I knew Waititi would do a great job with the finale but it even exceeded those expectations.

Just finished 7 and 8, and goddamn.  That is how you do Star Wars.  Let Favreau and Filoni do all the Star Wars from now on until they die.  As a collective piece of work, this is IMO the best SW we have seen.  Or it is at least right up there with Empire.

Baby Yoda noping the fucking out and grabbing the ship controls was the funniest thing I have seen in a while.  Until perhaps Apollo tells him to do the hand thing, and he then obliges, jesus christ so funny.

Apparently Jason Sudekis was one of the biker troopers. Jesus Christ that bit was so funny.

Episode 8 was much weaker than episode 7.  Some great bits, some weak bits.  Waititi tone whiplash in full effect, which his Thor movie had quite a bit of.  "I'm dying, leave me!  Must sacrifice myself!  Oh, I'm okay! <prat fall> Oh, you can't sacrifice yourself!  Oh, all the baddies are dead, lets jokingly talk about everything going back to normal completely ignoring the supposedly sad moment we just had 2 minutes ago!"

I didn't like the scout troopers.  Too on the nose, and deflates the risk to our main characters if the baddies are blatantly fucking incompetent...  I mean, if they were that fucking bad how did they get the baby in first place?  I say that as someone who loved the old Troops short.  Storm Troopers have largely been portrayed as decently scary in the series until this episode, where the tension was drained out of the previous episode's setup by making them target dummies...  The troopers would have had Mando in episode 3 a couple of times if he wasn't fully outfitted in armor that actually works really well.   Or compare to the Jawas:  The Jawas were jokey in episode 2, and Mando murdered the shit out of a bunch of them, but they managed to beat him in a believable manner.

Troops: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HO70-Rk3jE
 

Wasn't bad, and there were some great moments like the Moff listing off everyone's full name and planet of origin, or the IG-11/Mando scene.  When you discover Gina Carrano was from Alderaan?  Yeah, now you know why she's got a big old hate fetish for IMPs.  It was just a bit mixed after the amazing episode 7.  Deborah Chow killed it in Episode 7, and people are really excited for her Obi Wan series now.

The scouts in the finale reminded me of the two goobers in the Oceans franchise. Loved 'em.

I thought that was a vibroblade, but I guess the armor on a Moff makes sense having a saber, too. Never heard of a dark saber, but I'm no uberfan (I mean, I have a Vader helmet but not the entire outfit!).

Off the top of my head, the dark saber appears only in Clone Wars and Rebels material.  It is an important Mandalorian artifact.  I was never clear on whether there was only one of them in existence, or if they were just rare like lightsabers.

There's just the one, made by the first (only?) Mandalorian Jedi, before the Jedi and Mandalorians went to war. Nobody knows how it was made, and it has never been duplicated.

--Dave

Ok, that set up season 2 even better than I had thought!

I've watched Clone Wars and Rebels and I've never been quite clear on what makes it so special other than being black. It seems to work like a regular ass lightsaber.

Afaik, in lore it is a traditional weapon of the boss mandalorian.

Certainly in the Filoni cartoons it was just a weird looking lightsabre. Significance is political not murder efficiency.

Only one is known to exist, but if a writer wants two, I'm guessing there shall be two.

I thought the AT-ST was customized by raiders to be more intimidating/raider-like. It looked cool, many times that's the only reason anything needs to be the way it is.

There's also no reason you couldn't put an AI brain into a salvaged AT-ST if you wanted to.

It was a bad movie, but Last Jedi literally had BB-8 piloting an at-st by itself and murdering everybody.  So sure, yes.

Though I also assumed that it was manned by pilots, and the red glow inside the cabin was just the raiders being metal.

Did we ever see pilots through the black tinted windows?  Not that I recall.  I mean, they were there, but I don’t think we could see through the panes.

Just going off RotJ, doesn't appear to have any glass at all going by this clip and the shadows both in and out camera angles.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDwXglOI5jA

Either way, you cannot see them.

But whatever, the whole scene were they required the AT ST to take a step into the bog didn’t really make sense on any level, there was tons of shit wrong with it.  I like the whole episode just the same.

I agree with ya on it, just pointing it out. But I like anything with Gina in it... that girl's smile is killer

Yes there was one shot of pilots in the walker.

It was created by a Mandalorian Jedi and became a sort of symbol of the Mandalorian leader. Sort of their Excalibur. There is no other Dark Saber in the lore and with Dave Filoni attached to this I don't see that changing.

Gosh, I wonder where that sword will end up.

He's not going to keep it. He'll give it to the minigun guy or something.

Like every 4 eps mando will get some new loot. That saber will be the legendary drop he gets in season 5.

The 6th episode was fun.

I find the weapons bounce of everything/kill anything switch ups kill any tension in the show when it tries to have it, but it’s good silly fun when you just go with it.

The last episode is both the best and worst for this.

Bouncing off?  I mean, blaster bolts bounce off the beskar, at least at a sufficient distance, so that is to be expected.  Was there other bouncing of note? 

Huh, okay, maybe you are right.  I didn't specifically notice those events, but it could also be that I am so used to seeing similar stuff everywhere that it doesn't register.

But whatever, they are clearing getting the big stuff right with this series, I can forgive the little stuff.

It may well be "Star Wars RPG, the series. Now with Loot Progression, Loyalty missions,  and Armor Quests", but I'll be damned if it isn't damn compelling and fun to watch.

I guess there is a reason beyond providing timesinks why they use these mechanics in video games.

To be fair - there is more than just a numbers game to the troopers.  50 in a town square - an open space - is different than 15 to 20 when you're stuck in a slow moving boat and they have the high ground.  As everyone knows, the high ground is the quintessential advantage in Star Wars.

It still has to be executed in a certain way.  One of the things from the Rise of Skywalker that I can't get out of my head is the whole Sith Dagger Is A Clue If Held Up In Exact Spot thing they did.  It was exactly the sort of shit that you do in a video game.  But it still didn't work, because it was absurdly executed and didn't ultimately make sense.

I'll take your word for it as I didn't see that movie and will at the earliest when we get Disney Plus and it streams there.

In Mandalorian its superbly executed, though. At thirst I thought seeing those parallels was my imagination because I'm a filthy gamer.  :grin:

Watching this a second time through.  It holds up really well.  Did anyone else notice all the Aperture Weighted Cubes in the background?  Because I totally missed them the first time but they're EVERYWHERE.   :drill:

(Here's where someone posts a Wookieepedia link that explains that these are a specific canon thing that have been around forever.)

I finally took out the Disney+ trial subscription and binged Mandalorian. It's fine, I'm not saying it's bad, but I was like "this is what I was missing?". Getting through it in 7 days was a bit of work.

I had the same reaction to Iron Man 1, also a Jon Favreau creation. I was surprised by how many people thought that movie was awesome, not just adequate. And that led to the whole MCU set of movies so I am hereby defeated and crawl back into my Amazon Prime Video hole to await 20 years of Mandalorian spin-offs consuming the entertainment industry. I'll be raving about rotoscoped original animated dramas, steampunk deep fantasy milieus and The Expanse if you need me.

Those cubes have been there since the original Star Wars. The scanner crew that they sent to investigate the Falcon on the Death Star had them.

There are quite a few SW nerds here on f13.

It was water cooler talk at work. I sat through some legal training where the lawyer's entire reference material was The Mandalorian. Baby Yoda entered pop culture. That's the fuss that hyped it up for me, more even than you lot! I saw Star Wars in cinema with my sleeping dad in 1977. You'd think I'd live for this stuff.

If Mandalorian was built solely on SW nostalgia I wouldn't like it (see: all the recent movies).  Mostly I like it because it's a dang good space western and it sort of fills the Firefly-shaped hole in my life.  Baby Yoda is just a bonus.

That is exactly it.  Or it's both.  It would be excellent if it was some brand new non-SW IP.  There is a lot of the nostalgia stuff, with the main difference being that they largely did a great job with bringing those things in.  IG-11 is s straight copy paste of IG-88, for example, but instead of being some ham-fisted cheesy shit, IG-11 is fucking awesome.

It's the same with Baby Yoda.  It's such blatantly cheesy fan service on the one hand, but masterfully executed nonetheless. 

Started watching this, watched ep 4 last night.

I wish I was a fly on the wall in the storyboard meeting when someone said "Let's have our Boba Fett and a baby Yoda go defend a native american village".  So bizarre.

Star wars is supposed to have moral grey areas and character development, not just comic book level plotting, jokes and action scenes.  That's what's missing, there's no tension, no conflict, no point to any of it.  Just a pretty shiny man and a cute doll doing random shit.  Sometimes really really random.  They fail at storytelling 101.

It's damn pretty though, love the art in the end credits every episode.  I'm definitely watching the last 4.  Wish it was better.

While we here at F13 respect diverse and myriad opinions, you sir, are fucking nuts.

Just kidding.  Kind of.

Hah!  Much love.

That is one of the more common complaints about the show -- that the middle episodes (4 - 6) did very little if anything to advance the main story line. If you can make it through them, though, you will be rewarded.

When I read this shit I think of the Dick in college that complained about 'conquests' taking breaks during marathon BJs to play with his balls.  Give the artist a fucking chance to breath.

Minus the dick and balls, that's also my opinion.  They can spend 3 or 4 seasons not advancing the plot for all I care.

I thought it was more like a village from a Vietnam War movie. Episode 4 seemed pretty lazy to me as a fan of the original Magnificent Seven (I've seen Seven Samurai and the Magnificent Seven remake and think early Hollywood did the best job).

But yeah I meant to say I too appreciated the art in the end credits.

The middle episodes helped the pacing and established why Mando has to go back, dropped relevant world detail, fleshed out his backstory, and introduced future recurring characters.

1. He can't just disappear to a random planet, because he will be tracked down.
2. He can't just hook up with his old merc buddies, because he will be betrayed (and maybe the New Republic will be looking for him.)
3. He can't expect to work as a bounty hunter because his rep is out there and the jobs will dry up/he will be betrayed.

So when he goes back to the original planet it feels like he's exhausted his other options, and that the situation has naturally evolved.  It doesn't feel like he's going back because the script or episode count is saying that "its time for the big end of season action set piece!"  Too many shows now try to do serial story telling but wind up locked in an awkward holding pattern where you don't get to breathe but are just passing time until episode 8 or 9 when the final arc actually kicks in. 

I had a discussion the other day wishing there had been /more/ content and the #1 thing I could think of was how the Magnificent Seven arc could have been at least an additional ep without feeling bloated. Could have devoted at least half an ep to the hunter sniper that was tracking him, fleshed out the raiders and the planet/village a bit more, had the raiders show up demanding their tax, get rebuffed, then come back for the big bad fight etc.

Another thing that I wanted more of was the young punk and the assassin storyarc. That felt rushed. There was plenty of time for more of that.

Obviously they could have sent Mando on random time waster missions with Burr and the gang for days for all I care as well.  :drillf:

+1 to those last two posts.

Hell, Bill Burr was brilliant and def. could've been in a few more episodes without losing interest. I felt the pacing of the entire season was perfect, because it left me wanting more.

Vs the slog of Punisher season 2, which I'm trying to get through all the filler nonsense. Mandalorian > all the Netflix Marvel stuff imo, and a lot of that is due to pacing.

That's a great comparison. It's why I gave up on the Netflix shows despite having all the good will in the world towards them: they're all a chore to get through because of terrible pacing.

Being reminded of Bill Burr's performance, I've realized that I would absolutely love a spinoff show with him, Clancy Brown, and Natalia Tena just wandering around stirring shit up and stealing stuff.  Or maybe, since they were stuck on that prisoner transport, make the show Space Oz.

I stopped watching the Marvel shows with Cage. That shit was bad.

I've watched a lot of TV in my years, and I believe this is Great Classic TV. We have all seen or made the comparisons. Possibly in 2020 there is too much terrible/wackadoo/mind-blowing TV inside some minds to get back to well-executed basics and enjoy. Like Randy Marsh and his porn, some people can't go back to regular old fucking.

While I'm absolutely guilty of this, having watched most major shows since The Honeymooners, the combination of tropes from shows I loved in the past with a modern visual and professional execution just hits all the checkboxes.

For bias considerations: I loved the monster-of-the-week episodes of X-Files more than the main plot(s). I wanted there to be another 8 episodes of weekly adventures. It's not like I have to get out a notepad to follow the main arc, which is great.

This is great TV, but I'm not sure if this is classic yet. I have to see how they handle the popularity and see how they expand the story and if it has legs.

If they keep the scope small, keep the view point simple and intimate then they have a good chance for this being a show for the decade.

That's a good comparison. This show is exactly what I wanted out of 'new' Star Wars.

When the third trilogy was announced I didn't think it was going to work out well. What I wanted was more like a comic book and less epic adventure. Something like following adventures of a bounty hunter or a Jedi Master and apprentice. Hint at interactions with epic parts of the movie, but don't directly interact with it.

And for all the memes and chatter, the child is really, really fucking cute. They are doing a great job with it.

I also want more than 8 eps per year  :awesome_for_real:

XFiles had 20+

And longer episodes.  And shorter breaks between seasons, I'm not getting any younger motherfuckers.

In related news, the Obi Wan series appears to be heading in to trouble.

If it got cancelled after one season, it would be the new Firefly. I think that's compelling enough to push it into classic territory.

I wish the New Canon crew could get some actors, direction, and writing that can rival the scenes with Han and Leia. For me (and my non-nerdy fiancee), those two are a lot of what keeps ANH and ESB (and especially RotJ) heads and shoulders above all other SW. There have been some good moments and promise, but those simple scenes still resonate with a human element that hasn't been hit since.

Everyone loved monster-of-the-week X-Files more than the "main plot" aka "mythology" episodes, with a couple of exceptions.

But I do think people have reasonable expectations now for narrative movement and character development over the course of a series to a greater degree than they once did, and I think that's because the contrivances of a long-running series where the only time people ever change is through evil twins, mirror universes, time travel (that gets reversed), dream sequences and so on get to be just too frustrating. They accumulate like arterial blockages.

I'm the exception. Don't get me wrong, there were some memorable, amazing monter of the week episodes, but I turned in for as long as I did for the meta plot. And I was furious at how shit that turned out to be.

I was about to wager cold American money that if anyone didn't like monster-of-the-week X-Files, they would be on this board.

Oddly enough, Grimm did that same thing... started off with the monster-of-the-week routine and I watched pretty faithfully. I assume this is because they weren't sure the public would watch the show, but once it caught a following, they decided to start a main story arch built off a few threads in the first season. But since I remembered the same thing happening in X-files, I stopped watching. For me, I didn't know any better and let the main story kill my love for the show with the way it progressed and devolved. I wasn't going down that road again...

It me.

I'm with Haemish. Mulder's sister, aliens and the smoking man. What is with this monster of the week delaying the story!

Many of the stand-alone episodes were great the but the ones I would talk about with other friends watching were the mythology ones. Those were the ones that kept our interest going in the show.

Man X-Files was so good. I loved the main story eps more than most monster of the week eps but really I loved both. I'd say I'm more of a overall story guy though.

And no reference to Lost?

Well, if on one hand audiences have learned to expect some kind of narrative movement and character arcs in a long-running series, Lost (and other shows like Twin Peaks) also trained a lot of folks to expect series writers to have an actual fucking plan in mind. There is nothing worse than the disappointment you feel watching a "mystery box" series when it turns out they never had any idea in the first place what the answers were. You can kind of forgive it when the showrunner does actually know where it's going but has to adapt because some of the cast leaves or the network messes with it--the pacing of late season 4 Babylon 5 and the telepath plot and new horrible captain of the first half of Season 5 is a good example. I hate it but I understand why it happened. But when a showrunner or writer starts a pot to boiling but doesn't know what they're going to do with the hot water, that's fucking bad.

Like, in this case, I really hope they have a few ideas about who/what Baby Yoda is. Is he a clone? Are ALL of the Yoda-people Force-sensitives? Why doesn't anyone know who Yoda's people were? I don't care if they don't know all the answers yet but I hope they aren't going to just wing it, either.

I could see a lot of ways for this all to go--mostly episode Lone Wolf and Cub; evolving slowly into a Star Wars version of the A-Team--a rival mini-guild against the Bounty Hunters' Guild; delving deeper into the underworld elements of Star Wars; etc.  But I would like it to feel like there's a plot thread bigger than just caper-of-the-week and so far that's exactly how it feels.

They apparently have a plan based upon a few statements by Favreau and Filloni.  

However, There is a chance they're going down very difficult paths... (https://wegotthiscovered.com/movies/mandalorian-season-2-reportedly-explain-palpatine-returned/?fbclid=IwAR2hJPa-3AINI7Z-Ki2NNpayksq9HE5US1MXF3BziT2XuBCiCgZp18cTFt4)  Hopefully, things like this are entire BS.

Hmm, Filoni isn't really all that great at the higher concept thing. The forcey worcey episodes of rebels were not amazing.

Personally I wish they'd just say the galaxy is big enough for something like this to be its own thing.

VaderNOOOOO.gif

If that happens (and it's probably bunk) it will be because there is a cover-your-ass thing going on among the suits--kind of equivalent to the reaction at WB after Batman V. Superman where they tried to act like everything was going COMPLETELY TO PLAN and then leaned on other creative people they had on the hook to Snyder-up everything in the hopper to make the corporate line look true. If that happens here, then Star Wars really deserves to just fucking crash and burn once and for all. Forcing the dumb bullshit of the sequels into Mandalorian in any significant way would be like corporate WB telling Patty Jenkins on seeing a first cut of Wonder Woman to put a grimdark filter over it all, drop the trench warfare scene, have a weird bad cameo of Steppenwolf, etc.

Incorporating those elements into the Mandalorian would be very hard to do without it being real bad.  However, even if they confirmed it was true, I'd still be looking forward to the season to see if they could pull it off.

I felt the same way.  I wanted to know the backstory.  The cancer man episodes were what hooked me, not repetitive “we somehow lost all the evidence” monster episodes.  It was around the time Kryczek showed up with a fake hand and no one took the opportunity to ask hi what the hell was actually going on that I realized the show was never going to go anywhere, and I stopped watching.  I tuned in for the series finale, and it really pissed me off.

TIL this show was shot using the Unreal Engine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUnxzVOs3rk

Yeah - and when you look at how well it worked, you can expect that a massive number of shows are going to follow

Soooooo

I was involved in some discussions with Lucas Arts about 5 years ago. Saw some "stuff". They were using EA's Frostbite engine for several demos that we saw. They said they intended to move towards "game engines" for a lot of "drama creation". Not surprised they are using that engine.

 :awesome_for_real:

October 30

Then Nov 6, then the 13th... Weekly release schedule will be hard to endure...

I was happy they went that direction, I enjoy having a weekly fix. Not even close to being a binger.

We are bingers, but it just means we'll watch the first 3-4 around turkey day and the rest about xmas. This fall has been good for TV, with Umbrella Academy, The Boys in a few days, this... and a few others we haven't watched yet.

If you haven't watched the Gallery series (making of the Mandalorian), it's really interesting from many angles. I learned a ton about classic SW I didn't know, and the making of the show itself I find fascinating.

I will unreservedly second that recommendation for the Gallery series. It’s so good.

1. thank you for surfacing the return date.
2. thank you for the Gallery recommendation, new to me.

I'm gunshy of being a fanboi, but I really dig this show on multiple levels, and I feel happy (grateful?) it's coming back. Puts me in a real kid mindset (in a good way).

If it weren't for pandemic-related job insecurity (tax income is down, costs are up, libraries are easy to cut), I would be getting the set of sixth scale figures Hot Toys put out. I'm still signed on for the art book, but it's pretty cheap. I'm in fanboy mode, for sure. Though not by millenial/gen z measures, I've learned through them that I'm not a geek or a fan of anything at all :D

There is a segment where Carl Withers is talking about how the new screen tech is so much better than having to play make-believe in front of a green screen. He was using the scene where


and how the tech allowed the actors to react in real-time and play off each other and the set. Nailed for me why I love the tech part so much, I've always despised how fake green screen looks in general, but the doofy 'pretend this tennis ball is an orc' kind of thing is so obvious and terrible, no matter how good the actor is.

Season 2 trailer:  https://youtu.be/eW7Twd85m2g

Looks great. Rosario Dawson is Ashoka and original actor for clones is Boba Fett.

Boba Fett is a rumor still, though with support - I think he (also?) may be playing Rex, the Clone (who would look just like Boba/Jenga).

Says “Bobs Fett” in the IMDb All Cast in 2020.

IMDB has been wrong before - but again, there is support for it being Boba Fett.  It just isn't a lock.

I feel like that is what Star Wars should have been with everything after 1983.

I love the idea that it's Bobs Fett, the clone who is a used landspeeder salesman.

"Am I CRAAAAAZY to be selling at these prices? You bet, but It Is The Way."

Imdb is just random Internet people guessing. I don't believe this thread would have missed it if there was any public info supporting it.

Rex seems much more likely in the absence of anything from Disney.

We didn't miss it - the epilogue on episode 5 is a strong hint of Boba Fett returned.  Go listen to it, then go listen to Boba Fett in ESB at the start of the dinner scene.  The spurs that jingle jangle jingle...

Season 2 "Special Look" (another teaser/preview): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICuqzhViWAI

9 more days.  Fucking long time.

He's back.  Not the best episode so far, but quite enjoyable.  They definitely did not cut the budget.  I keep hearing this called another "great western" episode, and the first half is, but the second half is a fantasy blockbuster.

It was fine. I enjoyed it more than most of S1 because of tempered expectations. Also last time I binged it and I think this is better watched one episode at a time.

Found it helped a lot having seen the documentaries of how they make the show with the big screens. First season I found the sets and backdrops distracting because they just seemed 'off' and I couldn't work out why. Watching this time the break between set and backdrop is sometimes very obvious, but knowing how they do it stopped it bothering me.

I guess it is an uncanny alley thing.

I didn't even pay much attention to the big "surprise" at the end. I guess I'm willing to just let them tell a story and figure out if there were cool Easter Eggs later. I think that's key: letting the Easter Egg substitute for a satisfying experience is bad fandom.

I have a lot of confidence that they'll tell a good story that happens to be crafted around fan favorite material.  I will be shocked if they mess this up even with so many major 'fan service' elements coming.

What does that mean "I didn't even pay much attention to the big surprise at the end." It was just a 1-2 second clip of someone turning to the camera and fading to credits.

Are we doing spoilers in this thread?

That 2 seconds was something that the producers hyped up a lot in talking to reviewers, that's all.
 

Tend to think the specific armour in The Martial is so clearly Boba Fett's that there is only one possible interpretation.

I mean it's obviously Boba Fett.

It's just going to be interesting how they weave him in to the story.

That's why I asked why you "didn't even pay much attention to". There wasn't much to pay attention to.

One thing to consider - the final shots of Rebels show Sabine Wren giving an update on the characters.  She talks about how Rex and Hera fought in the battle of Endor.... and then at some point down the road she realized that she was meant to find Ezra Bridger.  That would put the timing of her search for Ezra, which she leaves for when Ahsoka shows up at her door, would be in the ballpark of the timing of the Mandalorian.  That absolutely is not coincidence with Filloni being responsible for both, and with the freedom he'd have had about when to set the Mandalorian. 

But also, it could be Boba Fett.

NObody is arguing that it is not Boba Fett. The question is what else is going on this season.  For example, I think there is a good chance we see (or perhaps just hear) Sabine Wren, Hera and Rex. 

There are some rumors swirling around that Disney is going to start shooting a Boba Fett spin-off soon, before season 3 of Mando starts shooting.

… as a mini series.  One short season.

Episode 2 was ok for the Mandalorian.  Not great.  Special effects were again amazing, but both episodes 1 and 2 were a tad of a let down for me, but I had insanely high expectations.

That krait dragon meat looked fucking delicious. Speaking of meat baby Yoda trying to genocide an entire people with his mouth was not as cute as they were hoping for.

Geesh.  This is no worse than someone eating the ovaries out of a person.  Get over yourself.

I thought Baby Yoda slurping up frog caviar was goddamn hilarious.

I'm with Threash on this one. Just felt like bad writing to me. Can't really try to make us empathize with the frog lady afraid of her line dying out and then repeatedly playing it for laughs with scenes of the child eating the eggs. It would probably bother me even more but the whole episode was kinda crap really. Not much progressed with the overall story arc. Not much progressed with the characters. A more self-contained episode is fine, especially at this point in the season, but even then the plot can be summed us as Mando crashing on an ice planet and fighting some spider creatures. Probably the worst episode of the series to me so far.

Uh, this is clearly an episodic more than serial show so I never get that criticism.  The overall plot is really simple (take thing A to unknown point B) and just a tool to hang a bunch of weekly adventures on.

And if you have the future of your "line" then don't leave it just sitting around alone or take it for a walk in an unknown environment. Some species deserve extinction for being evolutionarily stupid.

Hey, her line is on the verge of extinction for a reason.  Still, eating the young of a sentient race is darker than I expected.  I thought we'd get a reveal at the end of the episode, after all of the eggs in the container were gone, that he had not digeste them, ut instead was just keeping the last few safe inside of him.  Corny, and a bad choice, but I thought it more likely than eating a sentient offspring.

And Momma not noticing that eggs were missing?  Huh.

This was directed by Peyton Reed, and written by Favreau with credit to Lucas.  I feel like Reed had a stronger hand in the story than Favreau for those parts.

I had the same exact thoughts when talking with a friend about it.

Terrible episode.
Nothing happened except his ship getting fucked up.
We have only 8 episodes and this was completely wasted.

If this was a 20+ episode per season show like XFiles this would have been an amazing monster of the week show. But it's not.

edit:
I get that this is an episodic show, but if you're not going to move the story arc forward then you need some kind of character development or introduce a new character or reconnect with an old one.

Like I said, self-contained episodes are fine, although I think the first season had maybe 2 episodes that didn't advance the overall season arc or at least introduce some character who would be important later (maybe the Frog woman will be a recurring character but I doubt it). As a stand-alone there was just not much to this episode. Mando crashes, needs to repair his ship, fights off local spider creatures, gets rescued by New Republic or whatever fighter pilots, takes off in heavily damaged ship. Frog creature isn't particularly memorable. The spider-monster isn't very interesting. There's no twists, no interesting character moments. It's the equivalent of a random encounter in an rpg.

What did you like about the episode aside from it being another episode of The Mandalorian?

I thought BY was hilarious and cute. The first ambush fight was cool with a funny resolution with the Jawa thief and the jetpack.  I thought it was awesome when the space cops switched to a 2nd channel and then just silently extended the X-foils into attack position.  The space/atmo chase was cool.  The practical creature work was great.  The Alien homage of the spider eggs was nice. The "spiders" were cool and that third act was a great action scene where Mando actually has to be saved which is unusual as he is usually unstoppable. They tied back to the prison break ep to re-orient Mando with respect to how the New Republic views him (i.e. honorable outlaw).

It was fun adventure in the SW universe with some easter eggs for hardcore fans, which is basically all I want from the show.   

It was a  monster of the week episode that didn't do anything for the meta but establish that Mando will never let anything bad happen to the Child, and the New Republic will turn a blind eye when needed. It was fun, had some great visuals, and kept me amused for an hour.

What the actual fuck? Not every episode has to be Art.

--Dave

Way to argue against something nobody said.

Edit: And again, don't have an issue with standalones or MOTW episodes. The previous episode could pretty much qualify as a MOTW episode, as a good chunk of revolved around dealing with a big fucking monster.

Ab at least articulated what he liked about the episode and fair enough. I didn't get out of it what he did but I can appreciate that he had a good time with it.

I liked that episode more than almost any prior episode. Baby Yoda being a dick was mildly amusing and the first time he ever acted like a child. Admittedly fish lady not noticing was a bit weird. The scene with the robot voice was really well done. The visual effects were better than any prior episode, and the sequence with the xwings at the start was great.

I don't care about the lack of plot progress because this show has no overarching plot worth a damn and I am fine with that. Espeicially  given people were suggesting some god awful first order related plot might emerge this season.

Pretty sure she did notice, which is why she went in the hot spring to lay some more eggs.

The problem with the mandalorian from season 1 is that you only needed to watch 3-4 episodes to get 100% of the plot. Half of season 2, if their simply copying and pasting from previous success, is bound to be filler.

I'm not certain that is a problem though.

I, too, hate it when a series isn't just a plot synopsis.

 :uhrr:

It is a problem if the filler episodes are mostly meh. I did like season 2 episode 2 and is pretty ok with it literally doing nothing for the plot but I'm not invested in mandalorian being the star wars that will save us all.

On the whole I like this show less than the internet does.

But been surprised how many comments like this I've seen when season 1 was the same, only with slightly lower production values.

If you thought of S1 as meh, then I get it. I'm enjoying it, but like S1 my socks remain unblown-off. Just surprised to see S1 boosters also down on it.

Let's see if they are still meh at the end of the season.  I have a feeling we're treading a bit of water right now while building the anticipation towards the main thrust.

Overall I liked the start of season 2. Baby Yoda eating the eggs of a sentient being was a bit dark for me considering how light the rest of the series has been.

It's very possible that the ship getting beat to shit matters for the rest of the season.

I enjoyed the episode, it might have set some things up but character wise I liked continued connection with the spaceport lady and the action scenes were well done. I really enjoyed the scene with frog lady using the droid's vocabulator, it was kind of the opposite of Jar Jar Binks with a character who seemed to be either dumb or agentless suddenly asserting herself because she has her own fucking 'quest' thank you very much.

Baby Yoda eating the eggs was weird but definitely was it clearly behaving like a child and could set up some questions about Mando's ability to parent. It was pretty clear baby Yoda only sees him as an authority insofar as he's a direct physical obstacle since he doesn't really reprimand the kid. The bit I found a bit creepy was the final one, after the lizard lady had very directly saved the kid's life. I thought there would be some sense of empathy/identification but nooooope (which is pretty true to children).

I can see some potential callbacks to come out of this (reappearance of the space cops, lizard lady and her droid/mechanical skills, damage to the ship driving the next few episodes) so I wouldn't dismiss it as purely monster of the week but also I think you can have a good series have a fair number of stand alone episodes if you are writing a show like that. 'Filler' episodes are a problem when you've got Battlestar Galactica or Lose where they are setting up grand narratives and the go ignore them for 3/4 of a series and rush to resolve them. When the 'grand narrative' is you are bringing a toddler back to his people then the journey itself needs to be interesting.

Not just that but the story did not end, they never got to her husband.

Based on the way the kid was looking at the eggs and the way they framed his initial reaction to them (including the musical cues), I wouldn't be completely comfortable in saying he was EATING the eggs. I wouldn't put it past them to say that it could be using the Force to gestate them in some way.

Or it could just be a throwaway gag.

I don't think there's anything you guys like talking about more than Star Wars.

Han shot first.

Baby Yoda was eating the eggs.

These are facts.

Maybe Baby Yoda can Force Poop fully gestated frogaliens and that will be the firing of the gun on the mantlepiece in the next act. Won't you all be surprised!

Considering that it was almost entirely disassembled in season 1 and then rebuilt during the equivalent of an 80s workout montage while out in the wilderness, I do not think this should be a huge deal once they are back in port.

There's a difference between disassembled and wrecked though.

Kuiil was a master mechanic as well.

... and a master mechanic in a desert is to be compared to his choice of mechanics from an entire planet.  It might be too expensive to fix, or something along those lines, but he sems to have had no trouble fixing his ship up to this point.

I was also thinking the ship might be done for, but it would be weird because I think part of it is making the ship "iconic" for merch and promotional reasons.

Hasbro just sold almost 30000 of them at 350 a pop literally last night, be quite a kick in the nuts if they destroyed it lol.

There's a lot of copies of Death Stars and Superstar Destroyers and Enterprise-Cs out there. It's kind of the fate of a lot of iconic spaceships to get blown up. But I don't think this one has really had the chance to be iconic quite yet.

It's basically a clone war gunship they probably got billions of those they would love to sell for 1000% profit at this point.

I meant this thing (https://hasbropulse.com/collections/haslab/products/star-wars-the-vintage-collection-razor-crest) they sold on their kickstarter wanna be site.

.

https://smile.amazon.com/LEGO-Star-Wars-Mandalorian-Exclusive/dp/B0849GZMZH/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=star+wars+lego+mandalorian&qid=1605065942&sr=8-2 (https://smile.amazon.com/LEGO-Star-Wars-Mandalorian-Exclusive/dp/B0849GZMZH/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=star+wars+lego+mandalorian&qid=1605065942&sr=8-2)

.

Tell them to hurry, Legos massively increase in price after selling out.

.

There are Chinese knock offs that are available for a much lower cost, usually.  They often continue to produce and sell "limited edition" sets long after they escalate in price in the US.

Just watched ep 2 the other day and I'm glad I'm not the only one weirded out by Baby Yoda's dietary habits. Of course I was also upset over the "no droids allowed" in ANH.

I didn't watch it yet, but apparently a bunch of folks are super pissed about that episode and are writing a bunch of letters to Disney.  :uhrr:

If they had stopped at two incidents, it probably would have been fine.  At the fourth one, with the Mando still just standing there impassively while BY does something clearly wrong, it loses all humor.  If he did something like this in an IVF clinic, people would be howling for justice, and the show makes it clear the context is pretty much the same.

As the show is likely to pick up before the frog lady is delivered, there is still a chance we see 'a twist'.

Edit: So no twist, but acknowledged.  The episode was pretty good.  Not quite up to snuff with the best of season one, but I enjoyed it and it dealt with some interesting lore questions we've discussed before.  This is still one of my favorite series of all time, even though we are only 11 episodes into it.

Corvus is an interesting name in Star Wars lore ...

You can argue it was good or bad writing to have Rey kill chewbacca, you cannot argue it was OK to have Rey kill chewbacca and then reverse the decision in the next scene.

Same applies to baby yoda's appetite for caviar.

So we/they cannot argue that is OK for BY to eat; and then reverse the eating, or say it was not ok for him to eat?  That is not what they did, in the end. 

He ate.  It was messed up.  He seemed to not understand the consequences of what he was doing at the time.  Very reasonable for a kid that seems to be acting with a mix of traits of between a 1 year old and a 4 year old (human).

The episode followed up, but didn't reverse anything like I thought there was a chance it might. 

Some people that think this may be foreshadowing that BY is not necessarily a lock for the Jedi path.  That he has a dark side due to some choking and other minor twisted acts.  We'll see.  It does seem in line for us to have Favreau give us something 'cute' and then have it fall into darkness.  That is the core story of Star Wars, after all.  Little Anny grows into Vader.

Apparently plenty of people noticed and didn't like it, they are going with it's no different than us eating eggs (https://ew.com/tv/the-mandalorian-baby-yoda-eating-controversy/?fbclid=IwAR2QwtMqm9T2cL0k8exBNO0WwKfLbWstIiO__F9o6a8OSz_49Z9nexxjYyc) because they were unfertilized. Which really does not work for me, but whatever. This weeks episode was much better, and Katee Sackhoff looks better than ever. Had to remind myself that she's not really too young to play Bo Katan, she just looks that way.

I'm on the side of "if your species has mastered space travel but can't figure out how to put a padlock on your valuables, your Darwin award is long overdue."

Arguing about comparisons with chicken eggs is weird, that is a moral debate about whether BY was in the right. Of course he wasn't don't be daft.

But preschool kids are generally considered to be below the age of responsibility and looking after one in this environment should inevitably result worse things than this. It was the very first time BY acted like a character and not a prop.

A good character doing something in-character but bad is not bad writing.

He's basically a wild animal.  Like most toddlers.  When Mando tells him sternly "now don't eat any more of those" and then turns his back I was yelling at my screen WHAT THE FUCK HE'S A FUCKING BABY WHY IS HE UNSUPERVISED WITH THE SNACKS IN THE FIRST PLACE AND WHY DO YOU THINK TALKING TO HIM WILL HELP

Did you think Mando was actually prepared to be a parental figure?  He fucked up, the kid did something disgusting, and it offends a lot of people, especially anyone that has ever struggled with fertility issues. 

I think a lot of the people are most offended are people that have experience with fertility struggles, and they see someone carelessly destroying a Mom's chance to have kids when a father figure is negligent and a kid is allowed to run amuck.  The eating part of it is just injury on insult.  If Baby Yoda had just played with the eggs like balls and popped them I think the reaction from the really offended would have equally strong (but obviously couched in other terminology).

I liked the start of the episode but adding an alien that can't communicate in regular fashion with a protagonist that rarely speaks and a toddler removes all interesting banter which is needed when the monster just ain't interesting. The sheriff was monster of the week episode done right.

There has been almost no interesting dialog in any episode.

Aside from Cara, the client, and maybe the people in the prison break episode you could have shot the whole thing as a silent movie and not lost much of anything.

I fall on the side of people who were creeped out about him eating the eggs.  I mean, obviously they thought it was just some funny gag, but the amount of people who were put off by it shows a really weird disconnect.  My theory is that one of the lead writers/producers is a vegan who wanted to draw the parallel to eating eggs and eating human fetuses, heh.  But again, whatever, just a weird thing.  Episode 2 I'll agree was probably the worst of the bunch just because it was disjointed and everything was extremely by the books and cliche.  That doesn't mean it was BAD, just at the bottom end of a very well produced TV show.

Now, just watched Episode 3, and holy crap!  Spoilers in case people haven't seen, and also a lot of stuff revealed if you've seen any of the clone wars.

Jesus Fucking Christ

The two primary influences are samurai movies and westerns, so.... yeah.  To be expected.  The conveyance of a character with limited speaking and no facial expression ... hard stuff to pull off.  I think they have.

I don't have a problem with it.


Anyway, episode was good. I'm glad they addressed this mandalorian being nothing like the other Mandalorians, and I'm glad they did so efficiently.

Only slightly odd thing was how much better Bo's gang looked in their armour than main character does. They really have settled into the visual effects better in this season.

Their jetpacks were also a lot smaller but way faster.

Sure, but you'd expect Bo to able to get her hands on better tech than random guys.

After all, strange women lying in caves handing out jetpacks is no basis for a system of government.

They tried to match her look to the animated version.  They also have quite a variety in the look of the Mandalorians we've seen.

And they did very well. Both matching the animated Bo, and making it look good.

Main character is way too reflective and uniform. He looks like a miniature painted by someone who doesn't know how to use metallic paint. Someone here mentioned their better half referred to him as 'tin foil Boba fett'. That was exactly right.

I think they wanted to show off that their "virtual set" tech makes the reflections look right in a way that green screens don't.

--Dave

They originally had a far more 'Boba Fett' look in mind, but that was just the starting point.  The intent was always for him to acquire the heavier armor that makes him look more like a knight.

Also, remember that he has higher quality Beskar Steel armor while many others have armor crafter of cheaper materials like Durasteel.  Beskar is not always available, and the armor he had on day one gets destroyed quickly while his current armor has proven quite durable.

Put me in the boat of "kind of understand why people's tits are bent out of shape about Baby Yoda eating the eggs, but think they are really reading too much into it." I've liked all 3 episodes so far, and I see that they are firmly leaning into adding the Rebels and Clone Wars stories into the Mandolorian narrative arc. Having not watched either of those shows, I don't have a problem with it, I just want them to not get sidetracked by trying to finish writing stories they didn't have a chance to on other series.

I wasn't bent out of shape about it. I just didn't think it worked, it was bad writing to make the plight of the frog lady whom you are clearly meant to sympathize with and root for into a big joke.

The proof of that


Shit's great.  I'm super entertained.

Yeah, tbh I think that was just because main character is super awesome.

But it is all good. None of it changes the fact that main character looks mediocre compared with Starbuck's gang. All the visual stuff has been better this time around. I'm happy just putting it down to people being better at their thing.

I still disagree with this assessment.  I think his shiny armor is distinct, and designed as it is for a reason.  The only reason Starbuck's looks as it does is to match the look from Clone Wars / Rebels.  It is not because they had improvements in mind. 

Baby Yoda has a record (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsTkpTW7axc) from season 1.

Exactly. Baby Yoda did what he's done all along. If he can shove it in his mouth, he tries to eat it, like most children. His instinctual connection to the Force doesn't mean he can understand it, or that without training, it will override his desire for a full belly. Fuck's sake, the little bugger almost got them killed by chomping down on Cthulhu spider babies.

If you cannot be simultaneously a little disgusted by the egg eating while also seeing how hilarious and adorable it was....well, glad I am not that kind of person, your life must be extremely boring.  It was totally on brand.

The people most offended seem to be people that struggled with infertility (at least those are the most vocal on the show forums). 

Try to put yourself into the mind frame of a person that desperately want to bring 'their' kid into the world, only to be told their body (or their partner's body) is not capable without help, and with help it will be difficult.  Until tht point in their life, it was a basic assumption on their part that they would have 'their own' kids. 

Despite the challenges, they sink hundreds of thousands of dollars into the process, go through dozens of procedures  to test, extract eggs, implant ... and spend weeks and months stressing out on whether this attempt will work or not.  In the end, some people get lucky and get that biological child they always wanted.  Others go through all of that and eventually give up, either because the body just can't do it or they've used up every cent they can must and gone so far in debt they'll never actually recover.  And then they see a tv show with a mom that talks about this being the last chance she has to have kids - and Baby Yoda eats those chances for comedic effect. 

For many of those people, and for some others, this is akin to making cancer jokes or laughing at people that lost everything (including family) in a flood, hurricane, etc...

Bull.  Literally everyone in the world has a story they can use similar to that.  Most of the best humor is based in some form of darkness, and the .001% of the population that actually can relate to the problem everyone is in an uproar over can stop trying to ruin the planet for the rest of us who are able to distinguish reality from pretend space frog fetus munching.

This argument is stupid.

I am sceptical about the 'people struggling with infertility are offended' bit.

It just didn't look or feel anything like fertility difficulties.

I'm not trying to say anyone's specific discomfort is invalid, my experience isn't theirs. I'm just saying I'm sceptical of people reporting that lots of other people were offended for that thing.

For some people I suspect it is really about not liking that a good character in star wars did a bad thing. It is Poe and Luke in last jedi all over again.

I can also understand the viewpoint that it wasn't necessary to do the same joke 4 times in the episode.

0.001% would be one out of 100,000.  Fertility issues challenge impact between 9 and 11% of individuals aged 15 to 44 in the US according to the CDC.  So, you're only off by roughly a factor of 10,000. 

As for the skepticism that this was the source of offense for many of the most offended - walk away from f13 for a bit and read the comments on some of the mainstream coverage.  There are people saying, "Just like eating chicken eggs", and there are people saying, "it is close to cannibalism". Most of them are approaching it without much concern.  And then there are the people speaking about how offended they are - and those people generally are focused on the "last chance to continue their line". 

Is there some rule(law), that need's a name, where all Star Wars threads have to devolve into completely stupid arguments about stupid things? Holy shit. BY eating eggs was hilarious :D

Counselor Troi:
Stop this petty bickering, all of you! Especially you, Mother! [runs out of the dining room]

Lt. Cmdr. Data:
[polite tone] Could you please continue the petty bickering? I find it most intriguing.

Watch BY regurgitate up a bunch of tadpoles in a future episode just to troll all the hand-wringers :why_so_serious:

The most important f13 rule is that star wars threads never stop.

We had to do IVF and both thought the egg eating was hilarious.   In fact, the second BY laid eyes on them I said out loud "he's going to eat them."

Midichlorian's Law.

We're talking about Star Wars so the stupidity is kinda baked in.

There are professionals for these people. I don't know why we let them get away with trying to force us to circumvent their particular defect instead of them trying to fix it themself.

It was clear from the first scene between Baby Yoda and the Tank of Eggs that it would go this way. Blaming other for the lack of self control to skip these episodes if that is your trigger is beyond egoistical.

Fucking pay for your psychiatrist already and stop bothering everybody else (meaning the people that are offended by this, not you personally)

Exactly.

Trump would be jealous of your lack of concern for others.  You are pieces of shit.

What the actual fuck just happened here?  :headscratch:

Don't tell anyone about Boba working for slavers yo.

Well that took a sharp turn.

Luke killed a moon-sized space station of people. Damn!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQdDRrcAOjA

Zigacktly.

Maybe Baby Yoda sensed that they were all Dark Force Using Frog People, eh? Like, he was just blowing up his very own Death Stars in utero! Little Boy Anakin killed spaceships full of Frog Charlie Chans and nobody got salty about that, right?

But have we heard what he thinks about sand yet?

If those are the "last of the line" in the extinction sense the only way the line continues is incest.  :oh_i_see:

Sorry guys, too busy holding a candlelight vigil for those poor stormtroopers who were blown out the airlock and could still yet be alive.  Something similar happens every year to roughly 9% of all Americans, I wish some of you would take it more seriously.

"Sorry your mom had to stay a slave, Annie...I'm carrying a lot of debt right now and can't really find the spare change to free her from the, and did I mention, crippling slavery problem in the galaxy that we're not really going to bother doing anything about..."

Jedi are nothing but a bunch of child thieves. Only takes a small nudge in one direction to just start slaughtering them.

Would baby Yoda have eaten the eggs if he'd been piloting a mecha and the eggs had been honeycrisp apples?

Ultimately I think the only way we'll be able to decide this is getting box office totals for the different episodes to see which was better.

I am realizing that America's cruel insensitivity to disabling and fatal injuries caused by malfunctioning doorways showed in our general approval of the first episode of the first season. Where were the online debates then, eh?

Did somebody say "twitch"?

Sorry, that's a registered trademark now. Pay the Bezos now.

Fuck, there are a lot of ignorant, insensitive, heartless fuckheads here. 

The amazing lack of empathy shouldn't be shocking to me.  It really shouldn't. 

Thankfully we have you to be our guiding beacon of hope for mankind.

(https://media.tenor.com/images/3d1687a5acf054d430c09abe823d0737/tenor.gif)

(https://i0.wp.com/boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Baby-yoda.gif)

Petition to change the forum's official logo from "Usefully Cynical Commentary" to "Amazing Lack of Empathy".

A forum is at steak.

You barely even gave a shit yourself at first, you just said it was darker than you expected. I don't know if something caused you to become Champion of the Infertile like a week after the episode aired, or if it's because your pet plot twist theory didn't pan out. Either way, I never thought I'd say this but I liked you better when you were over at your wall of yarn trying to work out how the Inhumans TV show was going to connect to Infinity War.

No, no, at this point in this miserable year, let me say that I really enjoy reading something that is just gloriously wrong-headed in a kind of nothing-held-back way. It's relaxing, like a warm bath.

I'm pissed at the idiotic dumb fucks with no empathy.  The ones that say, "Go get therapy and shut up".  It is the RESPONSE to the episode, here and elsewhere, that is reminding me of what fuckheads so many people are. 

A huge number of people struggle with infertility.  They may spend their entire life's savings to try to bring their biological kids into the world, and then get nothing for all of their efforts.  They are financially devastated, guilty that they gave so much for nothing (when that money might have been used for an adopted child's college, etc...), and angry/devastated that something they took for granted - a fundamental piece of the life they always pictured - will never be theirs.  A lot of people looked at this episode and saw it as mocking (or just being ignorantly insensitive) to what so many people go through.  Some people struggle through infertility issues for over a decade.  For many, it is the single most painful thing they ever go through. 

After 9/11, Hollywood spent years avoiding anything that might be considered a reference to that day.  They digitally removed the Twin Towers from movies.  They changed storylines to avoid plane crashes or collapsing buildings.  There was a widespread understanding that you should avoid reminding people of that trauma. 

Far more people deal with infertility issues, and it isn't something that changes in one morning - it is a struggle that builds and dominates lives for a long time.  And - yes - comparing the trauma of 9/11 to the pain people suffer through with infertility issues is 100% appropriate.  Losing the family you learn you could never have can be as traumatic as losing someone you love. 

Making the loss of the eggs a punchline is a bad look for Disney.  However, saying people just need to get over it, need to shut and go to therapy, etc... just makes you a huge fucking insensitive asshole in ways that are far worse.  It puts your ass in the same fucking category as Trump and his idiots - unable to think about anyone but you and people that think like you. 

This is really basic human empathy shit.

People in this forum are perfectly capable of empathy. If you've got a story to share, and it seems germaine and honest, people will show regard for that, or at least keep the snark to a minimum.

What we're all pretty immune to is empathic manipulation on behalf of hypothetical or abstract others, not present. Our response to "Think of the children!" is going to be "Why, are they good with ketchup?" You want to guilt-trip, we're going to lean into the barbed comments.

--Dave

Since this seems to directed at me mainly, the response was to your belligerent white-knighting for a retarded cause - mainly the cleansing of main-stream media from everything that could be negatively affecting somebody. The others just tried to show you how ridiculous and impossible that cause is by further examples.

Why you go into a meltdown over this instead of realizing how dumb your statement was is another question altogether.

Psycho.

This thread delivers.
 :uhrr: :ye_gods: :uhrr: :why_so_serious:
 

Are we talking about space frogs?

Just when I was beginning to think that the forum medium was dying out.

Just think, those eyes would have probably been better with a good dipping sauce. Poor baby yoda.

Listen. Infertility does suck and all and it was pretty miserable going through the whole process (and I wasn't even the one having to take all the injections), but we are talking about a puppet eating CGI space frog eggs.  People need some perspective if that is really going to bother them and this show is the least of their issues if it does.

i'm adopted and my mom is barren and yoda eating babies is legit the only funny thing in the history of star wars

jg, my dude, this whole thing is fuckin stupid and embarassing

Been exactly here and same.

The thing I'd add is that what makes me super sceptical that any significant proportion of the complaints is from people with actual experience, is that this experience is about an endless grind of trying things which give almost zero feedback and take months and months to do.

This show did not attempt to present anything that felt or looked at all like dealing with infertility.

We went past Midichlorian's Law and hit plaid

Careful, let's not get the szechuan sauce nerds riled up again!

Dude.  Read.  Go outside your little f13 bubble and read the complaints on the mainstream sites.  Don't just contain your asses to self reinforcing beliefs in a tiny community.  Don't be like the Red Clown followers.

And, again, FUCKING READ.  While I think that eating the eggs of a sentient creature is a bad look for Disney, my problem is with the fuckheads here and how they are talking about the people that are triggered by this situation.

But, please, feel free to go on championing for the degradation of people that have suffered.

Degradation? I think you're the one who needs to read some other stuff. I've not seen the stuff you're talking about anywhere else except the same few copypastes from facebook/twitter.

[edit: speeling hard]

Dude it’s fine. Whatever has people riled up about SW out there doesn’t mean it needs to translate here. I did not think anyone is arguing you may not have seen something about it.

Or don't. Seriously. Web journalism is a trash hole worthy of this current tangent, and comments are seepage from the devil's anus. And you dare give us shit about some snark. C'mon, man.

I'm done.  Lost causes.

wow

lol

I'm sorry dude, but you're a grown ass man. I don't know what's going on irl, though I can guess at some of it, bit the net is that this whole little fight is absolutely mega stupid.

Getting mad online about a non-controversy, here OF ALL PLACES, and about star wars

Just step back and regardless of the topic, you *have* to respect how utterly ridiculous that is.

I'm sorry people on fb or some shit are upset about a sentient poop emoji eating alien whateverthefuck because they had trouble conceiving

The last thing you should take at face value is an extremely online "controversy". Are you one of the people "triggered by this situation"? Do you know, IRL, any of these people? Can you actually prove they exist?

Because there's a good chance they don't. Or at least that they are vanishingly rare, and most of those pretending to be them are in it for the lulz.

--Dave

Since we're getting more serious, exactly this. I have come round to Mahrin's way of thinking on this, mostly. This is not to say that there are not real people with really strong feelings who react in emotionally real ways to what we see in our culture and who then go on to say something about that in various forums.

And we should absolutely acknowledge that there are people who are in their completely real lives under siege from the Internet for doing things that they believe are completely ordinary and commonsensical. The WaPo has a thing this weekend from a woman who is--well, was--a public health officer in a small county in Missouri who is getting death threats and other real life shit like people following her children around town and taking photos of them etc. just because she believes in masks.

Games, Star Wars, you name it, can bleed into real life in ways both trivial and profound. So I don't doubt that somebody somewhere may have felt bad or weird or angry about Action Baby Yoda Egg Slurper. In fact, even the most ostensibly innocent popular culture can hurt or concern someone in ways that are sometimes retrospectively predictable and other times wholly surprising.

But I do doubt two things: first, that there's some real massive groundswell of real people who are really feeling this way who are somehow tangibly knowable and obviously so on social media somewhere that only one of the many nerd-aware people on this site can see and know and take seriously. So get the fuck over yourself and get a grip.

And second, that the few real people who might feel this way are so obviously justified in feeling deep and profound pain about one element of a sprawling pop-culture series that has in its time blithely and for your amusement served up heroes killing tens of thousands of enemies with one shot, summary executions and maimings galore by the Good Guys, slavery that is ignored by Our Heroes, a heroine being stripped nude redressed in a bikini and chained to a lusty space slug, a father torturing his daughter, a wise old space wizard lying his fucking head off to his young apprentice in order to trick him into abandoning his aunt and uncle, the casual mistreatment of sapient robots by bigoted humans, and a character we're told to think of as redeemable personally murdering a huge number of young children and being enthusiastically involved in the genocidal destruction of an entire planet. And so on and so forth. It's kind of like the willing suspension of disbelief. You want to get fucking serious about Star Wars? You will have to stop watching it altogether then, because the number of people who are entitled to clutch their pearls and write on a subreddit under the name MegaInfertileKaren about how they are feeling such deep pain about BabyYoda's ovary-slurping escapades is only the beginning of the semi-fake people who can operatically demand that you sally forth onto some no-name forum and confront all the people you know nothing about over their insensitivity to other people you know nothing about.

Feel free to return after your vaginectomy.

Wait...
Wait...
Like seriously hold on I need a sec here to...

You’re quoting someone who seemingly just said he had first hand experience dealing with infertility stuff (in response to another person saying they also had experience with it).

And your response was to tell that person they need to leave their bubble and go read the pain of anonymous commenters on the internet in order to understand how they suffered?

It’s late and I need someone to tell me I’m reading this wrong.

This thread is making me suffer.

This is the way.

ANYWAY new episode.

And I really think they are getting into their stride this season. The action very occasionally reaches beyond what their TV budget can deliver, but only just. Compare this with the ATST episode or prison ship episode from season 1 and they've clearly got so much better at what they are trying to do.

Also BY waving his arms around near the end was very cool.

Guys, I feel it prudent to warn that several very sensitive subject matters were insensitively displayed in the most recent episode, including:


Any of you having previously experienced trauma in related areas might want to skip this one.

Oh hey, Carl Weathers got to direct that episode. That's cool.

Like Scandal Makers?

No.

That was a good episode. Plenty of action, lots of Baby Yoda humor. Exactly what I'm looking for from this show.

EDIT: Somehow I forgot Gina Carano being hot as hell. I'm so ashamed.

Too bad she is such a shitty person.

Great action this episode. Just the sound design of the chase with the speeders and TIE fighters tickled my brain. Good direction by Carl Weathers and his goatee was nails.

That episode (and others) proved that episodic Star Wars is actually much better than movie Star Wars, and even the technology is there to pull it off.  And that Carl Weathers directed it tickles me pink.

And agreed about the speeders and TIEs.  I could watch thirty minutes of those chase scenes and nothing else and be totally satisfied.

And now that we are hopefully over that past coversation, let's just put it out there:  Baby Yoda is still the best thing probably ever.  I laughed so hard.

His "weeeee"' in the Razor was great.  I also love little tidbits like the Troopers dropping the "It's them, Blast 'em!" and the reactor switch being in a ridiculously perilous place with no guardrail for no reason.  The people that make this are obviously just flat out original SW nerds (with a good dose of humor) and it really comes through to my delight.  On some level I don't even really give a shit about the story, I just dig the vibe which reminds me of when I saw the OG trilogy 40 years go. Is it "fan service"? Fuck ya, gimme gimme.

However, they’ve unfortunately made the cardinal sin of not only acknowledging midichlorians, but looks like are basing the entire overarching plot around them.   :awesome_for_real:

Thing is, the way this episode mentioned m-count is exactly the way the original Star Wars introduced tonnes of world building. A casual remark that has a bunch of implications if you want to think about them, but without a weird lecture on cellular biology given to an 8 year old.

'Jedi have shit in their blood that would help support cloning of super soldiers' sounds fair enough when introduced like this.

Yeah, that.  Most of what was wrong with those things that shan't be named were the ham fisted presentation.  Like everything in the prequels.

I do look forward to the inevitable fight with a squad of Force Troopers.

I hope they emphasize the fact all their shots hit, and the main characters just look at each other like "of fuck, we're screwed!"

I mean, Mando gets hit plenty, that's the point of his armor. It's against the other unprotected main characters that the stormtroopers aim suddenly goes cold.

IVF here. Did not equate the egg eating with infertility. I do dislike the Hollywood fetish with morally gray characters though. BY is a dick but Mando is also a dick for slaughtering Jawas. If they ever go to Endor I'd expect more dick moves with the Ewoks.

I'm more offended by the existence of the entire The Last Jedi movie. As far as it looking bad on Disney; Disney would sell their only disabled grandma for a dollar if they could. They are already scum of the earth.

This episode (S2C12) and S2C11 were pretty good Star Wars. I like Mando's armor shiny as a counterpoint to the grittiness of the Star Wars universe. Similarly to how the storm troopers are white. The short made for TV camera angles are very suspension of disbelief breaking though.

Baby Yoda isn't a dick - he's just a baby. He knows the concept of hunger and "mine." Not sure you could attribute his actions to much more than that.

Baby's are dicks.

Looked like Snoke in the clone tank.

I kind of assumed that they were leaning towards making this part of it the story of how Palpatine cloned himself or something.

Episodic SW and not better that movie SW. Like Ab says, it's just need to be Star Wars and not some shitty movies that we've gotten with the prequels and sequels. I think Rogue One proves that. Star Wars has always been about epic battles of good and evil. Mandalorian shows us that it can also be about smaller stories too.

Works both ways I think, you just need to be able to understand the simple beats that makes SW fun.

Is that what the internet is saying? I try to avoid all the hour long episode breakdowns of a half hour show. I think it's just clones and messed up experiments.

I was talking with a bud of mine and we were speculating whether or not Gideon is the big bad of the empire, or if he is the regional big bad. Will we see an epic escalation of a regional fight only to find out there is a mastermind behind Gideon? Is the story building to anything outside their TV show like future movies?

I kind of doubt it personally. Very hard to build a bigger story around a show where you have the shitty sequels just looming over your head.

Unless Disney just says, fuck the sequels, and just say they aren't cannon which is doubtful.

It could be that Disney is allowing Favreau to fill out the backstory about the First Order that the sequel movies should have but who the fuck knows what Disney is thinking? After all, they released Rise of Skywalker.

He's a Moff not a Grand Moff, so probably more local.

Well, pre-fall of the Empire Moffs used to be sector governors, so he is not low on the totem pole either.

Mandalorian is 25 years before the last three movies, isn't it? Plenty of time to kill off the old guard to get replaced by the teen squad of  the last trilogy.

And the empire is in complete disarray.  A local governor like him would probably have ambitions to take a bigger pieces of the pie.

There is clearly some orderly conduct. They have clean uniforms, shiny ships and plenty of personnel. It looks to have some sort of manufacturing base etc.

Or at least, there is a Corby trouser press in the barracks.

Where was the cleaning staff? The troop carrier had a tarp over it, so we can assume the vehicle maintenance guys were laid off, but the halls were still pretty clean. Maybe they were part-time stormtroopers?

Maybe the reason some stormtroopers shoot so poorly is that they are actually just working stiff stuffed into armor and handed a blaster?

(https://lumiere-a.akamaihd.net/v1/images/mouse-droid-main-image_035abc9d.jpeg?region=238%2C0%2C916%2C515&width=768)

Doot doot doot-doot!

Well, the movie Solo did essentially make it so that droids have agency, so blowing up a base with droid cleaning staff in it is still murder, right?

Only fuck-droids have agency in the SW universe.


(https://i.imgur.com/UDcBQAq.png)

Any droid can be a fuck-droid if you're willing enough.

(https://media.giphy.com/media/lA3qoZE4TKQhi/giphy.gif)

First half of that espeicially has many beautiful shots that could have come straight out of clone wars. Far and away the prettiest episode, despite being wall to wall mud and fog.

Fantastic how well they captured her movement and lightsabre style. I wasn't totally sold on the costume though.

It looked exactly like her last clone wars outfit. Unless you mean it should have been her rebels outfit, which actually makes sense.

I didn't see rebels either, so I had a similar reaction to you when she name dropped him.   :drill:

Top to bottom a really good episode. A lot of really effective shots and atmosphere, clearly tons of fan service that I'm not nerdy enough to catch.

I was told there was KOTOR/SWTOR fan service but I don't know enough about SW (including legends) to know if the references I caught were specific to the games or not.

Those would be:

Well finally a plot episode. I have to say it did fix my one nagging issue with baby yoda  and that final scene was easily better than any new trilogy light saber duel. Even with a lower bar this episode clearly a reason to watch this show. 10/10.

Well, certainly young Anakin piloting his fighter through Trade Federation ships was an example of well-trained Force use! So yes, by all means, let us complain of Disney!

And look at Luke! He had to train for a whole week or two with Yoda on Dagobah before he became a pretty fair dab with the Force. Almost a lifetime of training!

I mean I'm sorry actual star wars cannon kills your dreams of waking up one day and being jedi. I mean I'm not really but at the very least I can enjoy a show for giving a shit about star wars cannon.

*canon

Sorry, personal *twitch* issue.

--Dabe

Pretty amazing Easter eggs and foreshadowing in this episode.   Anyone else catch that Pedro Pascal's character in GoT's used a spear?   What did the Mandalorian get in this episode... a lightsaber resisting spear.   Should be useful against a certain Moff Gideon and his Dark Saber.   Trial by combat Pt 2 anyone?

For reference, I never watched any of the cartoons but I've read a little bit about the basics. I've started watching them, but I'm only 10 episodes in to Clone Wars season 1.

First thing, this episode probably had the best music and visuals so far. Better than almost any movie imo. Watching Asohka fight felt more real - less clean and less rehersed/choregraphed. She was ruthless.

And OMG Thrawn. Fuck yes.

Here's my theory on what they are doing with Mando and the future of Star Wars - in bullet points.

The Sequels are trash and most people believe so, or at the very least they watched and forgot about them and don't give a fuck.
Feloni and Favreau need to find a way to bypass the Sequels to compel Star Wars into the future to create new movies. That's the ultimate goal.
You can't have new movies in between the OT and Sequels because there isn't enough room for an epic story arc.
How do you bypass the sequels? Introduce Thrawn into the live action world (I don't know much about him from Rebels so excuse my ignorance and don't spoil me).
So you have these books Thawn was in that nearly every SW nerd would love to have had instead of the sequels.
Feloni and Favreau have admitted that in order to be successful is that you have to respect the source material as well as grow it. I.e. sequels did not respect shit.

So you can essentially bypass the sequels with Thrawn. How?

So the sequels were so poorly written that there is no backstory. Outside some books and comics you really don't know how we got from RotJ and the New Order. We don't know where the New Order really came from (and books and comics can easily get retconned), we don't know anything about Snoke except it was shoehorned that Palpitine made him or some dumb shit. We know that the New Republic fell apart after like 5 worlds got blown up. We know that Leia was kind of laughed at and was forced to start up a "Resistance" because no one took her seriously. The whole timeline of the sequels is like 6 months long or some stupid short period of time.

Because of the extremely poor world building and plot of the sequels you can easily just put it in it's own self contained world where everything happened in this small portion of the galaxy and everyone else really wasn't impacted by it (which was kind of shown to be true in TLJ and Rise because fuck all really happened)

So with all that being said, with the excellent world building of Mandalorian which some hints of things happen else where, you can see how they can lay the ground work for jumping ahead  into the future and really creating a new story that actually makes sense and not have to "retcon" the whole sequel and instead ignore it and quarantine it away and write around it.

That's my initial impression and rambling of it all.

Good point, but I don't think that happens this season. If Mando is heading to the core, Gideon won't follow him with a contingent of Imperials where the New Republic is the strongest. I think you a confrontation being set up for Season 3.

With all the pure Beskar dude is accumulating he is probably one of the richest guys in the sector at this point.

I blamed the Mando. 

We also went through IVF and were offended that they kept going with the egg eating. Once or twice was darkly funny.  Then the mom-to-be explains her stakes.  By the 4th time the Mando just sat there watching a toddler potentially fuck up someone’s life (and maybe get shanked for it), it made me resent the writers.  A lot. 

Until the next episode.

But yeah, I expected the real drama to be the frog lady plotting revenge against BY and the Mando learning a lesson about parenting.  But instead, space spiders.  Whatever.

I wasn't complaining about the design, but the quality.

For example the headpiece looked too obviously like a prop.

The little foam wrinkles, which sure you can argue a wrinkles because she has aged, just looked like wrinkles in a foam headpiece.

It was a little more Doctor Who than Star Wars.

Actually I think I saw the tip of one her flappies move around so I'm not sure it was just a foam prop.

Either way and that aside, live action ahsoka far exceeded my expectations.

It was also an outstanding casting choice.  I kinda love Rosario Dawson anyway, but she really looked like Ahsoka Tano.

I am a total fanboi of this show.  My favorite SW.

I've been somewhat amazed by the caliber of guest star they've had on this show. Dawson, Michael Biehn, Giancarlo Esposito, Katie Sackhoff, Ming Na Wen, Carl Weathers, Gina Caruso. I probably shouldn't be as Disney has enough money to bribe all of them a million times over, and Jon Favreau knows enough of them to maybe ask a favor, but still it has helped keep the show on a level of acting quality that was a bit unexpected. I'm not saying it's an Oscar studded cast, but still impressive.

I’ve liked pretty much all the guest stars, but aside from Dawson and Herzog I can’t see any of the others taking a lot to get on board.

And Dawson is playing one of the franchises most liked characters, Filoni's original character and someone who is going to probably get their own show eventually.

And Dawson usually gets cast as Rosario Dawson. She has more to gain from playing a different damn character for a change than anyone else in the show.

For me it wasn't just that she looked and acted like Ahsoka, she  was convincing as Ahsoka plus however many years of experience.

He doesn't need to call in favours. It's a good career move to be on a hit AAA production show. Look at all the people who landed big roles after  being on Game of thrones.

Who wouldnt want to work in the volume?

Um. Who wasn't already a steadily-working actor who got a part on GoT and has since been hitting it big?

Honestly the only one that comes to mind is Jason Momoa.  Who ironically was in very little GoT.  I guess it really screwed him at first, but he came out of it all doing pretty okay.

As I'm starting to think on this episode before, and loath though I am to bring up the egg-sucking episode, I think that there might actually have been a little more deep thought put into that one than just a gag. It's pretty clear from Ahsoka's comments that the kid could fall to the dark side, and the egg-eating might have been a bit of a hint at how dark the kid could actually get. Granted, I still thought it was funny as hell because of the puppet's expressions, but it might actually have served a more subtle (and misunderstood) narrative arc.

Probably more a reference to him force choking Cara Dune, that's always been a dark side power. Eating the eggs is like him eating the live frogs he's done in several episodes, just a baby being hungry. It was a tone deaf joke, not a plot point.

Boba Yoda can't fall to the dark side in any realistic run of this show, because he isn't going to grow significantly in that time. He's supposed to be 50 years old. He acts like he's about 3. So by the end of the show he'll be acting roughly 3 years and 1 month.

I think they are just trying to make him into a character rather than a prop, and giving main character more moral responsibility for what happens around him.


Emilia Clarke, Richard Madden, Kit Harrington, Sophie Turner, Jason Momoa all owe film and/or plumb TV roles to GoT. Peter Dinklage is running a tier above where he was before GoT.

They are all actual people responsible for their own careers and weren't just sitting at home watching daytime television before Got showed up at the door. But equally it would be daft not to acknowledge that GoT had opened a tonne of doors for all of them. With the possible exception of Herzog there has been noone in this who doesn't stand to benefit from the profile it gives them.

I think it also kind of fits with the overall Jedi philosophy if you're looking at BY as a an actual potential person. Jedi are specifically meant to be trained before knowing anyone they could develop a strong attachment to, Ahsoka's just seen Jedi Jesus fall to the dark side because he cared about his mum and fell in love with a girl when he was 6. Seeing a potential Yoda level being who has developed a strong family bond with this bounty hunter probably just seems all kinds of bad idea.

That's without going into the simple practical issues like this kid will probably need to continue his training for the next 250 years (doing super rough human equivalencies) before he's matured sufficiently to be able to live and function without guidance as a Jedi. How long is Ahsoka's life span and if she's not sure she'll be around much after the kid if functionally 7 how responsible is it to give that child a host of dark side potential?

You know who else started training much later than 7, and has a good time communicating with creatures that can't speak? Ezra.


Ahsoka training someone would kind of undermines her story, since she very specifically isn't a Jedi! and seems reasonable that she wouldn't feel capable of training someone because of her experience.

And Maisie Williams.

I wouldn't call this confirmation, but speculation has certainly intensified after Ahsoka's episode had the highest IMDB rating for any in the series:

https://wegotthiscovered.com/tv/liveaction-ahsoka-tano-tv-show-reportedly-moving (https://wegotthiscovered.com/tv/liveaction-ahsoka-tano-tv-show-reportedly-moving)/

--Dave

That absolutely isn't confirmation. It is a wegotthiscovered story. It is made up horseshit themed around whatever is this week's Internet trend. Like all wegotthiscovered stories.

Let's be honest, they would be stupid not to be seriously considering it.  If they could keep Rosario in that role, with similar level of budgeting, direction and effects....I would watch the absolute shit out of that.

I mean it's the obvious direction of expanding the D+ offering. Filoni would cut off a finger at a chance to keep that character going on a bigger platform.

They've always needed a marquee Jedi who wasn't a Skywalker. Obi-Wan and Yoda are the only two who've made the cut to date, and Ahsoka has a great growing mythos of her own now that can sustain some story-telling that doesn't come back to the Skywalkers.

Honestly, that she managed to organize the Rebellion, presumably fought in the Rebellion unless finding Ezra took up all her time (though notably was never at any of the big events and did not show up offering to train Luke Skywalker, which is VERY interesting, given that the moment she heard his name she must have put two and two together), and is still around now creates all sorts of enticing narrative hooks that they can keep working now.

Fwiw I don't think Ahsoka would be a great fit for a long running series, but a short run thing, like they seem to be planning for Kenobi seems like a great idea.

The more I think about the Kenobi idea that more I think they've got some 'splaining to do. Like, if Ahsoka survived all this time, it seems to suggest that a smart enough Jedi could stay ahead of the purge. It's hard to figure out what Obi-Wan actually did all those years on Tatooine (except kill Darth Maul when he showed up) unless Luke was under constant hidden attack by bounty hunters, Inquisitors, etc., which doesn't gibe with the rebooted continuity in the comic books. He didn't get a chance to actually train Luke, apparently because of Owen Lars. A Kenobi series will be great IF they end up explaining what on earth he was actually doing all that time.

Star Wars timeline is so fucked up from Kenobi's age, the lack of Asohka being mentioned anywhere in the movies and all the other hamfisted stories that made into lore via comics/tv.

Kenobi seems very interesting, I'm excited to see what the timeline of the limited run will be.

I never watched the cartoons, so I could give a shit about that. Rosario's character was interesting, and I'd like to see more of her. Not neccesarily a full multi-season series, but a 8-10 episode standalone that was never intended to continue could be fun.

--Dave

I never understand the complaint about how 'strange' it is that Ahsoka doesn't show up in the OT movies.

In a war supposedly spanning thousands of star systems it would be weird if every character we know was alive did get screen time.

WWII films don't check in every soldier of note in the second world War.

You could do worse than catching just the last 4 episodes of seasons 5 and 7 of Clone Wars. Would play as exactly that.

There would be a bunch of other plots cutting across. Notably the mandalore and maul plots, but honestly nothing that isn't fairly self explanatory.

It comes off as an obvious retcon, and is the biggest reason I've never watched any of the SW cartoons. It's not believable that Anakin had this secret apprentice who he was so close to that we just never see in any of the 6 movies he's in. She's not "every soldier of note" she's arguably the person who knew Vader best (aside from maybe Obi Wan), and her absence there has always made the cartoons feel more like licensed fanfic than something that was intended when the movies were shot.

It's worth overlooking that fact to watch the cartoons. I'm working through them now and while there's a fair bit of fluff, there's some really great fleshing out of stories. I mean, the dang darksaber shows up in Season 2 of CW for example.

I agree, some of CW is really good, and I liked all of Rebels.  Weirdly, I have not seen the last season of either of them.  I probably should fix that.

That's my major problem with the cartoons that you just have to hand wave away. I'm only half way through Season 1, but the shows are decent and I see why people loved them.

From my understanding of her character through osmosis of the internet, she was basically there  throughout Anakin's temptation to the dark side. It's like three years between Ep II and III, and the last episode of the Clone Wars is the opening shot of Revenge of the Sith?

So apparently throughout the OT there is this Jedi trained force user that knows Anakin, Obi-Wan and apparently Leia in Rebels? (I think I've heard someone mention that), and no one brings her up? I mean, obviously the movies were made thirty years before the show, but the whole timeline is silly.

It seems like Asohka would be the kind of person to help Vader's son to rescue him. But you can also handwave that away that no one knew Luke's heritage anyway. But you could also see Obiwan trying to find her and get her to help after his death via the force.

I mean it's Star Wars so the whole thing is silly. I assume the last you see of her in Clone Wars and in Rebels she explains why she stayed away etc. etc.

Ahsoka is kinda the best and worst thing about Star Wars the Clone Wars. On one hand she is a good character but on the other hand she is a massive death star like plot hole the writers kept stringing along. And the fans of the Clone Wars are generally too young to care so they pretty much got away with it. Ahsoka is their baby and they couldn't do the obvious thing which was to abort her in clone wars or have her die in the god awful Rebels cartoon.

She is the ultimate character of diminishing returns, because the more they want to put her front and center the more they have to explain why wasn't in the OT and the faster this house of cards built around her existence as a fan favorite add in, falls apart.. Which is a shame because these writers, excusing the miss steps, do actually care about star wars and the lore and can make mostly consistent star wars fiction.

I'm ok with all the shitty timelines because the prequels and sequels are trash and I can just handwave everything with "they are just stories" as long as they come up on the other side of wherever they're going and write 10 years worth of decent Star Wars post sequels with something with the fun and heft of the MCU.

I really don't see the problem, there is no reason for her to be in OT.

I have no problem accepting that Ahsoka declined to be actually in the major military operations of the Rebellion or to be visibly associated with the command structure--that comes with the task of keeping fairly hidden. You'd think the Alliance might put in a call to her once it became clear Luke was a Force-sensitive--but maybe Obi-ghost and Yoda got on the Force phone to her and said "hey, we got Luke covered, you do your own thing". Or she wants nothing to do with Luke specifically once she hears his last name. Or maybe she decides after whatever happens on her search for Ezra that she's kind of done for the time being with other Force-users (which might be consistent with her reaction to the Child, I ain't calling it that other name).

Anakin's apprentice seemed weird to me as an idea till I watched clone wars.

But it is fine. And she's not a secret apprentice. She is well known to all the jedi you've heard of. They had a sensible plot for how she left the order well before the start of RotS and a frankly awesome set of episodes for what she got up to during RotS.

Fwiw RotS is improved a fair bit by watching the Clone Wars, and the last episodes which run concurrently with RotS in particular.

That the prequels were trash just made me less interested in the notion of fleshing them out further in an animated series.

I've never listed to Filoni talk about Ahsoka. Having had to do a test run on the Clone Wars movie when it came out, she just seemed like she was designed to appeal to kids. I don't know if there was ever a long term discussion around the fact that the person she was training under would eventually go on to murder all the Jedi except presumably Obi-Wan and Yoda. I have no idea if the original intention is that the show would end long before they ever got to that point, if the plan was to kill her off at some point and then the writers just couldn't go through with it, or if they had some notion going into creating her that they were going to have to come up with ways to write around the continuity. I just don't get why writers would decide to put themselves in that position of creating a character who realistically would figure into the movies had she existed as a character at the time.

Ultimately maybe I shouldn't give a fuck because even Lucas was introducing retcons during the OT leaving us stuck with stuff like siblings kissing in ANH. Also fans just handwave everything away with Obi-Wan "certain point of view" reasoning anyway that we all knew was bullshit when Obi-wan said it.

Writers come up with characters like Ahsoka because they don't want to just follow the dotted lines of pre-existing narrative.

Then... maybe don't set your show like right in the middle of pre-existing narrative?

The Clone Wars cartoon series isn't perfect but it does do three things the movies absolutely failed to do:

1) It actually makes you believe Obi-Wan and Anakin are close friends
2) It makes the clones into actual characters. You actually get attached to a few of them and some of the most emotional episodes revolve around the clones. It ultimately makes Order 66 even more tragic.
3) It makes you care about Anakin. It fleshes out his character a ton and there are a few subtle times where you can see that Anakin's fate could have been different.

The last 4 episodes of the final season are some of the best Star Wars ever made. If you've watched the whole series it truly makes Order 66 tragic and makes you feel for both the Jedi and the Clones.

No absolutely do this and stop worrying about it.

Star Wars' best asset is the setting. Heading off to different time period just seems weird to me. Espeicially when current projects are struggling to do world building.

Space is big. There is plenty of room for war stories featuring soldiers who never met Luke Skywalker.

Writers feeling the need to check in with every other character in a setting is annoying.

On the one hand it is a bit weird that Luke Skywalker becoming one of the big heroes of the rebellion wouldn't prompt Ahsoka to come seek him out if only just due to the name.

On the other hand maybe there are half a dozen good reasons why she didn't from personal regret and pain to just not hearing it or not putting 2 and 2 together, stop worrying about it nerd.

Ultimately it comes down to whether you're telling good stories with engaging characters. If no option 1 is very understandable, if yes then option 2. I think it's perfectly reasonable to be grown ups and acknowledge that putting said characters in set events limits story telling in a bad kind of way. If someone was writing a new Trek series set in the TNG era it would be pretty frustrating if the stories were all fused into TNG episodes and canon rather than having adventures happening on the other side of the quadrant.

Personally, I don't find it weird even a little bit.

Events in Clone Wars, Rebels, and her personality in Mandalorian suggest she would absolutely do whatever she could to stay away from central command structures and stay focussed on helping the person in front if her.

She explictly says failure to do this is why the republic is screwed up.

It also does a very good job in emphasizing how out of touch and corrupt both the republic and Jedi order were at that point, which also makes Anakin's fall more believable.

Goddamn, today's episode was great.

If they are going to build out the Star Wars universe as a massive flagship property of games, movies, series, etc. for decades it is probably going to need a lot of retcons. The main movies are kind of a hot mess of continuity.

Robert Rodriguez directed that one. Not bad.

Clone Wars did a great job I think at doing everything Lucas didn't do in the prequels--and showed that it could in fact have been done. The basic failure is first simply that the first film shouldn't have been about Anakin as a kid. That story should have been a ten minute prologue--Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon Jinn show up on Tatooine chasing some weird rabbit hole story that Qui-Gon has heard about a Sith working with the Hutts (say, Qui-Gon is obsessed with the Sith and that's why he's on the outs with the Council, who don't think they exist any more), they meet Anakin and realize he's astonishingly Force-sensitive, QG buys him out of slavery and promises to Venmo some credits to free his mom when they get back to Coruscant, they meet up with Darth Maul at the end of the prologue and get away narrowly with their lives.

Council doesn't really believe QG but they let him continue to train Anakin as a second padawan, unorthodox as that is--they're worried that QG is gonna go Count Dooku on them and leave the Order, so they're trying to humor his quirks. Flash forward and Anakin's an angry but very talented 14-year old still learning from QC and Obi-Wan, Obi-Wan and QC are the only people he trusts, QC venmoed the credits but they've told Anakin he can't go see her because it's attachment and also because they don't know where that Sith guy is. QC hears a rumor of the Sith guy on Naboo and gets involved in the whole weird Trade Federation blockade thing. Cut Jar-Jar out, add in some thriller hunt-the-Sith expose-the-conspiracy stuff; Anakin gets sent on a sidequest to guard Amidala while QC and Obi-Wan track Maul. Duel of the Fates; Anakin and Amidala have love-at-first-sight.

Then the way the cartoon developed Obi-Wan and Anakin would work really well and Anakin's anger would make so much more sense--always treated as a kind of shunned outsider by the Council, angry that QC was never believed about the Sith, but has a chance to rise because it's wartime and the Council needs his skill, etc.

Other than making it impossible to shoot accurately, I'm starting to wonder what Stormtrooper armor is actually supposed to protect against.

If it hadn't been for Return of the Jedi, you could still imagine that it was basically riot-control gear intended to deal with nuisance melee attacks, but no, Ewoks throwing rocks are an instakill.

So yeah, I dunno what it's for.

It's really good against bullets.

It repels tigers.

I joke, but Fett going HAM on troopers using the gaffi stick was pretty damn cool and a visceral level of violence that SW usually lacks, i.e all the shattering and crunching of all that armor.

To be fair, some of those rocks were from fairly high up and could be classified as "landscaping boulders". A good 15-30 pound rock is going to leave a mark.

The true horror of Return of the Jedi was the death by Ewok. You had to know that at best most of their melee attacks and sling attack were just stunning or knocking down. Death came slowly as small armed teddy bears wielding stone aged, child-sized weaponry slowly beat you into a pulp. Or they manage to slide a barely sharp spear into the creases of the armor. You are likely alive for several minutes of this.

You have to wonder if they served Storm Trooper at the end celebration.

Good episode but I was a little disappointed that you could just put tython into your GPS and just go.

Eh, I can believe it was a known world for force users with appropriate levels of Jedi security that, with the accelerated rate of Jedi influence and force users that seems to be part of Episode III>IV, just vanished and left the planet known as basically a funny tourist attraction with no other value as a planet. So not hard to find it's more equivalent to a weird English heritage spot a few dozen people a year pop over to take photos of themselves in the ruins.

Of course for that to make sense, you need to be onboard with the idea that it makes sense that within 50 years of fall of the Republic nobody believes Jedi exist anymore and their most sacred sites are all forgotten.

Recent history suggests that convincing a significant part of the population that scientifically established facts are all a hoax takes considerably less than 50 years.

Tython hiding is all deep EU isn't it? So I had filed it under 'don't care'.

Ahsoka could have just told him, she knew where it was. So who did Grogu contact? cause obviously someone has to show up.

It could be random new guy, but the only live jedi we explictly know of are Luke and Ezra. I think?

Since it seems likely they'll bring back BoKatan for the sabre and we already have Boba and Mulan in tow, and main character also wants to pick up S1 prison break guy, it is getting a bit crowded to also bring in another jedi.

So I'd guess whoever comes is a final episode epilogue / cliffhanger thing.

I believe Quinlan Vos is probably alive at this point.

It won't be Luke or Ezra. Luke because you just can't recast that role and Ezra for spoilery reasons that are fairly obvious if you watched Rebels. My candidate is Kyle Katarn. After all, they already have the Dark Troopers in here.

They could do Luke with some de-aging stuff.

Not sure if that would make for a good story, but they could do it.

Could just as likely be that he made no contact.  Or a dark side contact.  I am not brushed up enough on CW and Rebels stuff to even know who all is out there, but it seems likely it would be from either of those.

Asajj would still be out there, for example.  I think.

I was pretty happy they brought back Boba Fett and cleaned up some loose ends with his backstory. Only downside to the episode was the capture of Grogu was a bit to telegraphed for me and as soon as I saw him lay down his jetpack I knew what was going to happen.

Overall the fan service on this show has been pretty great for me. Some of the cgi is a bit cheesy but on a TV show what do you expect. The dark troopers were one of those I was just not impressed with. While the assassin droids from the previous episode were way better.

Cept how Jango's completely different armor turned into Boba's...

It cleaned up some of the loose ends not all of them. There are so many inconsistency's and obvious plot holes / mistakes in the movies that is impractical to fix everything.

So we got Mando, Boba, Fennec, Cara and they are going to get Mayfeld, that's five. Who's going to round out the seven?

Yeah, like, the homages here are sometimes just this side of a bit too rip-offy, maybe.

It's gotta be someone we've seen on the show or an Easter Egg person. That group is sort of missing the young gun but the only real young gun we've seen so far on the show died and he was an asshole anyway.

If they're coming at Moff Gideon, I think Bo Katan has to come back in the mix--she wants that Darksaber.

That's six.

So...what might be fun is if they set off with six and the seventh character is the Force user summoned for the Child who joins them by surprise after they've set off. No guarantee it has to be a Jedi...If they're rescuing good characters from the wreckage of the old EU, maybe it's time for a version of Mara Jade to show up. Or they could undo Asajj Ventress' death, since it happened in a comic.

I was thinking Olyphant's character, or Ahsoka. Would be kinda weird for Bo Katan to come alone instead of with a crew.

I like the idea of a dark side person answering.

If nothing else it get us over the problem of how you keep Baby Yoda in the show.

Yeah--like, if a patently unsuitable person shows up, Mando is not going to just hand the Child over.

Isn't good ol' Sheev still around?  SW9 was so stupid it literally shut my brain down so I'm not sure of the timelines on when he was allegedly resurrected or cloned or whatever.

Well, we don't know, because of aforementioned stupidity. Like, we don't even know if it is: "when I die, activate a clone, and I upload my current thoughts to it each day", "when I die, activate a clone, and it might not have any of my recent experiences or memories", "when I die, because of the teachings of Darth Plagueis the Wise, I turn into an evil Force Ghost and I can send my spirit to my clone tanks on the Evil Sith Planet only I'm kind stuck there for good because my clones are made of crumbly evil cheese unless I can find a Jedi healer good thing I planned that yeah?", "actually I just possessed Nub-Nub on board the Millennium Falcon and while you were all communing with Ewoks I stole a ship and went to Sithworld". Or whatever.

But considering that Sheev's survival seemed like a total surprise to pretty much everybody, seems like they really can't have him show up even in Voldemort back-of-the-head-under-a-turban fashion.

I suppose if they don't want a Jedi at all in the Magnificent Seven, Chewbacca might be a viable Easter Egg character to show up, he'd kind of fit the ethos.

They can do whatever, but the rough lore around Sheev post-RotJ is that his consciousness travelled to his clones on the Sith planet but the clones were not ready for the "power" Sheev contained. Which is why at the end of SW9 he looked more like an undead creature - his clone was all jacked up. Per the wiki, anyways.

That Jedi: Fallen Order game is canon so they could have one of the Jedi from there show up. I'm mostly kidding, but only because those characters weren't created by Filoni so I doubt he'd bother bringing them in.

Yeah he never bothers bringing in characters he didn't create. For sure, he'd never bring in a character like Thrawn that was created by a sci-fi author.

That would be as ridiculous as giving Maul a prominent role in Clone Wars and Rebels.

If someone shows up (and someone should, it would be dumb if all that happened for nothing) then it has to be someone who can die on the rescue or someone evil so Mando can go "yeah no, I'm keeping him". Finding a proper Jedi would basically end the show.

I do think they're working up to a third season where Mando rejects the creed--his confusion over Bo-Katan's group and the revelation that he's basically an orphan raised by a religious cult is a slow-burn thing that has to eventually blow up. Plus it has to feel even for the showrunners that they're leaving money on the table with a popular, charismatic lead actor who never gets seen. So maybe that also will be part of whomever shows up to round out the Magnificent Seven.

Given that Ewan was on set and in costume at one point doing screen test stuff for the Obi-Wan series, I would think his Force ghost could possibly show up here, but then I have no idea why that would require travel time.

I mean yeah, that was pretty ridiculous.

Heh, Disney just announced like 10 new Star Wars projects including 2 spin offs TV series from this timeline: Ashoka and Rangers of the Republic.

To be fair, this IS a potentially very interesting period to focus on.  After several decades straight of galactic war, you have peace but a weak central government and high anarchy.  It's basically post Civil War American West in every way.  Which I guess means this is Star Wars doing Firefly, but that's not a bad thing.  At least, it's a way better take to focus on than anything else they've done for years now.  They can do a lot with this period and all the various factions/characters that can be involved with this time, than trying to do anything near the latest trilogy....

Latest episode was good!  The whole helmet thing was a bit contrived and I wish the writers had put more effort into making the situation happen in a more natural manner, but whatever.

I was literally laughing hysterically when the 'sound bomb' cameo happened.   :drillf:

Apparently Hayden Christensen is attached to the Kenobi show and is expected to be Vader of some sort.

Another great episode. It was a nice touch humanizing the stormtroopers, and then slaughtering them any way. Also loved seeing the Rogue One shore troopers and tank drivers.

I would bet fair odds that not all those shows get made, but still. I'm kind of surprised Kathleen Kennedy is still apparently in charge, also.

I don't know how they're gonna put Kenobi and Vader in the same thing but it might explain why Obi-Wan is completely certain that Darth Vader is Anakin Skywalker when they meet on the Death Star and describes Vader as the person who murdered Anakin and the Jedi when he's talking to Luke in ANH (whereas Ashoka isn't certain in Rebels, at least at first). But on the other hand, Vader talks on meeting Kenobi as if it's the first time he's seen him since Mustafar, so...

I think their doing parallel storytelling where its the Obi-Wan settling into his role as protector of Luke/Still available for the rebel alliance vs Darth Vaders rise to power from broken quadrapledric to the number 1 threat in the galaxy.

Despite being an easy target for fanboys raging over the sequel trilogy, she's had one of the most successful runs of all-time as a film producer going back to E.T. so I can see why they haven't gotten rid of her. Also, if she gets blame for the failures, she should likewise get some of the credit for the successes like Mandalorian.

Not to mention Rogue 1, more clone wars, Rebels, basically everything that JJA was not involved with.

I mean she is an easy target because she put herself front and center as executive producer of the new trilogy. And when it became extremely obvious that even George Lucas could have done a better job she publically started calling fans trolls. The clone wars and rebels are Dave Flionis baby and Rouge One was a happy accident and the writing staff was let go once that movie was made.

She didn't really.

She got an exec producer credit, but an exec producer isn't a thing.

It does appear to be her fault that JJA was hired and her fault for not seeing that star wars needs overall creative oversight, but that isn't what she gets shit for. She gets shit because people are shit and the internet picked her fairly arbitrarily.

Revisionist history being what is, the existence of vitriol spewing man babies don't negate the fact that she very much treated the new trilogy like her baby and didn't make any positive decisions that prevented said baby from underperforming with fans or financially. Such was her fuck up that disney halted any new movies in order to stem the bleeding. Normally no one cares or knows who the executive producer actually is so the fact that fans even know her full name tells me enough.

Executive Producer is certainly a thing but they (usually) only indirectly influence on what a movie ultimately becomes.

https://www.masterclass.com/articles/what-is-an-executive-producer-whats-the-difference-between-an-executive-producer-and-producer#what-is-an-executive-producer

She's technically President of Lucasfilm so I'm not going to act like she doesn't have any blame for how the sequels turned out, but sometimes people fuck up. In this case it was fucking up something real big that a lot of people are maybe a little too heavily invested in, but I think if you look at what she's done over the years that maybe she gets at least a little bit of leeway and a chance to course correct. Lucas fucked up 3 Star Wars movies also and a lot of the same people complaining about Kennedy are saying they should have used Lucas' crazy fecal scrawlings for the sequels.

I think you can see her as fairly responsible for the sequel fuckup. She was the key player in deciding that they didn't need to decide, if you know what I mean--if the Lucasarts subfamily of Disney doesn't have a Feige and a Feige-like plan, that's her fault. I think you can see the flailing around for directors as part of that failure--it was driven by looking for talent without having a plan in terms of sensibility, narrative, outlook, etc. I think you could almost see her as the Yeltsin of Star Wars, e.g., the old regime was overthrown, she was in a position to joyfully plan shit without Lucas shaking his idiotic wattle at her, but there wasn't any real tradition of thinking without George about what Star Wars could be, so they invited anybody they could see into the regime. Some good outcomes, some bad outcomes. Now they need a steady hand. Hopefully not a Putin steady hand.

And then suddenly Senator Palpatine takes control of Disney.  Damn he's good at this!

Kennedy got much of the vitriol of fans because she very clearly set out to add more female leads and "strong female characters" to Star Wars, and the Internet incel crowd lost their fucking shit. Then she decided to hire JJ Abrams for Force Awakens without 1) having him write a clear outline for what followed his movie and/or have him actually write and direct all 3. She clearly signed off on Last Jedi which whether you liked it or not, stands out like a turd in a punch bowl in so many ways compared to both the movies before and after it. To my mind, it isn't that Johnson's vision couldn't have been successful - it's that it needed to fit with part of a larger arc and it just didn't. Kennedy bringing JJA back in for Rise of Skywalker just compounded the issues because he essentially wanted to forget Last Jedi and continue where he left off in Force Awakens, which required him to cram 2 movies worth of shit into 1, and most of the ideas in it were just either bad, stupid or badly executed.

Kennedy's problem seems to be more that she CAN go heavy-handed and micro-manage-y on a movie (see Solo and to some extent Rogue One) but when she really needs to, like the sequel trilogy, she either didn't micro-manage enough or she did and her decisions were really fucking bad.

Hell, though I like a lot of what's on that Star Wars slate, I can't look at it and think there's any real strategy to it other than "They like Mandolorian and are praising Jon Favreau, quick HIRE ALL THE SUPERHERO CREATIVES AND THROW THEM AT STAR WARS!" Which means some of the projects will be good, but overall it's going to feel like being shot in the face with a Star Wars loaded shotgun rather than a cohesive narrative universe.

Also, this episode was really good and it's exactly the kind of content I want from Star Wars.

I'm sure there's a lot of behind the scenes stuff we'll never know the full extent of. Kennedy being made Lucasfilm President was apparently one of the provisions Lucas required for selling Lucasfilm to Disney, but I'd be surprised if Disney didn't require the quick turnaround for getting the sequels out. She's also not a writer or director so I could see her not being a micromanager on the project. People will point out the Feige isn't a writer or director either but for fuck's sake not everyone can be Feige and even he was involved in quite a few bad pre-MCU Marvel movies.

I'm not a huge fan of Abrams but I can understand the perspective where bringing him might have seemed like good business sense. On paper, the guy is a highly successful writer/director/producer, and really that first movie isn't the problem. It's not fantastic, but, it's the fumbled handoff to Rian Johnson is where things just completely fell apart and in such a way that made it almost completely impossible to recover for the third movie. Was Kennedy aware that Johnson's approach was going to be throwing out a bunch of the hooks that Abrams set up? I don't know, but again I can see where hiring him also seemed like a good idea (and he went on to make a pretty damn good movie right after with Knives Out).

If it were anything other than Star Wars there wouldn't be nearly the amount of vitriol. Most people couldn't tell you who was an executive producer on any given movie.

Fiege was also involved in Thor 2, avengers 2, iron man 2&3 etc.

He's clearly done a good job, but sometimes people talk about the MCU like it is 20 back to back home runs.

I'm just happy that this season is really good, only one episode i didn't like that much.

Every one of those movies is Galaxy Level Awesome compared to what Rise of Skywalker turned out to be, on every single level.

Yeah, Feige even when he was hamstrung by Perlmutter fucking shit up pretty much hasn't done worse than hitting a single; Rise of Skywalker is like a five-error fielding play that permits three runs by the other team to score followed by a lead-off bunt that pops up.

I am more of a SW fanboy than an MCU fanboy, and I think that - relative to both Star Wars and most franchises - MCU has indeed hit an endless series of homeruns.  Even their bad shit is pretty good shit.  The same cannot be said for Star Wars, much as it pains me.

Each of those films was better than any of the sequel trilogy. 

They also let off that "Rogue Squadron" will be set in the future of Star Wars with another new movie to follow.

Also remember the Asohka and Kenobi series are limited runs. So they aren't a new Mandolorian.

They should really use the Asohka series to create some other Force-using characters who aren't Jedi or Sith for post-ROS use, because the cupboard is very very bare as of ROS.

I agree, but doing that does often bring out the 'star wars should never have shades of grey' crowd.

Fuck those guys. Han Solo was in the pipeline to be an Imperial TIE fighter pilot, until he got kicked out of the Academy for being a lazy shit. Luke wanted,  dreamed of, going to the Academy. I'm sure there were guys in the super-laser room of both Death Stars that felt conflicted about it. There's ambiguity baked right in. Rogue One gave us Rebel Alliance as terrorists, and it was the best post-OT movie.

--Dave

My pet theory I think I posted a few pages ago is basically this. The most successful Star Wars series (I don't have any metric for this) that has penetrated the cultural zeitgeist is the Mandalorian. With this new reality, you need to do two things. Create more content for this "time line" which is the Rangers show. Then you need to create a bridge to the future Rogue Squadron movie and beyond.

I hope Ahsoka is that bridge that lets us leap frog over the sequels and ignore them. Handwave ages and stuff like that. If Ahsoka is chasing Thrawn, use that limited run show to set up the new Star Wars movies.

I'm looking forward to the Cassian series that lets us watch the birth of the Rebellion.

I am completely on board with this.

Why people hate ambiguity or duality when the central character in the entire series is Anakin fucking Skywalker I have no idea.

The headline idea of Rogue Squadron is a good one.

But there are a few things that smell of 'we still haven't got a way of managing creative direction of the whole ip'. Little things like T65s being used in a 'future era' film, and big things like having a film with a narrow focus in a era without an established conflict.

I mean, there's the hilarious line in the prequels where Obi-Wan shouts that only the Sith think in absolutes.

And if the Force really is derived from life, life in the SW universe has predation and violence just like it does elsewhere (and the Jedi don't seem to hesitate when it comes to killing animal life forms that get in their way and are perfectly happy to lop off limbs whenever anybody gives them lip). There's plenty of room to have Force users who act according to their own judgment and are not Jedi or Sith--Westerns and samurai films both have plenty of those kinds of characters--white hats who are not pure as the driven snow.

I mean, there were Xwings in the sequels so they aren't just going away, so the future era could be inside a decade into the future past the sequels. Rogue Squadron could easily be a continuation of the idea of XWings patrolling space like in Mando that come across what will become "established conflict" in the new era of Star Wars.

If I had to randomly guess the Rogue Squadron story line it'll be this:

It's been 5 years since the fall of the New Order (lets not mention Palp) and the galaxy has been shattered into regional governance with the "New Republic" being one of the largest government bodies. The New Republican scouting group is patrolling space on it's farm flung outer borders when a mysterious force attacks and destroys the fleet/group/whatever. A group of Xwing pilots known as Rogue Squadron has been tasked with investigating this space in the Outer Rim (or insert distant sector that is wild/unexplored/empty). The squad find the wreckage and ...

Here you will find hints of a new Imperial Fleet or something like that headed up by Thrawn (or maybe he's hinted at but never seen or whatever). Dun Dun Duuuuun. The end of the movie is some fun space battles and they barely escape with their lives to report the new threat to Republic/Galaxy.

Xwings in the sequels are T70s and they look different to the one on the logo for this movie.

It just seems odd to go into this trying to create a new setting when that went so badly last time, and when the concept works so neatly in the OT period.

I just think it suggests there is still no thought about how any of these projects fit together.

Obl: “Han shot first!” reference.

I wouldn't really look to deep into promotional logos and shit for a movie thats 3 years out.

Also not sure what you mean went so badly last time. R1 and Solo were actually decent movies. The Sequels were trash over all (though you can say TFA was fine for kicking off the rust if not just mediocre).

Nothing about this suggests what amount of thought went in to these movies. Their track record suggests none. So right now I just have (misplaced) hope that it's going to work out.

I meant the world building in the sequels. I'm surprised they are going near that time period.

R1 and solo worked in part because they cut that corner by working with the preexisting world.

Solo did more world building than the entire sequel trilogy.  Despite the time period, Solo rested less on the OT setting shorthand than the ST did, giving a wider, fresher take on the SW galaxy.

Is Solo actually worth watching? I watched the Last Jedi and despite not absolutely hating it when I saw it kind of killed my enthusiasm for any of the new movies. That said Rogue One was very fun and the Force Awakens was, fine?

Solo was worth watching, although it never really "felt" to me like I was watching a younger Han.

--Dave

Only issue I had with Solo was the production was just a bit 'off'. Lighting was bad here, or location design was lacklustre there.

If had been a short TV series on disney+ this year instead of a movie following straight after certain types of people had had an aneurism over tLJ, then it would have been praised to high heaven.

It isn't as good as R1 but definitely worth watching now with your Mandalorian subscription.

Both Rogue One and Solo are cobbled together by replacement directors/reshoots/re-edits/studio meddling.  It's hard to judge them as actual movies from a filmmaking standpoint since they are both messes with some cool parts.

Solo was fun. R1 was great

Solo was ok.

The worst part was the world building, though. I really did not need to hear that Solo is not his actual name, etc. What, does that mean that every stupid name in Star Wars is something the person adopted? I get that about "Darths" but otherwise, please no. I did not need to hear that he's actually kind of telling the truth about the Kessel Run. Etc. All of that was like fingernails on chalkboard--it was a perfect illustration of where "Easter Eggs" slide into being actively stupid.

You didn't like that every single defining event of Han Solo as a character happened over the course of one adventure?

His name isn’t world building.  Seeing the industrial base of the Empire, it’s less glamorous conflicts, the criminal underworld, and an glimpse of the Empire’s energy economy (with its own raised questions), those were world building that made Solo feel like a lived-in world in a way nothing in the sequels did. 

I agree with the earlier poster who said the movie is better if you don’t think of this guy as the Han Solo.

I hear what Bob's saying and yeah, but I'd have rather gotten that through a film focused on Lando or on a completely new character.

One problem with Solo was that Donald Glover did such an outstanding job of channeling Billy Dee Williams, that Alden Ehrenreich just felt flat. He didn't quite have the sneer right, the voice wasn't even close, and he was 4 inches shorter sharing scenes with actors taller than he was.

If Glover hadn't been such a good match to Billy Dee, Solo might have seemed better. Or maybe it just would have felt completely disconnected rather than slightly off.

--Dave

Should've just made a young Lando movie.

That would have been preferable.  But what we got had some decent Star Wars moments, explored the setting, and didn’t shit itself like the sequels.

Holy. Shit.

That was weird.

Oh well now I know what I'm watching as soon as I finish work.

I can't believe they dared to go there.

But they totally pulled it off.

I was on the edge of my seat the whole time.

God damn.  Blown away. 

Good finale. Although for all the complaints about Carano's acting in the series, I think Sackhoff gives the absolute worst performance on the show.

(https://media.giphy.com/media/TgOYjtgKpS9jAytUlh/giphy.gif)

Also, be sure to stay past the credits.

That was extremely satisfying.

The Mandalorian is perhaps the best Star Wars thing since the original trilogy, for me at least.

I don't think its Sackhoff's acting it was the line's they gave her. There's some shit writing in this series at time. I'm dissapointed they let Bill Burr go, he was actually good. Carano is still godawful.

Uncanny valley is still deep.

I thought it was good.

But is the person Gus shot dead?

Because people had had that happen before and not been dead, and I feel we should know at this point.

Who? I'm pretty sure nobody is dead.

Bo-Katan is alive. She gets up toward the end of the scene, a bit shaky. You can see her in the group shot just before the credits.

Well. Interesting.

Did anyone else hear “maclunkey” in the after credits scene?

Ya, Bib definitely threw one. The guys who run this show are hilarious.

Ok, that was deeply satisfying, and well done. 

I'm almost disappointed that they're going to do another season, because that feels like a really good place to wrap up the whole thing.  Wonder where they're planning on going with it.

I feel a little less enthused about the ending than you guys. The uncanny valley is still way too uncanny, and it was distracting as fuck.


Bo-Katan surviving was a bit confusing, as was the necessity for the post-credits scene. The Mandos shitting on Boba Fett for the armor is odd, but I'm not quite sure I get why they don't like him. Is it because he didn't fight for the armor, he just got it off his dead dad's body?

I'm assuming next season of the Mandalorian is going to be about the ramifications of Mando winning the dark saber.

They think he is just a random clone and mandalorians also seem kinda racist.

The post-credit bit sets up a spin-off that was announced today. 

The mandos disliking the Fetts is a carryover from clone wars.

They didn't like jango either.

It is like the "you're one of them" thing. The culture is full of stupid sectarian squabbles about what makes a true Mandalorian.

I guess. Not knowing shit about Mandalorians prior to watching the series I kinda just took everything that was shown in season 1 as an accurate representation of how they are. I feel like the whole "what does it actually mean to be a Mandalorian" thing this season has brought up is the plot thread/world building element that has suffered the most from dragging in the Clone Wars stuff and maybe assuming the audience has a familiarity with it. Bo-Katan barely feels like a character to me. The nebulous idea of her getting the Darksaber and retaking Mandalore despite it being said that the Empire turned it to glass is put forth without any real explanation as to what that entails or why we should care. The explanations of how Boba and Jango fit in with the Mandalorians seem almost contradictory from episode to episode. Mando's clan gets characterized like they're some weird cult who follow these strict, ancient beliefs, but then Bo-Katan is the one who is like "nope, can't take that Darksaber you're trying to hand me, I'm going to need to kick the shit out of you at some point now because thems the rules".

Honestly, aside from Mando slowly realizing he's probably ok taking the helmet off, the season 1 representation of Mandalorians was a lot more interesting than where it looks like we're heading. If Grogu is written out of the show even in the short-term to focus on this Darksaber/retake Mandalore stuff I'm curious to see if the show's mainstream popularity wanes at all.

I'm curious about that as well. My wife doesn't give a flying fuck about all the star wars lore and easter eggs and just laughs at me when I geek out about them. She is ALL about Baby Yoda.

You don't need to go back to the Clone Wars series for the tension.  It was shown in the prequel trilogy that Boba Fett was a clone of Jengo Fett, but without the fast aging process the other clones got, so he could raise him a son.  Thus he looks and sounds just like all the clone troopers from the Clone Wars.

I guess it's hard for me to come from a view of somebody who doesn't know anything about the lore (Because I do), but I think the clash of ideals between the different factions makes sense.  Mandalore has always been a very militant and ritual/traditionally based society.  So even Bo-Katan is very bound to core rules that others would find silly.  Mando, however, is actually apart of what is kinda of a.... ultra-Facist death cult (the casual viewer is not really aware of that, but from what information they've given so far, you should at least pick up they are in fact outside the norm).  Just as we have various levels of political and religious extremist, so do they.  I do wish they'd maybe focus on that a little bit more.

One thing I will say, looking back at older episodes, I do miss the vibe of the first several episodes.  They took time to focus on gritty parts of the city as Mando walked though.  Strolling through markets filled with people hawking food, begging, or passed out on drugs.  A much more close in look at post war society in the universe that was interesting.  And as much as we all love Baby Yoda..... I really liked it when he had the freedom to just be a bastard and a shitty world making his way.  Pure western, instead of caregiver.  I'd like to see more of that again.  The later episodes had to concentrate more on pushing plot forward, and thus we got a lot more clean cityscapes and neighborhoods, with less world building.

Definitely think this hasn't been great.

Mandalore as we last saw it was a modern society trying to reconcile its past as a bunch of tribal/honorable bonkers/proud warriors/zealots. They had proper tribal politics and intrigue, they even managed to stick the landing on Obi Wan screwing the Queen. If they are going back to this and handle it as well as clone wars it can definitely be more interesting than the S1 tribe.

I think the idea was give the viewer the experience of main character discovering he was part of a tiny sect and then learning of the wider community.

But the actual delivery means viewers who know about mandalore were left wondering if this show is just ignoring the continuity and those who haven't are now just confused as they introduce wider mandalore.

The first Katee Sackoff episode is only one that did this well.

So I'm thinking the Mando who forges armor who pronounced Pedro's Mando to be a clan of two and charged him to find the Jedi for Baby Yoda is gonna come back in the picture and probably be mad that he's not sticking to the religion any longer. Whenever she shows up that's a good time for a Mandalorian explainer. Though I don't even think they're that interesting per se--they're basically Klingons in armor who have enough fighting skills and tech to take on Jedi, including all the internal conflicts that Klingons/warrior races tend to have in genre works. I think it would be better if the first couple of episodes dispense with Mandalorian lore and then the real arc moves on to something else entirely--something that brings Baby Yoda back into the mix.

I get that baby Yoda is cute, and I was surprised they wrote him out.

But is there really anywhere else to go with him in the show?

Seems like confident and logical writing for him to drop out now, maybe show up later as a guest puppet.

I can't really imagine what the show will be if they make about retaking Mandalore, but it is one plot line Filoni has handled consistently well in the past, so I have a lot of faith they can do it again.

They don't stick to any homage for very long, so doing Lone Wolf and Cub for two whole seasons was almost a record. But yeah, much like the comic, at some point it gets old.

I'm not sure people are even catching how many films they're homaging (sometimes almost ripping off) because of how many they move through. The episode on the tropical planet with the mining crawler and Bill Burr's character was homaging "Sorcerer" while they were driving the crawler, for example.

More nested quests! I kid, I kid. Jedi Master  is the best thing to happen to this franchise since 1983.

I really enjoyed the last episode and while the CGI was a little over the top I think it worked in this instance. Giancarlo Esposito really makes a great villain and is one of the reasons the show is so great. One of the biggest problems for me with the final 3 movies is the villains are poorly written and don't really provide a good foil to the good guys.

Post season 2 I thought there might be a spin off show for Bo-Katan with overlap on season 3 of Mandalorian. So when Disney announced all of the spin offs at the investor meeting and there wasn't anything announced for Bo-Katan I was wondering where they were going to go with the Mandalorian. After watching the last episode I wonder if the retaking of Mandalore will be the big cumulation of all the spin offs. Say around season 5 of Mandalorian? Since Mandalore or the Mandalorian's were not in the final 3 movies I think they can pretty much do whatever they want with that corner of the universe.

See, I totally don't remember that at all, probably because that movie was shit and I've blocked most of it. That would make sense though but surely I'm not alone in just not being that up on the Star Wars minutiae because the prequels blew so hard. I really wonder how interesting the show ill be without Grogu. That puppet really did make the series.

Yeah I know that part. I mean the whole thing where Mando's like "fuck you Boba, you can't have that armor" and Boba explained to Mando that yeah, he's not a Mandolorian but the armor belonged to his father who fought in some Mandolorian war and when he died the armor went to Boba so it's kinda ok for him to have it, and Mando (who was admittedly in a tight spot at the time) was pretty much like "ok, fair enough then". Then a couple episodes later when they talk to Bo-Katan we go through the whole "fuck you Boba, you shouldn't have that armor" thing again, only this time without the reasonable explanation as to why it's ok for him to have it.

So I don't understand whether or not Jango got his armor through legitimate means, and if so whether or not it was allowed to be passed onto Boba who (clone or not) was essentially Jango's adopted kid. I'm sure the actual answer is just handwaved away as different sects of Mandalorians following different rules, and the writers saying deciding they needed conflict between these characters. But for a show called The Mandalorian I feel like now know less about their culture than I did near the start of the series and I can't say that's a good thing.

The difference makes sense if you watched Clone Wars and stuff. Mando's clan is Death Watch which are old school Mando extremists. Ironically, Bo Katan used to be one of them but left them eventually. The Dark Saber is a totally different situation. That's more about tradition. The closest thing I can think of is it's sort of like Excalibur in the Arthurian legends. Whoever wields it is the King/Queen. If Bo Katan just gets it handed to her, then other Mandos may say "You didn't earn it." I think the easiest out is just to say "I'll tell everyone you whipped my ass and took it from me" but I think that it's honor keeping that from happening.


Think of it as a combination of cultural appropriation plus a looting of cultural treasures. It'd be like somebody not from Wakanda having a Black Panther suit without permission of the people of Wakanda.

Maybe my confusion in this respect is that I don't think they say in what capacity Jango fought in these wars, what side was he fighting on, and if the armor was given to him by Mandalorians, if he took it as a trophy at some point, etc...

It felt like they tried to explain Boba/Jango's connection to Mandalorians without really explaining it.

It sounded like Jango was involved with Mandalore in some way (I think Mando said he was a foundling?) but there's obviously something about the way Boba acts that instantly identifies him as non-Mandalorian. In the case of Bo Katan I think they're assuming he's a regular Republic clone trooper. Unless there's some Clone Wars background that connects the two, I can't think there's any reason why the Mandalorians would know there was any kind of unique relationship between Jango and Boba. I read that scene as them just assuming he was some random trooper who grabbed a suit of Mandalorian armour off his dead DNA donor. Even if they felt Jango was entitled to wear the armour they wouldn't recognise a clone trooper having some right to it.

Boba Fett is famous. They have a problem with him because he is a bounty hunter and works for the empire. They are upset because most people assume he is a mandalorian, that's why they resent him having the armor. Has nothing to do with how he got it, just how he uses it.

I think this discussion about Boba really highlights again just how fucking shitty the worldbuilding and narrative was in the prequels (don't get me started on the sequels). The fact that the main movie series just absolutely glossed over the clone wars completely reflects how little Lucas actually thought they mattered. Didn't we only hear about the Clone Wars outside the movies? Like was it ever even mentioned in the actual original movies or was it only just one line on Boba Fett's toy packaging that Extended Universe writers and fans turned into this huge thing because Boba Fett looked so cool? According to Googling, it was mentioned in one line in A New Hope and not again until the prequels.

It was mentioned in the most important scene of the entire Star Wars cannon, when Obi Wan explains the force to Luke and gives him the lightsaber.

You know, it's not that different from knights in medieval settings. None of us would be getting salty if we were watching a fantasy epic and an armored knight got all pissy when he saw a low-born fighter wearing a noble's suit of armor. Nor would we be that surprised if that code was inconsistent or contradictory where the knight didn't enforce it if it was inconvenient or if the low-born was someone with political power or even if he just took a liking to the plucky peasant who'd taken some armor off a dead man in order to survive a desperate battle, etc.

I kind of disagree.

The prequels built a perfectly fine world. They just didn't use it well. You are right that the clone wars, indeed the entire separatist / republic conflict, were only a thing for the last ten minutes of one film and the first ten minutes of another. But it did give other writers everything they needed to go fill that in. The films spent a lot of time explaining the republic, the jedi order, we know quite a lot about the droid armies.

I cannot imagine how you would start to put together a show like Clone Wars set in the sequel era. You'd be starting with really fundamental questions like what the fuck is the resistance, and what does the republic and FO society even look like? What is the relationship between the republic and the resistance?

The resistance cartoon notably set it itself in the middle of fucking nowhere - I can imagine why they did that.

I'd buy into this if the last time Bo got her hands on the darksabre, it hadn't been after Sabine Wren had won it honourable combat with Gar Saxon, then Sabine flat out gave the Darksabre to Bo to in front of all the other mandalorian nobles, with a speech about how Bo had proven she was the best leader by stopping Sabine killing all the bad guys with her patented Sabine Wren murder-o-matic machine.

I don't have a problem with main character not knowing about the bullshit tradition, but Bo suddenly taking stupid traditions seriously that never used to bother her felt like a shit set up for manufactured conflict.

I thought for a moment the episode might end with Starbuck saying something like "if you can get over your stupid hat complex, I can deal with my glowstick acquisition hangups, now lets hug and cry over how we're all growing as people - then hand over the loot crybaby". That would have been fine. But I'm not a fan of the idea that main character might become chief Mandalorian because of this.

Maybe, although by this point we're around 30 years after the Clone Wars and (from looking it up just now) the regular (non-Boba) clones aged at twice the normal rate. They were apparently phased out of the Stormtroopers prior to the OT, and I assume they'd have mostly all died off at this point.

I mean, a lot of this stuff is minor nitpicky stuff I'll admit, but it feels like the kind of mess you get when you keep trying to retroactively build a continuity out of over 40 years of content that had a fucked up chronology baked into it from the time they decided to call Empire Strikes Back episode V.

I don't think that was the intent because Filoni's Aristiocratic Mandalorians had specific but unexplained beef with the Fetts.

Afaik noone has written anything on what the beef is - and after the Boba Fett ninja monk episode it could be as simple as upper classes being sniffy about foundlings who have the temerity to become well known.

A lot of Mandalorians are dicks.