Though I haven't stooped so low as to call those sceptical towards the recent output from franchises I enjoy names, I'm aware that I tend towards the over-positive side of the fandom spectrum. Of course there's a lot to criticise, for instance, in the Disney + Star Wars shows. But still I have an irrational urge to shout "shut up! Just shut up!" when confronted with too many negative fan responses.
It's not just because of my old affection for the Mighty Mouse, which makes me cringe whenever someone uses the "oooh, Disney's so bad, they only want to make money" argument (I admit, my brand loyalty is waning of late – not because Disney wants to make money, but because they want to preach at the audience while doing it). I'm also somewhat of an anxious consumer. I've witnessed in the past how crucial good viewing figures have been for the continued existence – or not – of my favourite TV shows. That's partly why I've been obsessing over viewer responses to the latest season of The Mandalorian, to the point where it almost overshadowed my own enjoyment of the series. Because if various commentators talk down the season too much, and viewers consequently fail to tune in, Disney might quite simply stop making Star Wars TV shows. And then where would I be?
So, when I say that this season was somewhat unfocused and probably the weakest of The Mandalorian seasons, please let the record reflect that I still liked it very much and want lots more of this particular sort of fare. That said, here are a few points that puzzled me after the season finale aired yesterday:
So, who was the spy, then? An enjoyable part of The Mandalorian from the first has been the episode titles, which can often be interpreted in more than one way. The episode title "The Sin" in season one can refer to Din Djarin taking back Grogu (at that time still known as the Child) from a group of sinister ex-Imperials, after having accepted payment for delivering him. It's a clear violation of Din's wonderfully deal-based creed. But the real sin was handing over Grogu in the first place. The title character of the episode "The Jedi" can be Grogu or Ahsoka (though she left the order years earlier). "The Believer" can be Din Djarin, or the cynic Mayfeld who discovers something to believe in when confronted with a particularly nasty ex-Imperial, or even said ex-Imperial himself: what he believes in may be terrifying, but he does have conviction. And so it goes on.
So when an episode is called "The Spies", you certainly expect to see more than one spy in it. It could just as easily have been called "The Spy" and featured more than one spy, leaving you guessing as to which of them the title specifically singles out in true Mandalorian fashion. But no, here we have an episode title which is unusually insistent on the plural – and only one spy, Elia Kane who we already knew was crooked, is revealed during the run-time of the episode. This may of course be explained in the next season, but then the reveal that one of the assembled Mandalorians was playing false all along will have less of an impact because it has already been quasi-spoiled. In my view, the spy should either have been revealed before the season's end, or they should have gone with the episode title "The Spy" instead.
What's the Armourer's game? This isn't an original observation by any means, but the Armourer – the spiritual leader of the "covert" of Mandalorians Din belongs to – is awfully soft on Bo-Katan Kryze. Din Djarin, who's always toed the line, gets into trouble for having removed his helmet in public (all for the love of his boy) and has to fulfil a task the Armourer herself believes impossible and bring proof of it in order to get accepted again.
It's another story with Bo-Katan, though she has lived in open defiance of the Armourer's creed. She is integrated into the covert, though that wasn't her original intention; her alleged sighting of a mythical beast is taken by the Armourer at face value without proof; later, she is singled out as the future leader of the Mandalorian people by the Armourer, who asks her to remove her helmet so that she can "walk both ways" and unite the covert and less dogmatic factions of Mandalorians.
It's not that Bo-Katan hasn't proven herself useful, but still, it's a steep rise to the top for one whom the Armourer was very scathing about in The Book of Boba Fett (in one of the episodes where it forgot it wasn't The Mandalorian). This strange Armourer-behaviour made many speculate that maybe she was the spy, though her motives would in that case have been unclear. As it is, the Armourer remains enigmatic – which I realise is partly the point, but it's starting to get on my nerves.
Whatever happened to Doctor Pershing? Unpopular opinion: I really liked the Doctor Pershing episode, though admittedly there wasn't much Mando in it. It's hard to pinpoint what I want from political intrigues in Star Wars, but maybe, like my expectations of the franchise or the genre as a whole, it can be summed up with the words: relatable but different. I shudder at clunky parallells with the real world. My heart sinks every time someone calls the Imperials "space Nazis". It's obvious where Lucas got some of the inspiration for his black-hearted Empire from, but still: this is a galaxy far, far away. Let the Empire be evil in its own way!
The limitations of the New Republic as seen in the Pershing episode don't have an obvious real-world counterpart, but it illustrates wider philosophical problems we too can be faced with. What some commentators took away from the episode was that the New Republic was too soft on Pershing and other ex-Imperials, thereby letting itself in for being double-crossed. Me, I saw the complete opposite.
Pershing is allowed to give a lecture on cloning, but he isn't allowed to practise it or do any research at all. After having lived in a "re-integration" camp, he is housed with other ex-Imperials who are all busily extolling the virtues of the New Republic and condemning the Empire, yet none of them is keen to re-visit that camp. Pershing's job isn't only menial but gives no satisfaction at all, as he's tasked to make an inventory of Imperial technology which will then be scrapped when, according to him, it could be put to good use. His freedom is restricted: he's not allowed to leave a certain zone, and the Republic has planted a mole – double agent Kane – to spy on and employ entrapment strategies on him and other fellow ex-Imperials.
There are more indications still that the New Republic's "Amnesty programme" isn't all it's cracked up to be, yet you can see their dilemma: ex-Imperials are a threat to their regime, and it can't be easy to know which of the Imps will make model citizens and which will remain bad news. All the same it was clear, at least to me, that they'd set the bar far too low with being "not as bad as the Empire".
But what happened to Doctor Pershing after Kane, seemingly, fried his brains out? And was it so smart to do it when her bosses clearly wanted their clone doctor's brains unfried?
Will we ever see the end of the helmet rule? Are the Armourer and the other helmet nutters really expecting this genuinely stupid rule to survive, when they live side by side with Bo-Katan's buddies who don't adhere to it? And why hasn't Din Djarin abandoned it a season and a half ago? It's time he and his fellow Mandos saved their helmets for battle and started thinking about the future of their civilisation. Because how do you find a mate and procreate with your helmet on?
