100 Favorite Shows: #67 — The Mandalorian
“Some of my favorite people are bounty hunters.”
[Disclaimer: Gina Carano, who plays Cara Dune on The Mandalorian, has an extremely troubling social media presence, which includes transphobia, the spreading of lies pertaining to the 2020 presidential election, and the endorsement of Parler, an app prominently associated with anti-Semitism. This article on Vanity Fair discusses all things Carano with depth, intelligence, and nuance. It also addresses allegations made against Rosario Dawson, who starred in a season two episode of The Mandalorian, which had not aired yet at the time of writing this essay.]
When Disney Plus (or, as Andy Greenwald and Chris Ryan of The Watch would say, Disney “Plooos”) debuted in November 2019, it was staked by Bob Iger as the “future of the company.” As such, they needed to make a splash beyond the library of Disney, Pixar, Lucasfilm, Marvel Studios, and National Geographic; they needed a massive original series. Enter: The Mandalorian, from Jon Favreau, Dave Filoni, Rick Famuyiwa, and Christopher Yost. The first live-action television series ever set in the Star Wars universe, The Mandalorian centered around the titular character (Pedro Pascal as Din Djarin), a bounty hunter pulled into a protection plan for “The Child” (Baby Yoda). Combining elements of the space genre with the western genre, The Mandalorian debuted to fervency and immediately captured the world’s attention for eight weeks in the winter.
(There’s spoilers for The Mandalorian in here, but only for season one, so take that as you will. That’s the way, baby! (That’s what he says, right?))
There was a time back in November and December of 2019 when Disney Plus released new episodes of The Imagineering Story, High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, and The Mandalorian every Friday. It was a glorious six weeks. For a Disney nerd like me, it felt impossible and — at the risk of overly praising Disney — like a streaming service was catering directly to my niche, probably-not-great taste. But how fun it was to have these shows released on a weekly basis, especially since The Mandalorian reflected how refreshing it was that fans of Star Wars (both casual and diehard) could finally agree on enjoying a piece of Star Wars media again (I ride for The Last Jedi, personally).
For the casual Star Wars fans like me, The Mandalorian’s brilliance came from its traditional growth over time as a television program. The lengths of episodes were not overly indulgent and each provided some new ingredient to help the cultural conversation around the series grow week by week. We had new Baby Yoda memes every Friday (the best is when he holds the soup). (When Baby Yoda waves at Greef Karga (Carl Weathers), it might be the most adorable thing in all of Star Wars, especially considering the immaculate decision to depict Baby Yoda as a puppet, rather than CGI.) We had Chris Ryan exclaiming, “Mando!” in his Greef impression on The Watch. We had that incredible realization after the premiere, “Chapter 1: The Mandalorian,” that, “Oh shit. This thing’s actually dope.” Against all odds.
And for the rabid Star Wars fans, there were plenty of Easter eggs and allusions to comic book lore with which I remain perpetually unfamiliar. Characters who stem from the animated Clone Wars series, the revelation that Mando was actually named Din Djarin, the extended sequence during which his jaw-dropping (for some) armor is forged. The greater significance of this in the fandom was largely lost on me, but it was always fun to watch my most obsessed friends clutch their hair in shock when the moments transpired.
Beyond the sandbox of a cinematic universe, it was just a solid story (with three distinct arcs that almost turned into an adventure-of-the-week type series) that I didn’t mind sharing with my father or with my friends at school. Multiple viewings were welcome for The Mandalorian because it was just such a fun hang. It’s definitely a watershed moment in television history, even if the forthcoming WandaVision promises to be truly revolutionary.
The middle arc of the first season of The Mandalorian saw a number of cut-and-print journeys of the week to planets like Sorgan and Tatooine, introducing a flurry of fun characters into Mando’s orbit (Amy Sedaris as mechanic Peli, Taika Waititi as droid IG-11, Bill Burr as a space Bostonian). At first, it seemed like these characters were one-and-done on The Mandalorian, but as the first arc built up for a thrilling conclusion, IG-11 and Cara Dune (along with Greef and Nick Nolte’s Ugnaught, Kuiil) returned to team up in an effort to protect Baby Yoda.
The penultimate episode, “Chapter 7: The Reckoning,” and the finale, “Chapter 8: Redemption,” comprised this team of characters we’d seen before, making it immensely more satisfying when they mowed down the faceless army of Stormtroopers serving Moff Gideon (Giancarlo Esposito, wisely held back as the first season’s “big boss”). It’s common iconography in Star Wars. Those who dress in black and use clone armies tend to be the bad guys. But Mando and company treat them as just as much an enemy as the Jedi are. On The Mandalorian, the perspective of the universe came from a more neutral position, one that saw both popular warring factions as flawed. Maybe the far, far away galaxy needs more than a two-party system.
What’s most delightful about this middle-to-third arc of The Mandalorian, however, is the revelation that Mando is not actually that talented. Or even all that clever. When the show was promoted as the Plooos’ flagship series, it seemed like it was priming audiences to witness a bad-ass bounty hunter on the outskirts of the Star Wars landscapes we’ve grown accustomed to over the years. Instead, he’s constantly leaving Baby Yoda unattended and flailing around when he gets hit by the coordinated weapons and spaceships of others. He isn’t a John Wick or Jason Bourne type of fighter. He’s barely on the level of Gob Bluth.
This may be a bit exaggerated, but the comparison is apt. Mando often has very little control over his body and his decision-making faculties, relying prominently on his advanced technology to save him. However, when he needs to, he is capable of handling himself. In “Chapter 3: The Sin” (which brings the first arc of the show — breaking the code of Mandalore to help an “infant” in mortal danger — to a resolution), Mando doubles back on the laboratory to which he delivered Baby Yoda as a product. (It’s run by Werner Herzog’s (yes, he’s in this, too) ambiguous “Client” character.) In freeing Baby Yoda from imminent death, Mando occasionally shoots his way past Stormtroopers (the show makes excellent use of our preconceived acceptance that they never hit their targets). Sometimes, he hides from them. Sometimes, he blasts them with the flame thrower in the arm of his suit. To get away from Nevarro, he sets a droid-run land vehicle in motion, placing the episode’s climactic sequence in speedy territory. There are many sins committed in “The Sin,” but Mando reneges on the acquisitions and tortures of “The Child” to the point where it seems unlikely that he ever wanted to give Baby Yoda up in the first place.
Even though the first three episodes are largely driven by the present force between Mando and Baby Yoda, there is still the recognition that a Star Wars series has to be more than its action. It needs to have characters we feel compelled to root for, too. Many rolled their eyes when a tragic backstory for Mando was wedged (Antilles) into “The Sin,” but I found it to be a scintillating depiction of a child’s rescue from doom and repositioning into a community of welcoming and security. His rescue into the Mandalore creed (eventually run underground to live in secret — “This is the way”?) parallels his “pay it forward” (Hi, Haley Joel!) rescue of Baby Yoda. Naturally, Baby Yoda is just another child caught in the crosshairs of greedy do-badders who think only of extracting the magical sci-fi traits that make the infant special.
We see Mando’s backstory first when The Armorer (Emily Swallow) smiths equipment for him in “The Sin” and each clang of her mallet flashes a brief cut of Din Djarin’s terror when his parents were killed. Of course, because of the Mandalore code that insists the helmet remain on at all times, Pascal is forced to let his body language do much of the acting on the series, especially in this sequence. (I’m not even certain it is Pascal and not one of his stunt doubles, Lateef Crowder and Brendan Wayne.) We’re seeing trauma dredged up within Djarin, but we have no clue to this beyond the fact that Pascal is standing perfectly still. The helmet betrays no emotion, even as the camera zooms closer on it, as if we should expect to see the eyes beneath his visor. Pascal still doesn’t move. (It’s like how droids are tasked with conveying feeling and intonation in just a series of beeps.) I still wish we could see Pascal more (he’s a thrilling presence and a handsome man), but he does a lot of work in what could have been a glorified voice-acting role.
Even Baby Yoda, the puppet, is more expressive with his smiles and his easily fatigued frame. He’s not technically named Baby Yoda, but he’s named for the character he so clearly resembles. It’s like in Mario Superstar Baseball when the characters for teams are main characters like Yoshi, Donkey Kong, and Bowser, but also generic species-type entities that exist in pereptuity in the Mario universe, like Pintas and Koopas. In Star Wars, we don’t have Pintas, but we do have Yodas and R2-D2s (some with legs) and Jawas. It’s a shorthand developed for the space realm over the course of decades. By introducing Baby Yoda as a Yoda, rather than a new species to learn about, we’re instead able to see the character as a vessel for what he can be, rather than what he should be. It’s a baby Yoda! Maybe he’ll be wise and maybe he’ll just be of average intelligence. But either way, The Mandalorian uses his archetype to show new sides of The Force. It’s cool enough that Baby Yoda is attuned to the mystical side of space nature, but it’s even cooler that he can use The Force to heal others — something we hadn’t yet seen it capable of.
Baby Yoda’s intermittent use of The Force is The Mandalorian’s greatest recurring set piece. It’s harnessed alongside gorgeous imagery in “Redemption,” an episode helmed by Waititi. (The varied directors throughout the series were the show’s greatest technical achievement. Waititi’s efforts were stunning and Bryce Dallas Howard proved herself capable of navigating a cinematic universe on television, but Deborah Chow is the most exciting visionary to stem from the collection of filmmakers attached.) Waititi’s style of direction helped subvert some of the sillier sides of Star Wars (Jason Sudeikis’ Stormtrooper trying to shoot a nearby can with Adam Pally’s — after Moff Gideon is busy monologuing about his villainy — is one of the best depictions of an expansive universe making fun of itself), but it also produced some of the most astonishing sequences of the Disney-era of Star Wars.
Whether that comes in IG-11, a brand new kind of droid with some of the most fluid movements of any non-human character in the universe, riding back into town to save Baby Yoda and eliminate dozens of villains along the way or that same droid trudging through a lava river to his own self-destruction, Waititi is clearly in sync with the peak flairs of the genre. Waititi’s depiction of action has always been astonishing and fun, in equal measure (from the obvious wires in What We Do in the Shadows to anything with Valkyrie in Thor: Ragnarok), but it’s at its best in “Redemption.” When the season climaxes with Mando acting the part of a vagabond on the outside of Gideon’s TIE Fighter, all I could think about how excited I was to see more of this story.
Not just because it was cool to see a Mandalorian whip around a spaceship at high velocity, but because I genuinely cared about what happened to Mando, Baby Yoda, and their team in the face of a galactic villain. It felt genuinely moving when IG-11 sacrificed himself so that his allies would live. (Especially since Mando journeyed from despising and killing IG-11 to feeling palpable sadness at the thought of his newfound friend, the only one to see his face, exploding just moments after they’d forged a bond.) IG-11’s death proved that The Mandalorian had answered the call of producing empathy for its characters — even the most robotic and emotionless of them.
However, it also showed that the characters were capable of growing beyond what the worst actors of their kind had stereotyped them as. Mando harbors a hatred of IG-series droids because of what he knows they’re programmed to do. Others see Mando as a threat to the planets he visits because of the sinister lifestyles more scandalous figures like Boba Fett engaged in over their culture’s history. When they see each other as individuals, those prejudices fade away and they’re able to help each other, save each other, mourn each other.
Granted, it’s still a Star Wars series and the emphasis will always be primarily on having fun and knocking over jaws. The emotional character beats along the way were just unexpected delights for those who hoped The Mandalorian would be a little bit more. And it certainly was better than even I expected. Over the summer, it also garnered an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Drama Series in its first attempt, bringing Disney Plooos to the forefront of the awards race for the second wave of streaming services. Between its immersive production design, innovative filming technologies, and delightful, earworm western score from the great Ludwig Göransson, I think it’s highly deserving of it.
Disney Plooos will always be built more around “fun for the whole family” than “prestige drama,” but there’s nothing wrong with that. The Mandalorian proved it could provide the best of both, ushering in a new, post-Game of Thrones era of television. Maybe one day we’ll hear Göransson’s score fade into frame on a big screen Star Wars story, promising the arrival of an exciting character we’d previously only known from home before. That’s just the new era of television we’re in right now. I’m happy to go along with it if you are. Baby Yoda will be there, too.
