SPOILER Heroes of Mandalore Pt 1 and 2 (Not a Review)

I noticed it, but didn't know it was the first canon appearance. Good catch!

I thought the jump was a bit dumb too, but I try to ignore it. The show in general loves to exaggerate jumping. Some got mad at Kanan's 50 foot jump in the genosis arc last season.

Sabine has been shown to leap 20 feet in the air without her jetpack in season one. I chalk it up to being stylized, and the actual jumps are much shorter.


@Freelance Splicer Why do you think he sees her hologram?

 

I'm glad Bo took charge.

 

I think he recognizes where it is and is talking down (vertically, not emotionally) to her and responding to her body language.

 

Bo-Katan should have told Sabine you can't just give me the Dark Saber we have to at least fist fight for it.

 

Maybe that scene will come if she doesn't live up to her role, a right to challenge for the darksaber may happen.

 

It was fine enough. Kinda weak, in my opinion, but I haven't been a huge fan of the Mandalore plots since the Clone Wars anyway.

My biggest criticism of the episode is this-
I totally get how Sabine feels uncomfortable using the Duchess against the Empire, and how the Ghost crew support her on that.
But can you imagine if Mon Mothma, Draven, or other high ranking rebel officials found out? You know Draven at least would use the weapon without a second thought, and would be furious if it was squandered.

In a way, it could be the Rebels' Death Star, but one that only killed enemy combatants- basically the most efficient and powerful military weapon ever created (which, in a way, also doesn't help with the criticisms that Sabine is a little too much sometimes). Anyway, I think there's a pretty legitimate discussion to be had about using the Duchess- it could help the Rebels score many big victories, potentially saving many lives.

Maybe we'll revisit it before the end of the season, and that could actually be a pretty interesting episode- but I have a bad feeling that we're just supposed to forget about the Stormtrooper killing machine for now.

 

Especially weird since they showed it can be tuned to only temporarily disable the enemy. Although, storm trooper armor is so super worthless that they could overcome the weapon by just ditching the armor.

 

True, but it could've been saved for a big move at least. For instance, imagine setting that thing off at Echo Base or on Endor. Easy victory!

But that's true, it apparently even has a non-lethal setting. It's almost immoral to not use it and to continue war the old fashioned way.

 

It was ok, not one of the best, thought the notion of the tesla weapon was great at first and very ominous for such a show until it proved to have some ridiculous armour-targeting nature and the way in which Sabine was requested to improve the technology. Which simply involved her pressing three buttons. I thought he meant in the Galen Erso way of bringing her back for months or years to perfect the old work, not just poke around for 5 seconds with the default settings. And switched it to plastic. It's like she just showed him how to use the graphic equaliser on his stereo.

The other thing that annoyed me is that in any episode involving Mandalorians is that they have to say the words 'Mandalorians' or 'Mandalore' in practically every sentence. It quickly wore on my nerves. If you're bored one night, do try a drinking game with any episode involving these Jodo Kast cosplayers and take a neat shot at each use of the aforementioned words. I'm deliberately not trying to use the 'M' word now because it's reminded me how much it irritated me.

 

i was glad to see her give up the dark saber at least. i think that thing is kinda silly.

i really missed Hera and Kanan in this. i like Sabine okay, but i agree with @Daddy_Stardust; i've kinda have my fill of "Mandalore!" ~ hahaha

 

I might be in the minority, but I honestly felt pretty "meh" about it. It's a bit of a "beggars can't be choosers" situation, but I didn't really like how Bo-Katan's introduction was handled. She felt kinda shoved in without foreshadowing, and due to the episodes being about Sabine, she didn't have the screen-time needed to have a full arc about coming to accept the Darksaber. It just felt...rushed to me. I feel like she needed at least one more episode before she accepted the role.

The rest I didn't have a problem with. Saxon Brother was FAR more interesting to me than Gar Saxon, and I liked the Hera/Kanan dynamic (I feel like we haven't seen that sort of dynamic since Season's 1 or 2, although the one convo in the Season 3 finale was pretty good).

I like how these episodes felt more like a continuation of Season 3; but that also makes them the weakest starter episodes of the series.

Overall, the episodes were fine, but like others have said, nothing really special. It feels like a weird note to end Mandalore on, but then again, The Clone Wars didn't get to finish their arcs either.

I makes one wonder, which would you prefer - a personally subpar ending (i.e. how most people felt about SyFy's Battlestar Galactica remake, the Clone Wars Mandalore arc), or no ending at all (Firefly, not counting Serenity, Fox's Almost Human, or the Rebels Mandalore Arc IMO)?


As an aside, I watched this with my friend (who really enjoyed the episodes), and after watched the Rebels Recon. As we saw The Clone Wars clips play, we immediately lamented the loss of Georgle Lucas Money.

 

Two problems with giving Bo time to accept the Saber. We already had an excellent episode last season with Sabine accepting the Saber and the responsibility I really don’t think it could be done better, and we don’t have enough time to give Bo burn with a short season and wrapping up a number of the already introduced secondary and primary characters storylines.

 

I mean, it's possible. Thrawn could've just been like "Hey, we lost that weapon that teenager built that targets only Manadlorian armor. Do you think any of the top scientists in our entire galactic Empire might be able to take that concept and reverse engineer it so we can wipe out or subjugate the planet?"

At which point, anything his attendant would say other than "of course" would be absurd.

Another issue I had with it was that it felt rather anti-climactic. We've been foreshadowing the Mandalore stuff for a long time now, and even at the end of the last season we actually temporarily lost Sabine so she could help her people. I get the show is wrapping up, but a two part episode with just a couple minor skirmishes and a handfull of troopers doesn't feel like a liberation of Mandalore to me. I know we've already talked about scope and scale in this thread and how Rebels has issues with it, but I think they've been more clever about dealing with it in the past.

 

One of the dumber things from the clone wars, is that George made it so that Boba and Jango aren't mandos, just bounty hunters with the armor.

 

I didn't think about it until you brought it up, but mandos don't appear post ANH in the current canon, right?

I know the show seems to be leading towards freeing lothal as the end point, but before this season started, I thought it would be a mega war with Mandalore.

The rebellion couldn't have a major victory until Rogue one, but they could side step this by having a mandalore v empire skirmish by claiming mandalore isn't part of the rebellion, but a different sovereign government.

Who knows? I wonder when/if we will get an answer.

 

Don't blame the weapon. Sabres do not kill people. People kill people.

 

I think that at some point Mandalore and Lothal are both going to get messed up pretty bad, Lothal most of all. I think Ezra will be left without a home and he'll decide to stay on Mandalore with Sabine and help rebuild. This explains why there are no Mandos in the OT, where Ezra is in the OT, and leaves R1 as the first major victory.