The Mandalorian S2E8 - Chapter 16

Ahahahha.

Ahahahahahhahahahh.

Ahahahaha.

Ahahah.

Ahahahah-Ahahah, Ahahaha.

Hah.

(Loved it).

 

I'm mixed on Grogu now being gone or at least probably a lot of season 3. On one hand, I'm really going to miss him and it's going to be weird or just some getting used to. But on the other hand, I've been wanting the show to focus more on Din, bounty hunting and mandalorian stuff.

 

Spoilers, just in case you are here.

After my first huge excited reaction here are my thoguhts, pros and cons, cause there's a lot to talk:

-Lord knows how I love the Lambda-class T4a Shuttle, so at the very first second I was already screaming, cause Lord knows how I love Slave 1 too.
-Slave 1 in action it is a personal dream come true, yes.
-Dark troopers so cool. They impose a lot. Very well done.
-Lot of tension and incredible soundtrack again.
-And yes, when I saw the x-wing I started to scream and being excited a lot with both hands in my head and open mouth. I knew only one person could have and xwing and come to save Grogu. The next minutes has been, maybe, the biggest SW dream I have had since I saw the Return of the Jedi at the cinema and played with my toys for years. Cause when the green lightsaber appears, I felt something special inside me. And Luke destroying those troopers like a real badass it has absolutely no price. Not showing the face is the real point here. That was one of the biggest SW moments for me.
-I really like how things are finished now cause it implies a very different 3d season, I guess in a more Clone Wars animation show style.

And yes, my biggest concern is how Luke's face has been done. Even Tarkin in RO was better! They haven't played with shadows with his face (they did with Tarkin and it was incredible!), a true and big error. I would prefered Luke's face under the hood, being more misterious, to give more personality to the character and to disguise the not so good deepfake or whatever it was.
Yes, I imagined Luke could appear but also imagined they could have done it better.

When I saw post credits scene I was in shock too. Cause the palace was there, the stairs, the gamorreans, like old friends again. Boba sitting on that chair with Fennec at his side it's a very powerful image.
I assumed Bib Fortuna was dead too. Now sure he is. Glad to see him but it was not necessary. I guess he was not on that Sail barge when exploded...

I don't want a novel I want a miniseries about it!

 

Great finale!

as soon as you saw the x-wing approach and Grogu's ears pricked up, you knew!

having watched that De Niro 30 hour long film I always thought why not with Luke, and seeing those deep fake updates of Leia and Tarkin I thought yes they must be able to pull it off.

he felt slightly robotic, but maybe that was part of the Jedi swagger. it worked for me as they kept it short.

And then R2 strolls in, can't miss out on any action bless him lol.

But is that it for Grogu? is he now destined to be one of Bens casualties when he burns it down and kills all the students?

I can't see anyway that Grogu will now be a part of the series going forward..

That and Dins face at the end has left me in pieces

 

Uh oh... When a certain portion of the fandom realizes JJ killed off Grogu.

 

(I forgot to do a running commentary this time... But here's my reactions)

All the awesome, all the feels!

Highlights:
--Lambda Shuttle action! Oh, I love me some Lambda, me.
--The Infiltration-by-fake-emergancy-and-controlled-crash thing was awesome!
--Well-structured action episode (I really thought for a moment that they would just cop-out on the Dark Troopers with the spaceing thing; I really should've expected them to re-board!).
--As someone who usually finds action scenes boring, this episode did them very well. They were interesting visually, tactically, story-wise, and characterizataion-wise. Good stuff, Mr. Reed (and Jon & Dave)!
--Finding a way to show us the trouble that one Dark Trooper brings, as a set-up for their return; that was some strong writing. Also, getting Din to waste his whistling birds prior to facing off with Gideon was great. Actually, Din squaring off with that one Dark Trooper was a critical scene to the entire episode.
--The second you see that lone X-wing coming to the rescue party, you just know that it is Luke. The subsequent "tease" was an excellent way of drawing out that moment, excellent!
--The Luke reveal done as a call-back to the Vader reveal in Rogue One; perfection!
--The Mark Hamill de-aging was spectacular on a TV show budget! Pure magic! (I'm not sure if they did a body-slimming or body bouble-head-swap thingy, or whatever, but in any case that was excellent work!)
--Oh, the feels having to see Grogu go... I mean, it is great and all, but excruciating nonetheless... (Also, I don't want to ask myself the question what happened to Grogu when Ben flips insane a while later in the timeline... All options are painful )
--Jabba's palace! Bib Fortuna! Weequays and niktos and gamorreans and stuff! Bonkers as heck, but awesome!


Questions:
--I'm very surprised that they killed off the speaking-part Imp. Coms officer. I was sure she would at least get to surrender or something; her character felt important somehow...
--No more Babyoda from now on? That's sad... Well, at the least Mando, Rangers otNR, & Ahsoka shows' "climactic event" is sure to bring Grogu back in some form.
--That end sequence, though? WTF? Boba is the Kingpin of Tattooine now? My mind is blown!
--Will Mando season 3 be the final season of this show? Will Din's arc come full circle as he returns to Mandalore and helps liberate it and retaking his childhood memories, or something; and then that's it for him? (Of course, Din will show up again in other shows, including anything featuring Gorgu in a major way, but his own show could possibly be over with M3?)


Lovely episode!

 

The whole Luke thing was great, once he showed up on the monitors there was no doubt as to who he was. It did make me sad to see him helping younglings and being such a bad ass only for it to end up as a disaster in the long term.

For a moment there I thought Bo was going to kick Din straight in the chest, Grogu in arms and all.

It will be interesting to see how the show progresses without The Child, I think season 3 will build up the crossover with Rangers and Ashoka, don't know if it will lead up to a special or just a comic book situation with *to be continued on Rangers Chapter X

Gideon is not done.

Book of Bobba could be great, there are some legends stuff that were awesome in that part of the SW universe.

P.D: I was ready for the full heroes defeated Empire finale, but when the title came up I thought it was kind of a spoiler because they have been pretty straight forward with those.

 

I loved the finale. Not my favourite chapter of the season, but definitely in keeping with the high quality standard of the whole thing.

New drinking game: every time you see people disappointed with the ST say ‘Luke in S2 finale felt more Luke than all the sequel trilogy’. Well of course, because he is closer to RotJ than he was by the end of TFA.

They really did set the ‘feels dial’ to 11 though. The X-wing arriving, the clothes, the glove, the lightsaber... fantastic stuff. I feel like they put more Ahsoka in the recap than necessary to troll us a bit...

IMHO think the CG/de-ageing (whatever it was) was not as good as Rogue One Tarkin but better than Rogue One Leia. I’d welcome future revisions, and so long as it's streaming-only it's easy to update (see (or don’t see) Jeans Guy!). I do think ‘deepfake’ tech can offer help here, that it feels to me like they’re not fully using (I could be wrong). Still amazing work, and it should only get better and cheaper with time.

Other things.

- Well played Moff Gideon, making Din fight for the Darksaber. Also, lovely how they worked in the exposition for people who didn’t know the lore from other shows as part of the plot.
- The burning of the Dark Trooper was very reminiscent of Grievous’ death to me.
- The snarkiness from Boba Fett was fun. Is it a hot take to say I liked Boba in this chapter best of all?!

The title’s multiple meanings as usual...
- Rescue of Grogu
- Rescue of the Darksaber
- Rescue of Din’s humanity as he chooses to reveal his face to Grogu (awwww... may have slightly welled up...)
- (Begrudgingly recognised to me ) it’s probably going to be seen by some as a ‘rescue’ of Luke’s character... which I don’t think was needed in the slightest, but it’s still nice if it serves that function for those who did feel the need.

Looking forward, I am very excited to see where this all goes now. I’m pretty sure we’ll see Grogu again in S3 at some point. More than anything I am loving the feeling of progression that reminds me of The Clone Wars and Rebels and even Resistance... all of which I loved but even I would say improved as they went on, and (in the cases of Rebels, and in particular TCW) really hit their stride as shows once they had a couple of seasons under their belt. Dave Filoni mentioned the other day on The Star Wars show how in S2 they had the experience to know what they thought worked and what didn’t work so well, and that is the point I think. I’m rambling but basically saying I’m very excited to see if The Mandalorian can hit new heights in the way The Clone Wars did after a couple of seasons.

This year has possibly been the best ever for new Star Wars content for me. I adored Episode IX, I got two seasons of The Mandalorian, the excellent S7 of The Clone Wars, a bunch of amazing announcements, beautiful 4K UHD discs, played Jedi: Fallen Order and Squadrons in VR... got a stack of books still to read, and the Lego Holiday special was fun too.

Truly, “My cup runneth over.” But I still want more (*insert Kylo meme*). This is one happy Star Wars fan right here.

MTFBWY all.

 

OK, so...

This definitely didn't top last season's finale at all... But I have to sort out exactly how I feel about it.

At the end I was watching the credits like I always do for the music and the concept art, but no concept art...so I kept watching to see if there were any secret cameos...and I saw a credit for Bibb Fortuna and I was like, what the heck? Did I miss something? No, I hadn't yet... Apparently the Boba thing is a TV show spinoff, just as we had been speculating. https://www.ign.com/articles/book-of-boba-fett-spin-off-tv-show-release-date-december-2021

Yeah, so Luke. Yay, I guess?

Anyway, I can't believe that Grogu is not going to be part of Season 3 somehow. I mean, I love Mando, but I don't want to see him galumphing through season 3 with a broken heart. Maybe Luke will bring him back and be like, "Dude, you have to take him back. He steals people's lunches when I'm not looking, he keeps crying about a ball, and the diaper-changing is a bit much."

I have to say, it really bothered me that Din didn't have time to check on the kid and make sure he's OK, didn't ask Luke his name, for crying out loud, didn't ask where he was taking him. But at least he and Grogu got the face-to-face moment. So next season will also be about Din figuring out even more what his identity is. Whilst galumphing.

I am very surprised that none of the heroes died.

Now the darksaber...how come Bo can't just take it as a gift? Didn't she take it from Sabine in Rebels? I love that Din was just like, "Take the stupid thing already." He is so not interested in power and I love him for it. But anyway, this looks like the running action plot of season 3, aside from Galumphing Din. Moff Gideon is just hanging around too so I suppose he'll escape, and Dr. Pershing is still just chilling in the shuttle?

 

I bloody love Cara's sarcasm just as the X-Wing appears: "One X-Wing? Great, we're saved..."

 

She was so wrong...

 

It was perfect, because it mislead me for a second or two before I realised who was flying the X-Wing - at which point, the Star Wars part of my brain nearly combusted! lol

 

Will be the first to admit that I was wrong in doubting Luke wouldn’t answer the call. OF COURSE he answered the call.

That being said, the de-aging could use improvement and I hope that eventually they go back and improve it.

Lastly the mid-credit stinger looks like something I would have dreamed up when I was 10 years old playing with my Star Wars Figures.

No matter your take on this episode, Kudos to Filoni and Favreau. They killed it.

 

Its like poetry, it rhymes.

 

So happy for this episode, i started to cry when i saw Luke.

AND BOBA SERIES!!!

THANKS FAVREAU AND FILONI!!

 

I for one thought Luke's face was amazingly done and the best. Which is saying something as I liked the cgi faces in Rogue One and Rise of Skywalker