For those who don’t know, The Mandalorian is a Star Wars show that has just finished its third season. Taking place a few years after the fall of the Galactic Empire in Episode VI – Return of the Jedi, it follows Mandalorian Din Djarin, working as a bounty hunter, through the lawless galaxy. Early in the first season, Din Djarin comes across Grogu, who is a force-sensitive child in need of protection. The series follows the pair’s adventures thereafter. 

The last episode of season 3 of The Mandalorian was released on Wednesday, April 19th, and features a somewhat satisfying end to the third season of the series. Despite this, there are some problems with how the season ended that put a somewhat sour taste in my mouth. 

Season 2, in my opinion, was the stand-out best season of The Mandalorian. It combined good story telling with events that felt like they actually mattered. On top of that, the last episode of season 2 included one of the coolest scenes in all of Star Wars in which Luke Skywalker came to save the main characters from the Dark Troopers. In the end, Din Djarin handed Grogu off to his fellow force-user Luke, and the season ended with Luke, Grogu, and R2D2 walking away. It was a completely unexpected reveal and a great way to end the second season. 

Season 3 had hints of this, however it was riddled with things that didn’t make sense or didn’t seem right. For example, episode 1 starts off at a Mandalorian hideout, and Din shows up with Grogu. This doesn’t make any sense to viewers who hadn’t seen another Star Wars series, The Book of Boba Fett, in which we saw Luke and Grogu together. In a terrible, nonsensical scene we see Luke give Grogu the option of becoming a Jedi or going back to Din to become a Mandalorian, and Grogu chooses the latter. This completely invalidates almost the entire season 2 of the Mandalorian in which it was the goal for Grogu to find a Jedi so he can train. It backtracks on so much that season 3 starts off extremely rough. 

Despite this invalidation of half a season, those events mostly happened outside The Mandalorian so we’ll give the show a little credit. However, the events that follow don’t do much justice. All of the sudden, Din Djarin is no longer a real Mandalorian because the lady who forges their armor says so, and then he randomly makes it his only goal to change that as soon as possible. He then has to go back to their planet that was abandoned years ago and, on a random whim, see if there is a specific place that wasn’t destroyed. Big surprise: it wasn’t and he can be a real Mandalorian now. Later in the season, the Mandalorians at the hideout meet with other Mandalorians who do the same thing that made Din Djarin no longer a real Mandalorian, and the armorer is fine with it.  Episode 3 is 30 minutes of boring and uneventful storyline from characters who don’t really matter, and the story it told could’ve been condensed into about a 30 second speech from someone who does. 

One thing that season 3 got right was in the last few episodes, the conflict of the story is focused on uniting all the Mandalorians and retaking their home planet. This is a dramatic step up from the mission to mission style that was especially prevalent in season 1, and some of season 2. It adds a sense of meaning to the events that are transpiring, and allows the show to have a broader impact. 

The conclusion to season 3 was mostly good, however there are two main problems that I have with it. For one, the overarching antagonist throughout the show, Moff Gideon, dies to a blast of fire while wearing a beskar alloy suit. This means that he died from fire in a suit that has been shown being able to withstand fire countless times. Maybe this fire was extra hot or something I don’t know. Also, his death comes seconds after he fights the 3 most important protagonists of the series, so why couldn’t they have just killed him during the fight instead? Secondly, episode 2 of the series showed a short sighting of the Mythosaur, which is like the Mandalorian people’s divine being. Then, the season continues and it is never seen until the last episode in which a clip that looks almost identical to the first one shows again, and then the season ends. This means that the only payoff that it had was showing the exact same tease again. It was a waste of a season ending cliffhanger, and a disappointing miss.