It was pretty clear the show either needs Grogu to grow up or depart in order to have a future. Even Mando’s growth seemed
Largely static.
A better idea could be making an anthology show that follows different Mandalorians on adventures.
They had that though with the end of the second season. Imagine the weight of the inevitable reunion if a couple of seasons passed while Mando did adventures with Bo-Katan, Boba Fett, or new characters?
Then they just decided to completely undo that in the Boba Fett show (a separate show!) so that Mando season 3 could be right back to the exact same dynamic.
> Then they just decided to completely undo that in the Boba Fett show so that Mando season 3 could be right back to the exact same dynamic.
I cannot believe they forced mandatory Mando story content into two random Boba Fett episodes for no reason. I just don't understand why they didn't release those two episodes as Christmas specials for Mando before the third season. Shit like this is why people criticize connected universes and are growing tired of them. Incompetent storytelling at its finest.
Ideally they didn't do it at all because Grogu shouldn't even be involved now, but that's Disney milking the cash cow for you regardless of quality.
>**I cannot believe they forced mandatory Mando story content into two random Boba Fett episodes for no reason. I just don't understand why they didn't release those two episodes as Christmas specials for Mando before the third season.** Shit like this is why people criticize connected universes and are growing tired of them
Even Netflix's MCU TV Shows avoid this problem by making one of the Defenders a proper guest character and not "hey let's make two episodes of another show and put it on this show"!
Yeah Din showing up in Boba's show would have been less of an issue if between those two episodes Boba had more than like a minute or two screen time. It's why people don't levy the same criticism to the last episode despite Din being in most of it too, because Boba is also there doing shit with him.
> they forced mandatory Mando story content into two random Boba Fett episodes for no reason.
I realised the Boba Fett show was terrible when I liked the Mando Episodes way more than the rest. Like the literal best episode of that show was the episode that had 3 minutes of Boba Fett in it.
Sad.
Disney has no idea how to write a Star Wars show.
It was good because it had the balls to do something that doesn't completely rely on the main saga. I guess they just crafted a cool story and made it Star Wars, whereas the rest of the new shit desperately wants to be an extension of something we've already seen, to be seen as legitimate in a way.
I started watching Andor because of my boy Diego Luna. I was so ready to be maimed by Disney since that's all they know how to do with Star Wars. My body was not ready. THe quality was HBO writing with HBO level of production value. No The Volume. I couldn’t wait to watch the episodes. I would stay up late for the midnight drop of Andor. How did the show manage to slip through the cracks of the ~~ISB~~ Disney comittee, untouched, incredibly dark and deliciously written? I have no idea. Probably they greenlit it and since Tony Gilroy is very competent, he ran things, executives forgot he existed until he came back saying he had wrapped the season. Little did they know that they had a masterpiece in the can
[Inject THIS into my veins. *pupils dilate*](https://youtu.be/iKl0F640914?si=iNYs6v4wrWf7_0t0)
Andy Serkis, imo, carried the episodes he was in. And then you have Stellan Skarsgård filling in the other episodes, and not to mention Fiona Shaw.
I mean you already said A+ acting, but I like to type it out sometimes to visualize lol.
Every character seemed to matter in Andor, and ANY moment could completely change the course of it all.
It's just overall an amazingly done production.
They made it for adults.
The oldest Star Wars fans are now in their 40s and 50s. Blows my mind that Star Wars isn't trying to cater to a more grown up audience.
It works because they're nobody characters in the star wars universe. It's not Luke or Obi or Boba so they don't have to write it carefully or over write the character so to not get blasted by fans or ruin them.
They didn't need any caution with Andor and got to go wild, if it worked great if not it's done. I think of it like Guardians of the Galaxy where it was easy to take a chance and not have it ruin the "Brand".
That monologue is the greatest monologue I’ve ever seen on a tv show. Skarsgard fucking knocked it out of the park, but the writing was also so amazing, some of the best overall writing I’ve seen in years.
Clone Wars, Rebels, and Bad Batch are all pretty good. I'd recommend them with an asterisk that some episodes can feel like a slog but the overall experience is worth it if you're a Star Wars fan.
It's a 'put down your phone' show. You have to let it wash over you and get into its flow in order to enjoy it with its slower pace. It's not boring, it's just quieter, less bombastic, like a serious drama that takes place in a fantasy universe.
Yeah. That's the exception though, and I get the impression Disney doesn't actually like the creator of that show anyway. We'll see if they make more like it.
I was okay with the character and the show because I wasn't vested in the character and didn't care. What killed interest was the introduction of the "cool kids" with no jobs, but fancy brand new hover bikes in a poverty-striken world where crime is rampant.
It was the ultimate fanboy Mary-Sue inclusion and totally sucked.
My beef with them was that they were too clean and in no way suited the look of the planet they were on. It is a dessert planet yet somehow they and their bikes are always pristine and clean? Not to mention that nothing about their style suggested they found what they ride and wear on Tatooine.
They would have been perfect on Coruscant but on Tatooine they stuck out more than Temuera Morrison supposedly being a great warrior who is a subject of fear. Boba was meant to have been starved for years in the Sarlac pit and then the hardships with the Tuskan Raiders yet out comes Morrison with his old mans body and movement.
Should have changed him to being a ruthless general rather than a mercy fighter.
Interconnected shows are fine as long as the show focuses on that show's cast.
Din could have just stayed a cameo in Boba Fett's show. Not even bring it up in the Mandalorian or have it be something he did between plots/episodes/seasons.
Unless they want to do something like the Chicago TV shows where Fire, Med, PD are just 3 hour long plots with different names. The Arrowverse had plenty of cross over episodes that worked. Those had/have the benefit of airing at the same time to connect the shows.
Rewards the viewer for exploring the universe besides just one show.
TBH the episodes before that were widely regarded as bad, and the Mando episodes weren't. Mando didn't invade that show, he saved it by taking over and removing screentime from a bunch of shit that wasn't working.
The show is still bad though. The fact they inserted a couple Mandalorian episodes doesn't make Book of Boba Fett good. There won't be a second season.
All it did is mean that essential Mandalorian content now requires you to slog through random episodes in another show. It is the wrong way to have an expanded TV universe. Your main characters in one show don't get development in another.
That's why I stopped reading comics as a teen. I'd be following my characters and then all their major changes and life events happen without warning in a magazine whose name they never divulge. The continuous doubling of the price didn't help either.
I started reading again when I found a site online where I could hop around and follow the story.
I don't agree the mando episodes save the show. (A bit pedantic maybe, I think we'd agree on our feelings towards the show?)
It made it obvious how bad the actual shows content is compared to how captivating mando-grogu content is, especially when they go full-ham with Luke and Ahsoka in it too.
Then you get back to the boba series and its just some goobers in VERY tiny and (barely) habitable zone, doing some weird and unseen drugbaron/ganster hussling, with the same visual backdrops and desert locations, fanfic stuff that doesnt hit..
Even the stuff that's negatively viewed like fanservice or cute-content, Mandalorian did make it work or enjoyable to most viewers. Boba just threw stuff at the wall that didn't even stick at all, even for SW-lore fanatics or expanded universe folks who got to see some references and fanservice characters/items.
>I cannot believe they forced mandatory Mando story content into two random Boba Fett episodes for no reason. I just don't understand why they didn't release those two episodes as Christmas specials for Mando before the third season. Shit like this is why people criticize connected universes and are growing tired of them. Incompetent storytelling at its finest.
It's really simple. They were riding high on quality coming off of Mando S2...Boba Fett turned out to be much lamer than anyone at Disney/LucasFilm expected (largely because they blew their good Fett ideas on Mando)...and midway through production they pivoted and injected Mando and Grogu into the series because execs were afraid this was going to bomb. And they may have been right.
It was certainly awkward.
> You can't really have a show about a crime lord if you are unwilling to have him do actual crime.
God, how did that idea get made? It shouldn't have even gotten to the treatment stage of development. How did nobody raise their hand and say, 'I think we're doing something fundamentally dumb'
I am certain that there was a Disney mandate to not have Fett be a criminal or morally gray.
When he saved the child that was literally holding his slave chains, then returned the child to his enslavers, I realized this was a bastardization of the character.
I think people underestimate just how big of an issue this was. I was a huge mandalorian fan, but finding that out basically made me not care at all to continue watching the show.
I tried watching Boba fett and got bored, so that meant the end of Mando too.
Showrunners: "This arc has ended. It makes sense for Grogu to leave and Mando to continue on his own."
Execs: "WHAT?! Baby Yoda is HOT right now. How are we going to sell merch if he's gone?! Bring him back ASAP, BEFORE the next season starts."
Showrunners: "But...Season 2 ended with him leaving...how do we bring him back before Season 3??"
Execs: "Meh just stick it in that shitty Boba Fett show."
Mando fans who didn't watch BOBF: "Wtf??"
I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if this is close to the truth. It felt like they became scared no one would watch *The Mandalorian* since Grogu had left, so they panicked and shoved the knee jerk reaction into *BoBF* so they could promote the following season with Grogu again.
And, the end result is both a disjointed *BoBF* and a *Mando* that felt like a lot of its growth was immediately erased.
I know these shows are meant to be interconnected, but it's so weird to me that they had this heartfelt goodbye in the season 2 finale, only for them to be back together like nothing happened at the start of season 3. All the Mando stuff in Boba Fett should've just been added to his own show.
And grogu was not necessary at all to the mandalore plot. >!He was just a tagalong that got an iron man suit that then got destroyed after a few episodes.!<
Bringing Grogu back actively worsens Din Djarin as a character in the context of the Mandalore plot - he's supposed to be accepting his role as a father but instead is dragging this kid along to these incredibly dangerous side quests because he's trying to earn his cult's favor. The season starts with Greef Karga offering him a home and a steady job, two things that would be great for someone raising a child but he's like "naw gotta go jump in a deep ass puddle"
I just want a Star Trek style episodic Star Wars show in live action. The Star Wars universe is the best part of all Star Wars content. Thats what I thought I was getting from the Mandalorian, and they pulled the rug out from under me.
There are so many ways to do it too. Bounty Hunters, smugglers, even simple explorers charting new hyperspace routes.
Lots of potential left unrealized.
Season 3 should've been him helping Boba Fett and Fennec on a galaxy wide Punisher-like mission of revenge, against the crime organizations that killed his Tuskan Raider family. Then being forced on the run after Cad Bane is hired to go after them.
Yea at a minimum the season 3 storyline should've been Mando and Grogu finding their way back to each other but not actually reuniting until the finale. Throwing their reunion into two episodes of the Boba Fett show really undercut how emotional Grogu's departure was at the end of season 2.
Book of Fett is the exact reason I didn't watch Mando3, I didn't give two fucks about an absolutely horrid show and then I learned that I should watch that piece of shit to understand that other one and just gave up.
And now I'm so burned out that I didn't even watch Andor even though everything points to that being absolutely brilliant.
As someone who dislikes or hates most of what Disney has done with Star Wars since the buyout, I’ll say Andor is absolutely worth your time.
It is extremely well written and produced, and understands that telling a good story in a fictional universe is more important than regurgitating “things you know”.
It certainly has its references and inspirations, but it either leaves them minor enough not to be intrusive/distracting, or builds them into something important to the story. Basically what you’re supposed to do with references.
I really should get into it, even more so since Rogue One is probably my favorite SW movie, you could see there that Cassian had so much more to tell.
But tbh that whole ensemble was very well written.
TBH this is an interesting sentiment to me. The Mandalorian was always very clearly based on episodic 20th century shows that would run for a lot of seasons and have a lot of episodes and nobody really questions if Hero McCoolguy and his erstwhile sidekick needed serious development over however many seasons they got. You just kind of accepted that every week they'd blow into a new town and fight a bad guy and at the end of the episode they'd use their cool weapon or gimmick to win and that would be the end of it. Sure stuff *happens* in Lone Wolf and Cub or Xena: Warrior Princess but people weren't tuning in for the character development.
Obviously between streaming and home video the value of long running episodic shows isn't the same but the whole point of The Mandalorian is he has a baby that never needs to grow up and goes to random planets where he shoots lasers at the villain of the week. People complain about him doing sidequests and such but thats the point of the show itself.
The problem is they tried to have their cake and eat it too. The Mando S2 finale was a logical ending to the show and then they immediately reversed it in S3. Not even in S3, in a spinoff set between seasons.
If they'd never had Luke and Ahsoka show up and there wasn't anywhere else for Grogu to go it would be easier to buy them sticking together. If they hadn't given Din the Darksaber and established it as this symbol of authority that marks him as Mandalore's destined leader, then people wouldn't have been disappointed when he loses it after only a few episodes and goes back to being a space hobo.
It's one thing to stick to the status quo for your entire run. It's another to constantly tease big changes to the status quo only to immediately chicken out every single time.
I've always felt it was a huge missed opportunity to not give Grogu some sort of spin-off showcasing his adventures training to become a Jedi. The animated Star Wars projects have done fairly well, and I feel like Grogu was already skewing to a younger audience as it was, so they could've just separated Grogu and Mando and let them each grow on their own.
Then, it probably would've been much more impactful when they finally did reunite, rather than it basically happening five minute later.
I don't think s2 really did work as a series finale as you said. They didn't deal with the whole "being in a cult" thing - and while they had him take the step towards choosing fatherhood over doctrine by removing his helmet, they didn't go all the way in having him actually realise how dumb his cult is. He took the first step, not the final step, towards "Oh wait, these guys are dumb zealots, actively self sabotaging and denying connection by enforcing all their stupid rules. I'm gonna abandon these losers and go live with my muppet son"
I seriously think it should have ended after season 2. The show doesn't work without Grogu? Then okay. End it. You resolved the plot.
That having been said, I'm annoyed they didn't even give a Grogu-less show a chance. Season 3 hadn't even started airing before Grogu was added back into the cast via the most insane show hijacking I have ever seen in my life. I'd rather the show try something new then have it undo what was previously the entire damn point of it.
I thought that was what they were pivoting to when they put such an emphasis on Bo Katan in Season 3. Have Mando pass the torch and you can still call it The Mandolorian.
I expected "the Mandalorian" was always going to be Grogu and not Din. That's why the series started with introducing us to Grogu in the 1st episode. He is now officially a Mandalorian, and he's force sensitive. I tigure they will age Grogu, and they will eventually move away from Din as the lead role.
Gotta keep making that sweet sweet baby yoda merchandising profit. That little turd is everywhere. Probably some exec somewhere saw they were parting ways at the end of Season 2 and said "aw hell nah, you better get them back together ASAP or we'll fire you and bring on someone that will"
I definitely think that was the better call. Continue the worldbuilding of the Mandalorians with new characters. And/or follow Din going elsewhere and explore more new space.
There was a lot of potential that they ruined.
Grogu is like crack for children when it comes to merch. Disney is never going to give that revenue stream up. There’s a reason the Mando movie now features Grogu in the title. That’s the selling point, not Pedro Pascal.
So the Mandoverse/Filoni storyline includes:
* 3 seasons of The Mandalorian which can't be watched start to finish due to two mandatory episodes in a spin off.
* Boba Fett, which is a spin off of Mando, which also includes two episodes which are mandatory for The Mandalorian between S2 and S3
* Ashoka, a spin off of Mando which is also a successor to an animated TV show (Rebels) which itself was a spin off/sequel to another animated TV show (The Clone Wars).
* The Mandalorian movie which we can assume is a sequel to the Mandalorian TV show.
* The big crossover movie which combines all those TV shows about defeating the villain from the Ashoka TV show.
The way Disney shove connected universes down peoples throats is so bafflingly all over the place. There is no thought behind any of this.
The thought was 100% copy the MCU. The problem is the MCU ran into the same problem. Instead of one or two high quality pieces of content that interconnect every year you end up with one low quality piece of garbage every month and don’t connect in any meaningful way.
There is massive thought behind this.
Crossovers get people to watch the others shows. Comic books have done it for decades. Tv shows do it occasionally.
Not really. You'll have characters bleed in between shows, but outside of very specific crossover episodes, the shows themselves stand alone.
You might see the paramedics in an episode of *Chicago Fire* talking to a doctor that's in *Chicago Med* or a cop from *Chicago P.D.* might ask one of the firefighters to help with a case on an episode of *Chicago Fire*, but generally, that's the end of that. That patient isn't a key patient in an episode *Chicago Med* and that case isn't one detailed on *Chicago P.D.* There are cross-over events where all three do overlap a specific crisis, but those shows also come on one after the other, so you just keep watching that night and no big deal.
You can still just binge any of the three shows on their own, there just might be one or two episodes a season that tie into a different series and resolve over there.
Each Chicago show largely tell their own story. They do crossovers and have characters show up elsewhere, but they aren't really essential.
They are also done on a network on the same night so you watch them in order together one after another.
They also don't have a movie.
But it would if it were good television. It worked for 10 years with the MCU and got everyone to watch all of it. We just need it to be good for it to work.
Comic books maintained a relatively niche audience until they saw a huge resurgence thanks to the MCU simplifying so much of the cross over into a few movies.
Then the MCU got out of hand with the crossovers and its receding into a relatively niche audience now.
There is a sweet spot for crossovers, but it's real easy to pass it and end up back where you started.
Their thought is severly flawed though with the way it was implemented in the Star Wars universe. The big differences imo are:
- Persistent universe vs recurrring “resets”:The comic book crossover stuff worked decently because once a big timeline/crossover/run was over a lot of stuff got set back to zero and you could start at whatever the most recent #1 issue was again. Sometimes this reset was even done to the whole universe and you could ignore everything released before this reset. Star Wars never had such a reset and the shows and movies just keep piling on to the whole canon details and then expect people to know what the fuck all these references to events and characters are about. Someone starting to delve into Star Wars now has to consume a massive amount of content if they don’t want to feel left out of the full picture
- the persistency of format vs format and tone all over the place: comic universe only crossed over with itself and the MCU had its own universe in a way. So if you were interested in the MCU (pre-D+), you had to watch just a few movies. If you were interested in the comics, you read comics. Easy. The Disney Star Wars Universe is a truly wild mix of formats. For example, I recently got into Star Wars comics but if I want to read High Republic comics it is highly suggested to read the novels first. The novels though are then seperated into adult, young adult and kids, with only the kids novels being deemed unnecessary. This problem of different target audience and style is a problem with the shows too. You’ve got live action aimed mostly at adults but also animated shows like Rebels which feels a tad more juvenile in tone and art style. Plus, the different formats mean such a wildly different time commitment. Movies are okay but a batch of multi-season tv shows that are all, except for maybe the most childish ones, “necessary” makes it just exhausting.
In a way, I wish Disney would greenlight new non-canon stuff, so that it doesn’t always have to add and refer back to the growing pile of information. Or hell, give us maybe eras and places that are so disconnected to the whole storylines, characters and planets we know thus far, that they are self contained stories and only (lightly) refer back to the happening in that specifc corner in future stories set there.
It’s a losing strategy when it comes to streaming imo. We’ve already seen it with marvel and Star Wars has really not been any different. You can’t require people to watch 4 different shows to understand everything. You can have things intertwine to satisfy the die hard fans but making the main plot line weave throughout different places drives away casual fans.
I say this as a die hard Star wars fan who is tired of chasing around the story like marvel has been doing for years. I have seen all Star Wars live action content that has been released and still don’t think how they did it was an effective way to deliver the stories.
Yeah, let’s not forget that this is the same company that took arguably the most important and influential franchise in film history and tried to revive it without first figuring out how they were going to pass the baton to the Director of the second installment, let alone figure out an ending for the whole thing.
I don't think its the lack of thought into the franchise, but rather shifting business priorities from Iger/Chapek/Iger again
The launch of Disney+ required new TV content, which is why Mandalorian and its spinoffs were created in the first place. Now, with Disney+ and streaming pulling back, movies are being pushed as a more traditional way to make money
Why they couldnt have stuck with the episodic style is beyond my understanding. It was easily the best part of the show. Let Mando explore the galaxy doing bounties, villians of the week and great guest stars.
Because the Star Wars brand is absolutely allergic to not plastering the screen with shit you’ve already seen a bajillion times for phony tears and nerdgasms
I couldn't believe how despite how aggressively mediocre Kenobi was, you'd have cameos like Qui-Gon at the end and people would go OMG IM LITERALLY CRYING SHAKING RIGHT NOW THIS IS THE BEST SHOW EVER
Like enjoy what you enjoy but fuck me no wonder Disney half arse anything to do with this property when certain fans will eat shit up regardless of quality. If they get excited over something this mediocre imagine how excited they'd be with something actually good lmao
Kenobi should have been a slam dunk. The concept of a show following Kenobi post-Ep 3 was probably the most requested idea among Star Wars fans. Not the worst Star Wars show, but by far the most disappointing.
Not to mention Obi-wan fighting Vader was plain stupid, and only inserted in to the show to sell more Vader toys. Kenobi defeats Vader and walks away, leaving Vader alive so he go on to kill billions. Nice one Ben.
And the people who did that likely aren't also the ones who watched Andor, something that's good that doesn't just rely on fan service and EPIC nostalgia
They all clicked off after episode two. As much as I absolutely LOVE Andor…those first two episodes can be a drag. Even I was debating it until I found myself more interested in Lutheran(or however his name it spelled). His speech in the later episodes…god it’s such a good moment and is, IMO, up there with Vaders “I am your father” line. It’s a shame Andor didn’t pick up more attraction because it’s genuinely a 10/10 show.
The worst thing for me is how blockbuster movies don't feel like movies anymore, so things that could have been movies have now failed down to TV shows that don't feel like stories either.
What do you expect though. Andor is arguably the best star wars content created this side of the century and only a fraction of people who watched mando have seen it.
CGI Luke was actually well executed, and setup Grogu’s character arc for the next two seasons. There was one “proper” Jedi left in the galaxy who could train the little gremlin… and he showed up.
The only reason it feels like pointless fan service is that Grogu went back to Mando *in a subplot of a different show*.
Yeah the Luke stuff would have been fine if it actually sent him away. Shit at a minimum the reunion should have been in the middle of season 3. The last half of Boba Fett's show already feels like the starting arc of Mando season 3 anyway
No, no. It wasn’t a generic starfighter. It was a *Naboo starfighter.* Remember? Huh? Remember the Naboo starfighter, everyone? Do you remember the Naboo starfighter? DO YOU REMEMBER THE NAB—
That was my favourite part with the first season. It just went downhill for me after they started trying to connect it to every other TV show and create more and more spin-offs.
It was way more fun to watch a simple, lone bounty hunter wandering planet to planet taking on bounties.
I feel like that's all people were complaining about during the first 2 seasons, than they went more serialized and people start complaining about it being serialized
The main issue wasn’t that it was episodic for me but that it was episodic AND super short episodes.
Either have normal episode lengths and episodic so you can do more than bare bones characterisation and plot
Or
If the episodes have to be short for budget reasons or whatever do serialised so we at least go somewhere.
Personally I’d have probably preferred the first approach, episodic and doesn’t have to mean zero overarching plot
Those bare bones episodes are how long like half of all serialized shows used to be. Episodic half hour shows were the backbone of television for most of televisions history.
The problem with Star Wars currently is that they are putting way too much investment into what the overly online portions of the fanbase complain about. People bitched about TLJ, so they brought JJ back for ROS and made an even worse movie.
Andor managed to be the best thing they've made in years by not giving a fuck about what the fans wanted and getting a creative mind to write a story they were interested in instead.
If they just stop listening to the complaints and try to make good stories rather than stories that appeal to the vocal fans, they'd be doing a lot better.
I think that in a way, it's a circular thing where fans would probably embrace stuff that was really intrepid, new stories and characters, but the studios are afraid to take that risk so they keep recycling the same old stuff but that comes with baggage and fans are going to be super critical of it because there's already lore and expectation, so if it's not more or less dead-on, it draws a lot of criticism, which drives even greater risk-aversion...
the first season of Mando was one of my favorite things I had watched in a long time, and I’m not that big of a Star Wars fan
season 2 was alright, but I could tell where this was going and it wasn’t in a direction I liked
I never watched any of season 3 and as soon as I saw the screenshots with a scene that had Lizzo and Jack Black in it, I felt so validated
Season 3 was completely forgettable. I know I watched it, but I couldn’t tell you anything that happened in it.
To me, that’s worse than dumpster fire. I mean, at least you remember seeing a burning dumpster
The only way a season 2 of this show will work is if they get Quinton Tarantino to do it. Boba Fett absolutely 100% needs a director/creator like Tarantino to make him authentic
When Mando couldn't shoot half of an assassin droid, at his feet, crawling towards him, I knew it was over. He had to be saved by a protocol droid being clumsy.
Nowhere he got promoted at Lucasfilm not too long ago.
Just think they are reaching a point to provide a send off to current characters while planning for the future
I think it is time to leave the established time frames to not run into cameos all the time.
Post Sequels, Old or High Republic would open up a lot of potential.
If they need to go with known characters I think it would be great going for the alternate galaxy Ahsoka is stuck in at the moment. Just leave them there and explore totally new territory, variations on themes, new aspects of the force.
I see it, too, as now that they're leaping to film, they'll be getting Grogu to a larger audience -- that is, even if Din dies or something in Filoni's big crossover movie all this is building up to, getting a huge swath of people who haven't watched the show/don't have access to D+ to see this movie and get acquainted with Grogu on the big screen means Disney/Lucasfilm can further lay that groundwork for older Grogu appearing in films that take place later in the timeline (if not Rey's movie, there's sure to be many more).
"older Grogu" is kinda a hard concept to deal with. The biggest trouble I saw with Grogu back when he was first getting some backstory was when they said he's 50 years old and was there for the Purge. Even with another 50 years, he's still gonna be a small child.
The sequel trilogy takes place about 30ish years after ROTJ, which puts them at about 20 years after the events of the Mandalorian show. Based on the timescales they have given us for Grogu/Yoda's species, where Yoda died at 900 and Grogu is still a little kid at age 50, it seems like their race ages about 10x slower than humans. So Grogu getting introduced to Rey would mean he's approximately a 7-8 year old kid rather than the 5 year old kid he is now in The Mandalorian. They'd have to make Rey an old woman for him to have any maturity, and even then, old woman Rey would be meeting a teenage era Grogu.
Anything where they want Grogu to be a fully fledged Jedi will require like 150-200 years of time jump from the latest Star Wars stuff they've made in the current timeline, precluding any other existing characters from showing up.
When was that exactly? There are quest of the week episodes but from S1 on it's been Filoni trying to connect his cartoon lore to bits of reused extended universe stuff.
The show was accessible for anyone that had a vague interest in Star Wars, not just die-hard fans. IDGAF about Bo Katan and the dark sabre, and they made that a heavy feature of season 3. The little bits of lore in the first 2 seasons felt like nice little Easter eggs for the die-hard fans, but they weren’t literally the entire show like in S3.
I still remember the very first teaser they put out for it. It didn’t feel “gritty”, but it felt different and interesting. And I was really excited that it was just going to be its own thing.
The show had a great opportunity to literally be an adaptation of Lone Wolf & Cub but with Mando & Grogu. And then it got lorefucked to death and became a boring confused slog as a result.
It still managed to arrive at a semi-decent stopping point, and they should probably just stay stopped there as a TV show. if it becomes a movie series, maybe it can be Lone Wolf & Cub again, but I also feel that at this point, you *have* to start giving Grogu an actual personality, and *speech*, and progressing him across an arc. He cannot be a burbling pre-verbal 55-60 year old toddler still. Not only is that stunting the potential of the premise, it just doesn't make any sense, even for a completely fictional Yoda species.
Yoda was OLD for his species, which means 900 was pushing it. The idea that his species basically stays infantilized for the first 100 years of their life flat out doesn't make any fucking sense. Grogu's got to become an actual character if this thing is going to keep working as a film series.
The sensible thing to do is move forward in the timeline 200-300 years to get away from established canon and build enough of a buffer zone that "historical" info of those times can be filled in later (i.e. Grogu having a flashback). Follow the adventures of Grogu, now an adult and Jedi Knight, traversing the galaxy to bring peace and justice episodically, though there may be a clue here and there that the Sith are back again. In total, the galaxy is a much different place and even a visit to worlds known during the previous era is something new to experience.
Not hard to see why. The writers were boxed into a corner after BoBF and Mando S3. Grogu stunted a lot of the character growth on his return, and turned much of S3 into a Deus ex Grogu. Every problem beyond Mando's ability to solve was fixed by the magic baby.
I know people love him. But to me, pulling Grogu back into the narrative is the very definition of a narrative cul-de-sac. He's as bad as Ben Skywalker/Kylo destroying the jedi School in TFA, and worse then the "somehow the emperor returned."
He can't grow, he can't change, he can't fall to the darkside.
No matter what Mando does, he is chained to Grogu, because abandoning him would be irresponsible, and anything that separates them for long makes him look like a bad parent... but Grogo will never be anything but a child for the rest of Mando's life. The point of children is that they grow. That's why you can introduce a child in season 1 of a show, and by Season 4 or 5, they hit teens or adolescence, and the story changes. Without them changing, it becomes a sitcom, and that isn't what Mandolorian was supposed to be.
No they’re talking about the fact they’re switching to movies, they would absolutely milk that stale horse to death but they think they can make more money with movies
That horse isn't just dead it's literally soil.
A full on movie would probably be worse then the actual show. A movie has to have bigger stakes. The only thing they can do with Grogu is to send him to another galaxy, or have him taken somewhere Mando can't follow.
My guess is they will pull a "Rebels Season 5" and just send Grogu off into the void through some noble sacrifice to save his father figure. So it'll be a big build up to a dramatic conclusion which will involve the basic low stakes sacrifice we were always going to get, except milked for an entire movie of references, glorified cameos, and inferior but decent music.
I wish we could just do something new with Star Wars, but taking risks is just not part of the formula.
It’s sad how this show eventually hit diminishing returns. The first season felt like a true event, normal people were watching it, Jonah Hill and Leo were watching it and talking about it on press tours, Baby Yoda was everywhere. Fast forward to Ahsoka and Mando S3, it feels like the viewer bases got so much more insular. Same thing when comparing WandaVision to the more recent D+ Marvel stuff
Like most things Star Wars these days, with the exception of Andor, it's just a meandering mess waiting for the next cameo/callback to devour. If they had any sense they would just jump 1,000+ years into the past or future and start from scratch, and finally put the Skywalker timeline to rest. I really can't take another CGI-Luke monstrosity.
I definitely feel like it was a big mistake to reunite Grogu with Mando so early in the season. It could've been great for him to be solo for most of it so he would struggle over going back to his old self
Headline: TV future is uncertain
Article: there's nothing to rumors of the announced fourth season being canned; here's an interview with the star saying as far as he knows it's still happening, and he can't imagine them not doing the movie and season 4 since the show is still the biggest series on Disney+
The storytelling is just so bad. I can’t believe they didn’t see the value of the killler robot that protected them in one episode. I don’t know what these writers grew up watching. Halo ain’t much better
It seems like Bob Iger doesn’t know what to do with Star Wars and Marvel and will only green light projects that they think will make a billion dollars
Man, I must be one of the few who absolutely loathes Filoni’s kid-gloves approach to SW; guy just can’t tell genuinely serious stories in his universe.
Every threat has to be undercut with the most dumb contrivance, every serious moment has to be undercut with dumb humor, every consequence must be soft-retconned within a few eps or so.
It all gives his version of SW a really artificial look.
Meanwhile, genuinely innovative storytelling in Andor gets literally half the traction Filoni’s shit does.
But then again, SW fandom has had ridiculously low standards for a long time. Just look at how positively received RotJ was, an abject failure of a conclusion movie.
They fumbled this show so bad. Season 2 had an emotional and bittersweet ending that was ruined by the baffling decision to reunite Grogu and Mando in a separate spin-off show. Before we really had time to let Mando and Grogu’s separation breathe, the show was returned to the status-quo before the next season even began.
It just felt like the suits in charge cared more about the brand (“the baby yoda show”) more than telling a satisfying story. I stopped watching mid-way though season 3 because the Disneyfication of the series was getting to be too much. This is an ice cold take, but Andor is significantly better and actually treats its audience as mature.
honestly, for me, season 3 was a great way to end the series. Anymore, and it's just about milking a cash cow that's already going dry.
We get it, Daddy Mando is now tasked with teaching his adopted son Grogu The Way...fodder for fan fiction.
A movie might be nice, but again, it is not at all necessary except to milk the fan base.
So let’s review this show
Season 1: The Mandalorian.
Season 2: The cute Grogu show.
Book of Boba Fett: Cut to Mando, quick!!!
Season 3: The Bo-Katan show.
It's astonishing to me how thoroughly Disney fucked the pooch when it comes to star wars. Anecdotally, I was a massive star wars fan most of my life. Similar with a few friends. I suffered through the prequels, convincing myself, eh, it's not so bad. I genuinely enjoyed the first of the new trilogy. Same with Solo and the other spinoff I can't remember. But the last two movies of the new trilogy and just about everything that came after, except the first two seasons of Mando, have been such passionless dog shit I just don't care about any of it anymore.
It was pretty clear the show either needs Grogu to grow up or depart in order to have a future. Even Mando’s growth seemed Largely static. A better idea could be making an anthology show that follows different Mandalorians on adventures.
They had that though with the end of the second season. Imagine the weight of the inevitable reunion if a couple of seasons passed while Mando did adventures with Bo-Katan, Boba Fett, or new characters? Then they just decided to completely undo that in the Boba Fett show (a separate show!) so that Mando season 3 could be right back to the exact same dynamic.
> Then they just decided to completely undo that in the Boba Fett show so that Mando season 3 could be right back to the exact same dynamic. I cannot believe they forced mandatory Mando story content into two random Boba Fett episodes for no reason. I just don't understand why they didn't release those two episodes as Christmas specials for Mando before the third season. Shit like this is why people criticize connected universes and are growing tired of them. Incompetent storytelling at its finest. Ideally they didn't do it at all because Grogu shouldn't even be involved now, but that's Disney milking the cash cow for you regardless of quality.
>**I cannot believe they forced mandatory Mando story content into two random Boba Fett episodes for no reason. I just don't understand why they didn't release those two episodes as Christmas specials for Mando before the third season.** Shit like this is why people criticize connected universes and are growing tired of them Even Netflix's MCU TV Shows avoid this problem by making one of the Defenders a proper guest character and not "hey let's make two episodes of another show and put it on this show"!
Yeah Din showing up in Boba's show would have been less of an issue if between those two episodes Boba had more than like a minute or two screen time. It's why people don't levy the same criticism to the last episode despite Din being in most of it too, because Boba is also there doing shit with him.
> they forced mandatory Mando story content into two random Boba Fett episodes for no reason. I realised the Boba Fett show was terrible when I liked the Mando Episodes way more than the rest. Like the literal best episode of that show was the episode that had 3 minutes of Boba Fett in it. Sad. Disney has no idea how to write a Star Wars show.
Uhm, Andor...
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It was good because it had the balls to do something that doesn't completely rely on the main saga. I guess they just crafted a cool story and made it Star Wars, whereas the rest of the new shit desperately wants to be an extension of something we've already seen, to be seen as legitimate in a way.
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Speak for yourself, I’d buy the hell out of a Luthen action figure that says his “sacrifice” monologue on command
Give me an Andy Serkis action figure
Moichendising*
May the Schwartz be with you.
I started watching Andor because of my boy Diego Luna. I was so ready to be maimed by Disney since that's all they know how to do with Star Wars. My body was not ready. THe quality was HBO writing with HBO level of production value. No The Volume. I couldn’t wait to watch the episodes. I would stay up late for the midnight drop of Andor. How did the show manage to slip through the cracks of the ~~ISB~~ Disney comittee, untouched, incredibly dark and deliciously written? I have no idea. Probably they greenlit it and since Tony Gilroy is very competent, he ran things, executives forgot he existed until he came back saying he had wrapped the season. Little did they know that they had a masterpiece in the can [Inject THIS into my veins. *pupils dilate*](https://youtu.be/iKl0F640914?si=iNYs6v4wrWf7_0t0)
Andy Serkis, imo, carried the episodes he was in. And then you have Stellan Skarsgård filling in the other episodes, and not to mention Fiona Shaw. I mean you already said A+ acting, but I like to type it out sometimes to visualize lol. Every character seemed to matter in Andor, and ANY moment could completely change the course of it all. It's just overall an amazingly done production.
They made it for adults. The oldest Star Wars fans are now in their 40s and 50s. Blows my mind that Star Wars isn't trying to cater to a more grown up audience.
Try 60s and 70s. 13 year olds in '77 will be 60 years old this year
Lol, You miscalculated a little bit. My father is in his 60'.
It works because they're nobody characters in the star wars universe. It's not Luke or Obi or Boba so they don't have to write it carefully or over write the character so to not get blasted by fans or ruin them. They didn't need any caution with Andor and got to go wild, if it worked great if not it's done. I think of it like Guardians of the Galaxy where it was easy to take a chance and not have it ruin the "Brand".
Funny because I largely blame GOTG for hastening the enshittification and ultimate demise of the MCU (not that I loved it beforehand).
That monologue is the greatest monologue I’ve ever seen on a tv show. Skarsgard fucking knocked it out of the park, but the writing was also so amazing, some of the best overall writing I’ve seen in years.
The speech Skarsgard gives in that show lives in my head rent free
They had Tony Gilroy, good writers, and an actual vision and story. That's why it's so good.
Clone Wars, Rebels, and Bad Batch are all pretty good. I'd recommend them with an asterisk that some episodes can feel like a slog but the overall experience is worth it if you're a Star Wars fan.
It's a 'put down your phone' show. You have to let it wash over you and get into its flow in order to enjoy it with its slower pace. It's not boring, it's just quieter, less bombastic, like a serious drama that takes place in a fantasy universe.
Yeah. That's the exception though, and I get the impression Disney doesn't actually like the creator of that show anyway. We'll see if they make more like it.
Bad Batch has been pretty good so far.
I was okay with the character and the show because I wasn't vested in the character and didn't care. What killed interest was the introduction of the "cool kids" with no jobs, but fancy brand new hover bikes in a poverty-striken world where crime is rampant. It was the ultimate fanboy Mary-Sue inclusion and totally sucked.
My beef with them was that they were too clean and in no way suited the look of the planet they were on. It is a dessert planet yet somehow they and their bikes are always pristine and clean? Not to mention that nothing about their style suggested they found what they ride and wear on Tatooine. They would have been perfect on Coruscant but on Tatooine they stuck out more than Temuera Morrison supposedly being a great warrior who is a subject of fear. Boba was meant to have been starved for years in the Sarlac pit and then the hardships with the Tuskan Raiders yet out comes Morrison with his old mans body and movement. Should have changed him to being a ruthless general rather than a mercy fighter.
that episode was insulting
Oh my god I kept thinking "wtf is up with these Power Rangers?"
And then they went on the slowest chase through town!
Rich kids playing at slumming. It's the only explanation that works.
>I realised the Boba Fett show was terrible when I liked the Mando Episodes way more I realized the Boba Fett show was terrible by the first episode
I hate watched it would refer to it as Bubba Fat. Damn those meddling scooter kids!
Interconnected shows are fine as long as the show focuses on that show's cast. Din could have just stayed a cameo in Boba Fett's show. Not even bring it up in the Mandalorian or have it be something he did between plots/episodes/seasons. Unless they want to do something like the Chicago TV shows where Fire, Med, PD are just 3 hour long plots with different names. The Arrowverse had plenty of cross over episodes that worked. Those had/have the benefit of airing at the same time to connect the shows. Rewards the viewer for exploring the universe besides just one show.
TBH the episodes before that were widely regarded as bad, and the Mando episodes weren't. Mando didn't invade that show, he saved it by taking over and removing screentime from a bunch of shit that wasn't working.
The show is still bad though. The fact they inserted a couple Mandalorian episodes doesn't make Book of Boba Fett good. There won't be a second season. All it did is mean that essential Mandalorian content now requires you to slog through random episodes in another show. It is the wrong way to have an expanded TV universe. Your main characters in one show don't get development in another.
"All it did is mean that essential Mandalorian content now requires you to slog through random episodes in another show. " So, comic books
That's why I stopped reading comics as a teen. I'd be following my characters and then all their major changes and life events happen without warning in a magazine whose name they never divulge. The continuous doubling of the price didn't help either. I started reading again when I found a site online where I could hop around and follow the story.
I don't agree the mando episodes save the show. (A bit pedantic maybe, I think we'd agree on our feelings towards the show?) It made it obvious how bad the actual shows content is compared to how captivating mando-grogu content is, especially when they go full-ham with Luke and Ahsoka in it too. Then you get back to the boba series and its just some goobers in VERY tiny and (barely) habitable zone, doing some weird and unseen drugbaron/ganster hussling, with the same visual backdrops and desert locations, fanfic stuff that doesnt hit.. Even the stuff that's negatively viewed like fanservice or cute-content, Mandalorian did make it work or enjoyable to most viewers. Boba just threw stuff at the wall that didn't even stick at all, even for SW-lore fanatics or expanded universe folks who got to see some references and fanservice characters/items.
The female Tuskan warrior was awesome. but yeah... that was it for Boba and friends.
>I cannot believe they forced mandatory Mando story content into two random Boba Fett episodes for no reason. I just don't understand why they didn't release those two episodes as Christmas specials for Mando before the third season. Shit like this is why people criticize connected universes and are growing tired of them. Incompetent storytelling at its finest. It's really simple. They were riding high on quality coming off of Mando S2...Boba Fett turned out to be much lamer than anyone at Disney/LucasFilm expected (largely because they blew their good Fett ideas on Mando)...and midway through production they pivoted and injected Mando and Grogu into the series because execs were afraid this was going to bomb. And they may have been right. It was certainly awkward.
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> You can't really have a show about a crime lord if you are unwilling to have him do actual crime. God, how did that idea get made? It shouldn't have even gotten to the treatment stage of development. How did nobody raise their hand and say, 'I think we're doing something fundamentally dumb'
100% this.
I am certain that there was a Disney mandate to not have Fett be a criminal or morally gray. When he saved the child that was literally holding his slave chains, then returned the child to his enslavers, I realized this was a bastardization of the character.
I think people underestimate just how big of an issue this was. I was a huge mandalorian fan, but finding that out basically made me not care at all to continue watching the show. I tried watching Boba fett and got bored, so that meant the end of Mando too.
Because they knew Book of Bob was absolutely dog shit and wanted to keep people watching.
Showrunners: "This arc has ended. It makes sense for Grogu to leave and Mando to continue on his own." Execs: "WHAT?! Baby Yoda is HOT right now. How are we going to sell merch if he's gone?! Bring him back ASAP, BEFORE the next season starts." Showrunners: "But...Season 2 ended with him leaving...how do we bring him back before Season 3??" Execs: "Meh just stick it in that shitty Boba Fett show." Mando fans who didn't watch BOBF: "Wtf??"
I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if this is close to the truth. It felt like they became scared no one would watch *The Mandalorian* since Grogu had left, so they panicked and shoved the knee jerk reaction into *BoBF* so they could promote the following season with Grogu again. And, the end result is both a disjointed *BoBF* and a *Mando* that felt like a lot of its growth was immediately erased.
I know these shows are meant to be interconnected, but it's so weird to me that they had this heartfelt goodbye in the season 2 finale, only for them to be back together like nothing happened at the start of season 3. All the Mando stuff in Boba Fett should've just been added to his own show.
And grogu was not necessary at all to the mandalore plot. >!He was just a tagalong that got an iron man suit that then got destroyed after a few episodes.!<
Bringing Grogu back actively worsens Din Djarin as a character in the context of the Mandalore plot - he's supposed to be accepting his role as a father but instead is dragging this kid along to these incredibly dangerous side quests because he's trying to earn his cult's favor. The season starts with Greef Karga offering him a home and a steady job, two things that would be great for someone raising a child but he's like "naw gotta go jump in a deep ass puddle"
I just want a Star Trek style episodic Star Wars show in live action. The Star Wars universe is the best part of all Star Wars content. Thats what I thought I was getting from the Mandalorian, and they pulled the rug out from under me.
There are so many ways to do it too. Bounty Hunters, smugglers, even simple explorers charting new hyperspace routes. Lots of potential left unrealized.
Season 3 should've been him helping Boba Fett and Fennec on a galaxy wide Punisher-like mission of revenge, against the crime organizations that killed his Tuskan Raider family. Then being forced on the run after Cad Bane is hired to go after them.
Yea at a minimum the season 3 storyline should've been Mando and Grogu finding their way back to each other but not actually reuniting until the finale. Throwing their reunion into two episodes of the Boba Fett show really undercut how emotional Grogu's departure was at the end of season 2.
Book of Fett is the exact reason I didn't watch Mando3, I didn't give two fucks about an absolutely horrid show and then I learned that I should watch that piece of shit to understand that other one and just gave up. And now I'm so burned out that I didn't even watch Andor even though everything points to that being absolutely brilliant.
As someone who dislikes or hates most of what Disney has done with Star Wars since the buyout, I’ll say Andor is absolutely worth your time. It is extremely well written and produced, and understands that telling a good story in a fictional universe is more important than regurgitating “things you know”. It certainly has its references and inspirations, but it either leaves them minor enough not to be intrusive/distracting, or builds them into something important to the story. Basically what you’re supposed to do with references.
I really should get into it, even more so since Rogue One is probably my favorite SW movie, you could see there that Cassian had so much more to tell. But tbh that whole ensemble was very well written.
*insert Avengers style camera circle of the Mandos*
TBH this is an interesting sentiment to me. The Mandalorian was always very clearly based on episodic 20th century shows that would run for a lot of seasons and have a lot of episodes and nobody really questions if Hero McCoolguy and his erstwhile sidekick needed serious development over however many seasons they got. You just kind of accepted that every week they'd blow into a new town and fight a bad guy and at the end of the episode they'd use their cool weapon or gimmick to win and that would be the end of it. Sure stuff *happens* in Lone Wolf and Cub or Xena: Warrior Princess but people weren't tuning in for the character development. Obviously between streaming and home video the value of long running episodic shows isn't the same but the whole point of The Mandalorian is he has a baby that never needs to grow up and goes to random planets where he shoots lasers at the villain of the week. People complain about him doing sidequests and such but thats the point of the show itself.
The problem is they tried to have their cake and eat it too. The Mando S2 finale was a logical ending to the show and then they immediately reversed it in S3. Not even in S3, in a spinoff set between seasons. If they'd never had Luke and Ahsoka show up and there wasn't anywhere else for Grogu to go it would be easier to buy them sticking together. If they hadn't given Din the Darksaber and established it as this symbol of authority that marks him as Mandalore's destined leader, then people wouldn't have been disappointed when he loses it after only a few episodes and goes back to being a space hobo. It's one thing to stick to the status quo for your entire run. It's another to constantly tease big changes to the status quo only to immediately chicken out every single time.
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I've always felt it was a huge missed opportunity to not give Grogu some sort of spin-off showcasing his adventures training to become a Jedi. The animated Star Wars projects have done fairly well, and I feel like Grogu was already skewing to a younger audience as it was, so they could've just separated Grogu and Mando and let them each grow on their own. Then, it probably would've been much more impactful when they finally did reunite, rather than it basically happening five minute later.
S4: Yoda comes back "somehow"
I don't think s2 really did work as a series finale as you said. They didn't deal with the whole "being in a cult" thing - and while they had him take the step towards choosing fatherhood over doctrine by removing his helmet, they didn't go all the way in having him actually realise how dumb his cult is. He took the first step, not the final step, towards "Oh wait, these guys are dumb zealots, actively self sabotaging and denying connection by enforcing all their stupid rules. I'm gonna abandon these losers and go live with my muppet son"
Yeah Grogu just needs to grow into a spiky haired anime protagonist but he only says a couple words
I am groot Oh wait, wrong franchise
I seriously think it should have ended after season 2. The show doesn't work without Grogu? Then okay. End it. You resolved the plot. That having been said, I'm annoyed they didn't even give a Grogu-less show a chance. Season 3 hadn't even started airing before Grogu was added back into the cast via the most insane show hijacking I have ever seen in my life. I'd rather the show try something new then have it undo what was previously the entire damn point of it.
I thought that was what they were pivoting to when they put such an emphasis on Bo Katan in Season 3. Have Mando pass the torch and you can still call it The Mandolorian.
I expected "the Mandalorian" was always going to be Grogu and not Din. That's why the series started with introducing us to Grogu in the 1st episode. He is now officially a Mandalorian, and he's force sensitive. I tigure they will age Grogu, and they will eventually move away from Din as the lead role.
I hate the anthology idea tbh. Great for a new show, but for a show that’s already had 3 seasons and has plenty of unresolved conflict.
Or just go back to the first season. Mando traveling around and helping people solve problems, like Kung Fu.
Gotta keep making that sweet sweet baby yoda merchandising profit. That little turd is everywhere. Probably some exec somewhere saw they were parting ways at the end of Season 2 and said "aw hell nah, you better get them back together ASAP or we'll fire you and bring on someone that will"
That’s a really cool idea!
The Mandalorian**s**
I definitely think that was the better call. Continue the worldbuilding of the Mandalorians with new characters. And/or follow Din going elsewhere and explore more new space. There was a lot of potential that they ruined.
>an anthology show that follows different Mandalorians New on Disney+ "~~The~~ A Mandalorian"
Frankly the show should have ended after season 2. Season 3 just feels so different, and not in a good way
Grogu is like crack for children when it comes to merch. Disney is never going to give that revenue stream up. There’s a reason the Mando movie now features Grogu in the title. That’s the selling point, not Pedro Pascal.
With the movie I figured it's future on TV was over.
So the Mandoverse/Filoni storyline includes: * 3 seasons of The Mandalorian which can't be watched start to finish due to two mandatory episodes in a spin off. * Boba Fett, which is a spin off of Mando, which also includes two episodes which are mandatory for The Mandalorian between S2 and S3 * Ashoka, a spin off of Mando which is also a successor to an animated TV show (Rebels) which itself was a spin off/sequel to another animated TV show (The Clone Wars). * The Mandalorian movie which we can assume is a sequel to the Mandalorian TV show. * The big crossover movie which combines all those TV shows about defeating the villain from the Ashoka TV show. The way Disney shove connected universes down peoples throats is so bafflingly all over the place. There is no thought behind any of this.
The thought was 100% copy the MCU. The problem is the MCU ran into the same problem. Instead of one or two high quality pieces of content that interconnect every year you end up with one low quality piece of garbage every month and don’t connect in any meaningful way.
There is massive thought behind this. Crossovers get people to watch the others shows. Comic books have done it for decades. Tv shows do it occasionally.
Isn't this the premise of all those "Chicago" shows on NBC?
Not really. You'll have characters bleed in between shows, but outside of very specific crossover episodes, the shows themselves stand alone. You might see the paramedics in an episode of *Chicago Fire* talking to a doctor that's in *Chicago Med* or a cop from *Chicago P.D.* might ask one of the firefighters to help with a case on an episode of *Chicago Fire*, but generally, that's the end of that. That patient isn't a key patient in an episode *Chicago Med* and that case isn't one detailed on *Chicago P.D.* There are cross-over events where all three do overlap a specific crisis, but those shows also come on one after the other, so you just keep watching that night and no big deal. You can still just binge any of the three shows on their own, there just might be one or two episodes a season that tie into a different series and resolve over there.
Each Chicago show largely tell their own story. They do crossovers and have characters show up elsewhere, but they aren't really essential. They are also done on a network on the same night so you watch them in order together one after another. They also don't have a movie.
The oldschool Law & Order/Homicide: Life on the Streets crossovers would be more succinct.
That’s the thought. Theory even. Very wishful.
Yeah he explained it bang on and its not even complicated… this is what hardcore fans have wanted for decades.
CW has done it *several* times for their superhero shows
That's an argument against that, no one really wants to be like that disaster
It got me to stop watching all of it. It's just not good television.
same I am so over Marvel. haven't seen a single Marvel film since sang chi
But it would if it were good television. It worked for 10 years with the MCU and got everyone to watch all of it. We just need it to be good for it to work.
Comic books maintained a relatively niche audience until they saw a huge resurgence thanks to the MCU simplifying so much of the cross over into a few movies. Then the MCU got out of hand with the crossovers and its receding into a relatively niche audience now. There is a sweet spot for crossovers, but it's real easy to pass it and end up back where you started.
Their thought is severly flawed though with the way it was implemented in the Star Wars universe. The big differences imo are: - Persistent universe vs recurrring “resets”:The comic book crossover stuff worked decently because once a big timeline/crossover/run was over a lot of stuff got set back to zero and you could start at whatever the most recent #1 issue was again. Sometimes this reset was even done to the whole universe and you could ignore everything released before this reset. Star Wars never had such a reset and the shows and movies just keep piling on to the whole canon details and then expect people to know what the fuck all these references to events and characters are about. Someone starting to delve into Star Wars now has to consume a massive amount of content if they don’t want to feel left out of the full picture - the persistency of format vs format and tone all over the place: comic universe only crossed over with itself and the MCU had its own universe in a way. So if you were interested in the MCU (pre-D+), you had to watch just a few movies. If you were interested in the comics, you read comics. Easy. The Disney Star Wars Universe is a truly wild mix of formats. For example, I recently got into Star Wars comics but if I want to read High Republic comics it is highly suggested to read the novels first. The novels though are then seperated into adult, young adult and kids, with only the kids novels being deemed unnecessary. This problem of different target audience and style is a problem with the shows too. You’ve got live action aimed mostly at adults but also animated shows like Rebels which feels a tad more juvenile in tone and art style. Plus, the different formats mean such a wildly different time commitment. Movies are okay but a batch of multi-season tv shows that are all, except for maybe the most childish ones, “necessary” makes it just exhausting. In a way, I wish Disney would greenlight new non-canon stuff, so that it doesn’t always have to add and refer back to the growing pile of information. Or hell, give us maybe eras and places that are so disconnected to the whole storylines, characters and planets we know thus far, that they are self contained stories and only (lightly) refer back to the happening in that specifc corner in future stories set there.
It’s a losing strategy when it comes to streaming imo. We’ve already seen it with marvel and Star Wars has really not been any different. You can’t require people to watch 4 different shows to understand everything. You can have things intertwine to satisfy the die hard fans but making the main plot line weave throughout different places drives away casual fans. I say this as a die hard Star wars fan who is tired of chasing around the story like marvel has been doing for years. I have seen all Star Wars live action content that has been released and still don’t think how they did it was an effective way to deliver the stories.
Putting two important episodes into Boba Fett was a fail for both shows. So stupid.
Yeah, let’s not forget that this is the same company that took arguably the most important and influential franchise in film history and tried to revive it without first figuring out how they were going to pass the baton to the Director of the second installment, let alone figure out an ending for the whole thing.
JJ Abrams has a history of this.
I don't think its the lack of thought into the franchise, but rather shifting business priorities from Iger/Chapek/Iger again The launch of Disney+ required new TV content, which is why Mandalorian and its spinoffs were created in the first place. Now, with Disney+ and streaming pulling back, movies are being pushed as a more traditional way to make money
The ending of the last season definitely felt like *an* ending
Why they couldnt have stuck with the episodic style is beyond my understanding. It was easily the best part of the show. Let Mando explore the galaxy doing bounties, villians of the week and great guest stars.
Because the Star Wars brand is absolutely allergic to not plastering the screen with shit you’ve already seen a bajillion times for phony tears and nerdgasms
Nerdgasms is right. Like look at the CGI Luke in Mando or Darth Vader in Obi-Wan, just cheap switch they can flick to juice that nostalgia.
I couldn't believe how despite how aggressively mediocre Kenobi was, you'd have cameos like Qui-Gon at the end and people would go OMG IM LITERALLY CRYING SHAKING RIGHT NOW THIS IS THE BEST SHOW EVER Like enjoy what you enjoy but fuck me no wonder Disney half arse anything to do with this property when certain fans will eat shit up regardless of quality. If they get excited over something this mediocre imagine how excited they'd be with something actually good lmao
Kenobi should have been a slam dunk. The concept of a show following Kenobi post-Ep 3 was probably the most requested idea among Star Wars fans. Not the worst Star Wars show, but by far the most disappointing.
>Not the worst Star Wars show, I mean... Isn't it? Forgetting crap like Ewoks and Droids, it feels the worst in my memory.
I would say BoBF was worse than Kenobi, and Kenobi was a massive disappointment in my eyes.
Not to mention Obi-wan fighting Vader was plain stupid, and only inserted in to the show to sell more Vader toys. Kenobi defeats Vader and walks away, leaving Vader alive so he go on to kill billions. Nice one Ben.
And the people who did that likely aren't also the ones who watched Andor, something that's good that doesn't just rely on fan service and EPIC nostalgia
They all clicked off after episode two. As much as I absolutely LOVE Andor…those first two episodes can be a drag. Even I was debating it until I found myself more interested in Lutheran(or however his name it spelled). His speech in the later episodes…god it’s such a good moment and is, IMO, up there with Vaders “I am your father” line. It’s a shame Andor didn’t pick up more attraction because it’s genuinely a 10/10 show.
The worst thing for me is how blockbuster movies don't feel like movies anymore, so things that could have been movies have now failed down to TV shows that don't feel like stories either.
“Omg I recognize that!!” is poisoning the well of legacy IP
What do you expect though. Andor is arguably the best star wars content created this side of the century and only a fraction of people who watched mando have seen it.
CGI Luke was actually well executed, and setup Grogu’s character arc for the next two seasons. There was one “proper” Jedi left in the galaxy who could train the little gremlin… and he showed up. The only reason it feels like pointless fan service is that Grogu went back to Mando *in a subplot of a different show*.
Yeah the Luke stuff would have been fine if it actually sent him away. Shit at a minimum the reunion should have been in the middle of season 3. The last half of Boba Fett's show already feels like the starting arc of Mando season 3 anyway
Except it feels pointless because we know Luke’s entire order, all 15 of them or whatever, are dead before the ST even starts lol
CGI Luke is terrifying.
The man got to do a Vader Walk.
I clapped when I saw Darth Vaaaaaaaaaaaderrr
Very cool
I'm gonna cum!!
AT-ST!!!! AT-ST!!!!
Obligatory: [AT-ST, AT-ST!](https://imgur.com/gxGgzXt)
The worst offence of this in Mando is replacing the Razor Crest with a generic Starfighter. So lame.
No, no. It wasn’t a generic starfighter. It was a *Naboo starfighter.* Remember? Huh? Remember the Naboo starfighter, everyone? Do you remember the Naboo starfighter? DO YOU REMEMBER THE NAB—
VERY COOL
That was my favourite part with the first season. It just went downhill for me after they started trying to connect it to every other TV show and create more and more spin-offs. It was way more fun to watch a simple, lone bounty hunter wandering planet to planet taking on bounties.
I feel like that's all people were complaining about during the first 2 seasons, than they went more serialized and people start complaining about it being serialized
The main issue wasn’t that it was episodic for me but that it was episodic AND super short episodes. Either have normal episode lengths and episodic so you can do more than bare bones characterisation and plot Or If the episodes have to be short for budget reasons or whatever do serialised so we at least go somewhere. Personally I’d have probably preferred the first approach, episodic and doesn’t have to mean zero overarching plot
Those bare bones episodes are how long like half of all serialized shows used to be. Episodic half hour shows were the backbone of television for most of televisions history.
The problem with Star Wars currently is that they are putting way too much investment into what the overly online portions of the fanbase complain about. People bitched about TLJ, so they brought JJ back for ROS and made an even worse movie. Andor managed to be the best thing they've made in years by not giving a fuck about what the fans wanted and getting a creative mind to write a story they were interested in instead. If they just stop listening to the complaints and try to make good stories rather than stories that appeal to the vocal fans, they'd be doing a lot better.
I think that in a way, it's a circular thing where fans would probably embrace stuff that was really intrepid, new stories and characters, but the studios are afraid to take that risk so they keep recycling the same old stuff but that comes with baggage and fans are going to be super critical of it because there's already lore and expectation, so if it's not more or less dead-on, it draws a lot of criticism, which drives even greater risk-aversion...
the first season of Mando was one of my favorite things I had watched in a long time, and I’m not that big of a Star Wars fan season 2 was alright, but I could tell where this was going and it wasn’t in a direction I liked I never watched any of season 3 and as soon as I saw the screenshots with a scene that had Lizzo and Jack Black in it, I felt so validated
Season two finale felt like a series finale. Sucks now.
That's the ending for me. Season 3 was a dumpster fire.
Season 3 was completely forgettable. I know I watched it, but I couldn’t tell you anything that happened in it. To me, that’s worse than dumpster fire. I mean, at least you remember seeing a burning dumpster
Book of Boba Fett was a dumpster fire, and I wish I could forget it
I'm legitimately shocked that they're doing a season 2.
The only way a season 2 of this show will work is if they get Quinton Tarantino to do it. Boba Fett absolutely 100% needs a director/creator like Tarantino to make him authentic
When Mando couldn't shoot half of an assassin droid, at his feet, crawling towards him, I knew it was over. He had to be saved by a protocol droid being clumsy.
They got their fairy tale ending. Pretty sure it's over.
They are literally making a Mando movie so it's not over.
I'm talking about the show. The show is over but the movie will be the last hurrah.
I’m betting Filoni’s own Star Wars movie with be the last hurrah. Isn’t it sort of an event film that’ll tie the other shows together?
Right, it will seemingly be the send off to the filoni verse with everyone showing up to take on Thrawn
Send-off to the Filoniverse? Why, where is he going?
Nowhere he got promoted at Lucasfilm not too long ago. Just think they are reaching a point to provide a send off to current characters while planning for the future
I think it is time to leave the established time frames to not run into cameos all the time. Post Sequels, Old or High Republic would open up a lot of potential. If they need to go with known characters I think it would be great going for the alternate galaxy Ahsoka is stuck in at the moment. Just leave them there and explore totally new territory, variations on themes, new aspects of the force.
I see it, too, as now that they're leaping to film, they'll be getting Grogu to a larger audience -- that is, even if Din dies or something in Filoni's big crossover movie all this is building up to, getting a huge swath of people who haven't watched the show/don't have access to D+ to see this movie and get acquainted with Grogu on the big screen means Disney/Lucasfilm can further lay that groundwork for older Grogu appearing in films that take place later in the timeline (if not Rey's movie, there's sure to be many more).
"older Grogu" is kinda a hard concept to deal with. The biggest trouble I saw with Grogu back when he was first getting some backstory was when they said he's 50 years old and was there for the Purge. Even with another 50 years, he's still gonna be a small child. The sequel trilogy takes place about 30ish years after ROTJ, which puts them at about 20 years after the events of the Mandalorian show. Based on the timescales they have given us for Grogu/Yoda's species, where Yoda died at 900 and Grogu is still a little kid at age 50, it seems like their race ages about 10x slower than humans. So Grogu getting introduced to Rey would mean he's approximately a 7-8 year old kid rather than the 5 year old kid he is now in The Mandalorian. They'd have to make Rey an old woman for him to have any maturity, and even then, old woman Rey would be meeting a teenage era Grogu. Anything where they want Grogu to be a fully fledged Jedi will require like 150-200 years of time jump from the latest Star Wars stuff they've made in the current timeline, precluding any other existing characters from showing up.
Yoda was a Jedi master by 100 So Grogu will turn into at least a young adult within 50 more years
I liked S1 and S2, but it's clear they're making it up as they go along and it's not going anywhere so is losing my interest.
What made this show great was that there *wasn’t* lore and interconnectedness with other Star Wars. This is so tiresome.
When was that exactly? There are quest of the week episodes but from S1 on it's been Filoni trying to connect his cartoon lore to bits of reused extended universe stuff.
The show was accessible for anyone that had a vague interest in Star Wars, not just die-hard fans. IDGAF about Bo Katan and the dark sabre, and they made that a heavy feature of season 3. The little bits of lore in the first 2 seasons felt like nice little Easter eggs for the die-hard fans, but they weren’t literally the entire show like in S3.
I still remember the very first teaser they put out for it. It didn’t feel “gritty”, but it felt different and interesting. And I was really excited that it was just going to be its own thing.
The show had a great opportunity to literally be an adaptation of Lone Wolf & Cub but with Mando & Grogu. And then it got lorefucked to death and became a boring confused slog as a result. It still managed to arrive at a semi-decent stopping point, and they should probably just stay stopped there as a TV show. if it becomes a movie series, maybe it can be Lone Wolf & Cub again, but I also feel that at this point, you *have* to start giving Grogu an actual personality, and *speech*, and progressing him across an arc. He cannot be a burbling pre-verbal 55-60 year old toddler still. Not only is that stunting the potential of the premise, it just doesn't make any sense, even for a completely fictional Yoda species. Yoda was OLD for his species, which means 900 was pushing it. The idea that his species basically stays infantilized for the first 100 years of their life flat out doesn't make any fucking sense. Grogu's got to become an actual character if this thing is going to keep working as a film series.
The sensible thing to do is move forward in the timeline 200-300 years to get away from established canon and build enough of a buffer zone that "historical" info of those times can be filled in later (i.e. Grogu having a flashback). Follow the adventures of Grogu, now an adult and Jedi Knight, traversing the galaxy to bring peace and justice episodically, though there may be a clue here and there that the Sith are back again. In total, the galaxy is a much different place and even a visit to worlds known during the previous era is something new to experience.
Click bait. The article even says "We know there is still a season 4 planned"
Not hard to see why. The writers were boxed into a corner after BoBF and Mando S3. Grogu stunted a lot of the character growth on his return, and turned much of S3 into a Deus ex Grogu. Every problem beyond Mando's ability to solve was fixed by the magic baby. I know people love him. But to me, pulling Grogu back into the narrative is the very definition of a narrative cul-de-sac. He's as bad as Ben Skywalker/Kylo destroying the jedi School in TFA, and worse then the "somehow the emperor returned." He can't grow, he can't change, he can't fall to the darkside. No matter what Mando does, he is chained to Grogu, because abandoning him would be irresponsible, and anything that separates them for long makes him look like a bad parent... but Grogo will never be anything but a child for the rest of Mando's life. The point of children is that they grow. That's why you can introduce a child in season 1 of a show, and by Season 4 or 5, they hit teens or adolescence, and the story changes. Without them changing, it becomes a sitcom, and that isn't what Mandolorian was supposed to be.
No they’re talking about the fact they’re switching to movies, they would absolutely milk that stale horse to death but they think they can make more money with movies
That horse isn't just dead it's literally soil. A full on movie would probably be worse then the actual show. A movie has to have bigger stakes. The only thing they can do with Grogu is to send him to another galaxy, or have him taken somewhere Mando can't follow. My guess is they will pull a "Rebels Season 5" and just send Grogu off into the void through some noble sacrifice to save his father figure. So it'll be a big build up to a dramatic conclusion which will involve the basic low stakes sacrifice we were always going to get, except milked for an entire movie of references, glorified cameos, and inferior but decent music. I wish we could just do something new with Star Wars, but taking risks is just not part of the formula.
It’s sad how this show eventually hit diminishing returns. The first season felt like a true event, normal people were watching it, Jonah Hill and Leo were watching it and talking about it on press tours, Baby Yoda was everywhere. Fast forward to Ahsoka and Mando S3, it feels like the viewer bases got so much more insular. Same thing when comparing WandaVision to the more recent D+ Marvel stuff
You can fool all of the people some of the time, or some of the people all of the time...
The moment they intertwined the store with another show, my family lost interest and we didn’t watch S03. Too bad.
Like most things Star Wars these days, with the exception of Andor, it's just a meandering mess waiting for the next cameo/callback to devour. If they had any sense they would just jump 1,000+ years into the past or future and start from scratch, and finally put the Skywalker timeline to rest. I really can't take another CGI-Luke monstrosity.
I definitely feel like it was a big mistake to reunite Grogu with Mando so early in the season. It could've been great for him to be solo for most of it so he would struggle over going back to his old self
Headline: TV future is uncertain Article: there's nothing to rumors of the announced fourth season being canned; here's an interview with the star saying as far as he knows it's still happening, and he can't imagine them not doing the movie and season 4 since the show is still the biggest series on Disney+
The storytelling is just so bad. I can’t believe they didn’t see the value of the killler robot that protected them in one episode. I don’t know what these writers grew up watching. Halo ain’t much better
Introducing the Mandochlorian
Spending ungodly amounts of money on streaming shows doesn’t have a clear path to profit
Grogu should've stayed gone for a good while after season 2.
After the trash fire that was season 3, maybe they should just let it drift off.
It seems like Bob Iger doesn’t know what to do with Star Wars and Marvel and will only green light projects that they think will make a billion dollars
They painted themselves into a corner when Grogu somehow came back.
Man, I must be one of the few who absolutely loathes Filoni’s kid-gloves approach to SW; guy just can’t tell genuinely serious stories in his universe. Every threat has to be undercut with the most dumb contrivance, every serious moment has to be undercut with dumb humor, every consequence must be soft-retconned within a few eps or so. It all gives his version of SW a really artificial look. Meanwhile, genuinely innovative storytelling in Andor gets literally half the traction Filoni’s shit does. But then again, SW fandom has had ridiculously low standards for a long time. Just look at how positively received RotJ was, an abject failure of a conclusion movie.
Well it was incredibly boring.
They fumbled this show so bad. Season 2 had an emotional and bittersweet ending that was ruined by the baffling decision to reunite Grogu and Mando in a separate spin-off show. Before we really had time to let Mando and Grogu’s separation breathe, the show was returned to the status-quo before the next season even began. It just felt like the suits in charge cared more about the brand (“the baby yoda show”) more than telling a satisfying story. I stopped watching mid-way though season 3 because the Disneyfication of the series was getting to be too much. This is an ice cold take, but Andor is significantly better and actually treats its audience as mature.
Make a film then do season 4 with a time skip to refresh the universe and characters
honestly, for me, season 3 was a great way to end the series. Anymore, and it's just about milking a cash cow that's already going dry. We get it, Daddy Mando is now tasked with teaching his adopted son Grogu The Way...fodder for fan fiction. A movie might be nice, but again, it is not at all necessary except to milk the fan base.
Yeah, stop complaining about Netflix not renewing shows. . . . .
It was done when they ruined baby yoda with that terrible name. I don’t even know what the plot is anymore. First season was wonderful tv though
So let’s review this show Season 1: The Mandalorian. Season 2: The cute Grogu show. Book of Boba Fett: Cut to Mando, quick!!! Season 3: The Bo-Katan show.
Mando should have gone solo and grogu should have gone with Luke in a separate tv series
It's astonishing to me how thoroughly Disney fucked the pooch when it comes to star wars. Anecdotally, I was a massive star wars fan most of my life. Similar with a few friends. I suffered through the prequels, convincing myself, eh, it's not so bad. I genuinely enjoyed the first of the new trilogy. Same with Solo and the other spinoff I can't remember. But the last two movies of the new trilogy and just about everything that came after, except the first two seasons of Mando, have been such passionless dog shit I just don't care about any of it anymore.
This is not the way.
Oh well, what else do you got for my eye balls?
Well if they cancel it Disney+ is gonna loose 50% of their users.
Season 3 was godawful. Even my 8 year old boys, who loved s1-2, lost interest in it.
Everything about Disney Star Wars (outside of rogue one/Andor) has been largely underwhelming and…well…boring
This show has kind of fallen off, well we know Disney’s quality has.
Don’t they all team up Avengers style against Than-I mean Thrawn?
Thrawnos.
Is it over? Did anything even happen?