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The season finale of The Mandalorian is called ‘The Return’ and it essentially quickly wraps up in a trim episode with no real surprises or twists or turns to speak of with really only one exception: The destruction of the Darksaber, which I guess isn’t really important in the scheme of things because it was smashed quite easily. Its destruction, like most of this episode, was a little anticlimactic and simple.
After all of the teasing about ‘the spies’ previously, the finale played it 100% straight — all of the Mandalorians are heroes and some like Axe are self-sacrificing ones. The only sinister people are Moff Gideon himself and his supporters, whoever they are. The episode reveals that he’s been building clones of himself with Force powers, which seems like more of an interesting idea than the ten seconds the episode throws at it.
I can’t say that it seems to matter one way or another and even Gideon doesn’t seem to be any more invested in killing Mandalore than before because of a personal investment. The lack of emotional investment makes the final fight scenes less impactful, because it’s more of a repetition of similar themes we’ve seen before.
In the first season, Grogu surprises by saving the heroes from a fiery attack and here he simply ‘levels up’ by doing a better job against a huge explosion of fire instead. And … does that mean Gideon is gone? Blown up in a non-personal way by a crashing spaceship? Feels like a more careless choice for the major antagonist we only saw again last episode.
The burst of energy we got last episode was dissipated quickly, and although there was no sudden saving from a CGI Luke Skywalker this time, the ending was more along the lines of the basic theme of the season explicitly stated: These people are stronger together, more than simply using a bunch of fancy trinkets. I mean that should be obvious enough from how Boba Fett ate it in Return of the Jedi because his fancy trinkets didn’t help him.
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There were some fun segments — Din leveling up as he goes through shields by getting new weapons was a nice touch, even if it was a little short and never got really crazy. The final fights between Grogu, Din, Bo-Katan, the Praetorian Guards, and Gideon were fine, really, not as dynamic as things have been. For a Force user, Grogu didn’t use it much in any visually interesting way.
The investigation by Carson Teva is also wrapped up quickly by simply never happening — it was solved for him as Din mentions it to him. All of the stuff on Coruscant and hints of other ideas like the mysteries of Nevarro are ignored in the rush to end the season.
The ending was both an open-ended call to who knows how many adventures in the future (the word ‘adventures’ is literally mentioned) as a mercenary for the side of good only under the New Republic and also a potential series finale. The final shot of Din out on a porch while Grogu Force lifts a little frog feels like a ‘And they lived happily ever after’ vibe too.
But I’ve felt that the season in general has been a mess — I don’t know if there was any issue with the writing or planning that was affected by the Boba Fett show which suddenly added Grogu and Din to it at the last minute and how this show seemed to want Bo-Katan to be the new protagonist but couldn’t quite pull that off.
It’s frustrating because the show was so effective until now, especially with its action scenes and character moments, and this season wasn’t as consistent with that sort of thing. It’s entertaining still, but it doesn’t live up to the standard it already set for itself.
What did you think of the season finale? Sound off in the comments below!
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