Salaam!
So it’s out. Been talking about it with friends and following the discourse on twitter and sufficient velocity since I saw it, and have been thinking about it more or less non-stop as well. I knew I wanted to write something pretty much immediately, even if I wasn’t sure what exactly it was. Was kind of averse to doing so because of the entire horrible discourse issue.
But I’ve been a fan of Star Wars since I was a kid, and while recent events haven’t marked the end of that they’ve marked a definite metamorphosis. I’m twenty-six, not exactly old enough to have watched the originals in movies, but my dad showed them to me and my brother when we were pretty young and they’re old favorites. I’m pretty sure I caught all of the prequels in movies and have fond memories of playing Rogue Squadron on Gamecube, reading EU comics and books, following the Tartakovsky animated series in the leadup to episode 3, and more-or-less twenty years of accumulated fandom.
And while that doesn’t make me different than most other western Scifi nerds, it’s still enough that I don’t think I can just turn up the chance to write this article.
So let’s talk about the Mandalorian!
At time of writing, the Mandalorian season finale came out yesterday morning. It wrapped up the season well, recontextualized the stuff that came before, developed the star wars universe, and set us up for season 2 with a cool hook and a new villain. It made the structure of the season work after what I thought was a pretty neat middle, pulled off some solid storytelling, did some cool worldbuilding, and imbued Star Wars with a sense of culture and religion separate from Jedi and Sith that writers have been struggling with for some time.
The Art of Storytelling
The Mandalorian’s finale isn’t revolutionary. This isn’t prestige television, the next coming of the wire. It’s solid, pulp, adventure storytelling with a movie-scale budget on a weekly television platform. Until the finale, it seemed like it might dip from its early burst of popularity and wonder, the PR miracle that was the Advent of Baby Yoda. But while the finale wasn’t revolutionary, it still served the series as a whole very well.
As I watched them, the Mandalorian’s middle three episodes seemed a bit of a dip. Each was fine individually, but they were basically self-contained vignettes, more Samurai Jack than the focus of the first three episodes. Fundamentally ‘Mando and Baby Yoda have an adventure, danger finds them, they leave’ is a formula that is only going to be interesting so many times. However, the finale changed the nature of these adventures. The return to Navarro meant that these weren’t just disposable side-trips, they were an escalating exemplar of the necessity of that return. They showed that Mando and Baby Yoda couldn’t hide in remote locations, couldn’t rely on work outside of the guild, and couldn’t rely on the Mandalorian’s old contacts. That the situation would have to be resolved, permanently, and ideally violently.
It’s solid, driven storytelling that is easily forgotten and takes advantage of The Mandalorian’s weekly format. From the hype of the Baby Yoda reveal to the cliff-hanger of the finale, the story is designed around the idea that it will be revealed gradually and is all the better for it.
It’s visible in smaller notes as well. The fate of the Mandalorian Covert, the escalating reveal of the rescue by Death Watch in the flashback, even IG-11’s self-destruct sequence. It may be a decade late to really blow minds, but it’s solid storytelling and helps tie together the season.
Not about the Laser Swords
Something the Mandalorian started on from its opening scene was really intensive, exposition-light worldbuilding. From gross biological traits of the first quarry, to the state of the galaxy as a whole, to how people who aren’t protagonists interact with Imperial firepower. It takes the used future, western/samurai/world war aesthetic of the original trilogy, using the power of modern special effects and the runtime of a mini-series to flesh it out and reconcile it with parts of the prequels.
It was one of my favorite parts of the show, and I think it succeeded at giving us a ground-level view of culture and life in large parts of the galaxy that we’ve largely missed in the movies. Even with the plot revolving around a force sensitive, the going-ons of Jedi and battle between light and dark that dominate the Saga and the CGI shows aren’t of real concern to the Mando. We meet backwoods farmers, mechanics, ice taxis, and pit droids. People for whom the Jedi are a dead religion of an ancient sect. Where a single TIE fighter is a momentous threat, a squadron of X-Wings an existential crisis.
It flounders at times, I still don’t buy the AT-ST as an invincible engine of destruction. But the finale lands it, sells us on the idea that an E-Web is terrifying if you’re not Luke or Han. That a single TIE fighter is a threat to a band of seasoned fighters. That the force is a mysterious, otherworldly presence that is just alien to most people in the Star Wars universe. And that doing all of that doesn’t stop the work from being Star Wars.
The Mandalorian sells a smaller, more intimate scale than sweeping battles and mythic stakes. Sells the idea of Star Wars stories where the consequences can just be ‘a single child will get murdered’ or ‘a village will continue to get mugged for blue shrimp every few weeks’. Where three X-Wings are an existential threat that most mercenaries can’t deal with.
Most importantly, it sells us on Mandalorians. Because the Mandalorian S1 has turned me into one of Those People. The Mando Fans. The really, really dedicated Mando fans.
The ones that start memorizing Mando’a and arguing about how they’re better than all the other polities in-setting.
And we’ve got to talk about why.
This is the Way
I didn’t like Mandalorians until episode 2 or 3 of the show. I mean, I had that phase as a teen where I was full ‘cool edgy bounty hunters with jet packs’, I watched Attack of the Clones way too young for that not to happen. But after that passed, and especially after I read Traviss, they fell flat. A symptom of the old EU’s obsession with military might and ever-increasing friendliness with fascism. The line of thinking that lead to the Fel’s being hailed as enlightened rulers and the cade skywalker comics ending with the Triumvirate.
So I was walking in with some baggage and a general distrust for anyone with a jetpack and a T-Visor.
Then the show decided that the Mandalorians were a religious minority.
The portrayal is spot-on. Dumb questions about minutiae of practice. Consolation from an Imam. Dumb arguments about praxis and working for the government at the masjid. Pining for the good old days, when we were stronger, for a Home many have never been to. The portrayal of the experience of religious minorities in the US, of Muslims specifically in the US, was absolutely uncanny.
And I suddenly realized what I didn’t even know I wanted out of Star Wars.
Over the course of a season, The Mandalorian provided millions of nerds with a crash course on minority religious practice. The dumb questions about his helmet could easily have been thousands of aggravating questions about halal food, or prayer, or hijab, or hajj that I’ve gotten over the years. The questions people raised online about The Mandalorian vs Sabine Wren or Bo Katan served as a solid primer on how different people practice a religion differently, the conversation on how Mandalorians as a faith are separate from Mandalore as a planet and ethnicity should be deeply illustrative to anyone surprised to learn that Muslims exist outside of the Arabian Peninsula.
A lot of it is in small details. The ceremony and spirituality around The Armorer. The arguments of doctrine in the covert, and the bonds of community that exist despite it. The details of practice and the willingness to treat that practice as something valid, respected, and sacred, even without any force-powered mysticism behind it. The exaltation of the Foundling tradition and the Mandalorian’s clear devotion to his faith under stress.
It’s an aspect of the show I hope gets more emphasis in the future, and one I am unspeakably thrilled to see on the screen. If you take nothing else from this article, I hope that you understand how and why this is important to me.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to work on some Mando lists for X-Wing.
I hope that you took something from this article, and that you’ll check out The Mandalorian, whether or not you use Disney Plus to do so. If you enjoyed my writing, please consider supporting my Patreon or Ko-Fi, they help make these articles happen.
Fear The Swarth 