I don’t see Grogu wielding the Dark Saber or becoming the leader of the Mandalorian Diaspora. He will though be a powerful figure as he deals with his past trauma and further remembers his skills.
I would be most interested in an arc that has D’jin learning to wield the Dark Saber by having to deal with his own inner conflicts about growing beyond being a dutiful child of the watch, not wanting leadership but being the only one who can unite the factions of the Diaspora, and Grogu with him being at very real risk of being overwhelmed by the Dark Side as he becomes more powerful and remembering his fear, loss, and anger. With us as viewers really able to believe that Grogu could go either way. The logic of no attachments is that it limits your loss and fear and anger of loss. Fear and anger are paths to Dark Side in that view.
Maybe Grogu can show a path that Dark is not Evil and Light not Good, but that they are best both parts of a whole?
But barring that a Sith Grogu would be more fun than a Jedi one!
Having now binged quite a few of the “essential” Clone Wars episodes on the very justified recommendations here (and wow Ashoka’s arc and the step up in both writing and animation in the last season!) Yoda’s search for teaching on manifesting himself may foreshadow that. His first lesson was to learn that ignoring or denying your Dark Side, thinking you have the power to reject or really banish it, is hubris. Maybe the better path is not as binary as the Jedi make it out to be.
Hell of a season finale, and they really went all-out on the space western motif - the gunfight at the Sanctuary with the Mods and Black Krrsantan showing up like the cavalry to save the day, and then Boba showing up riding the rancor as literal cavalry, and the final showdown on the main street between Boba and Cad Bane who, like a proper outlaw, plays it cool even when he realizes he’s been beat. The Scorpenek tanks had a very Terminator Hunter-Killer vibe to them. We didn’t get any big reveals about Grogu (aside from that he obviously picked the beskar mail over the lightsaber), but seeing him put the rancor to sleep was a great display of his Force prowess.
I wonder where S3 of Mandalorian goes from here. Din’s people don’t want him and Grogu rejected Luke’s teachings, so they’re pretty much stuck with each other now. Does Din try to find Grogu’s homeworld? Does he go to the ruins of Mandalore to seek absolution? Does he go back to hunting bounties with the little guy as his backup? I guess we’ll find out in December or whenever the next season drops.
Not quite sure what to make of the post-credits scene with Cobb Vanth in the bacta tank about to get operated on by the Mod surgeon, but I’m happy that we’ll probably be seeing more of him.
Rumor has it a Cobb Vanth spin-off might be in the growing list of upcoming Disney+ Star Wars stories. Otherwise it seems silly to reintroduce his character for all of 30 seconds just to let us know he exists.
Then again, a lot of The Book of Boba Fett felt like a mishmash of random Star Wars stuff that never really went anywhere.
I think Cad Bane speaks for a lot of the audience here when he says “I don’t understand your angle here Boba Fett”.
Also I don’t pretend to be an expert on Star Wars military tactics. But why wouldn’t you lead with giant deflector shielded robots? And why did every group that came to the “rescue” quickly cluster behind the same bit of cover as everyone else? For that matter, Beskar armor does seem literally indestructible (although getting shot does o hurt) - why was Mando and Fett strolling down Main Street casually blasting every Pikey they came across not considered a good plan (since that’s what they did anyway)?
And finally, the season finale confirmed my long held belief that the astromech droid (i.e. R2-D2) does the actual flying. That’s why a ten year old Anakin or an untrained farm boy and casual aviator can jump into the cockpit of a state of the art combat fighter and destroy a space station. When Obi Wan says “use the Force Luke” what he really means is “don’t fucking touch anything, let the droid fly the ship, and pull the trigger when the display tells you to because that’s the one thing the droid isn’t allowed to do you meat sack.”
So, we got a rancor ridden by Boba Fett battling a giant droid with machine gun arms which is also being attacked by a mandalorian with a blacklight lightsaber. Could anything be more badass?
No pay off for the all the flashback scenes. Still just have no investment in Fett or the town. He really only remembered he had a rancor to use then??? As portrayed he is a pretty stupid and uninteresting guy.
The episode was all a bit pat, willfully ignoring a lot of smarter options to set up the corny “to the rescue” scene. For instance, both Fett and Din have airships with antivehicular weapons. They could have integrated all these elements far more competently.
Fun and dumb. Disappointing because the whole season could have been a lot better with just a few writing tweaks, but still fun for me.
The funny thing is how we’ve been spoiled by The Mandalorian – if this Boba Fett show came out in, say, 1997, we would all be slobbering over it and it’d be the biggest hit in the world.
Yeah, good point about R2. I guess at that point Luke pretty much did have to use the Force.
Not to mention the show missed an opportunity to have Machete (Danny Trejo) spend an episode teaching Fett how to ride a rancor with humorously mixed results. So when Fett finally shows up with it at the end, we can all be like “Yea! He did it!”
And what does Fett give a crap about the people or town of Mos Espa? Did he just fall in love with the town and it’s culture in the year or so he spent working at Jaba’s castle?
Like I guess Cad and Fett know each other personally and professionally? Did I need to watch several seasons of Clone Wars or something to learn that?
And it’s not like Cad had anything to do with the massacre of the Tusken raiders.
Cad shot the sheriff… but he shot the shit out of the deputy
Did we really expect the other crime lords to honor their pledge of neutrality? Out of lust for gold? Power? Or were we to assume they were just born with a heart full of neutrality?
Entirely too much Star Wars takes place on a sandy planet Luke described as the furthest from the “bright center of the universe”.
It might have been more helpful if Fennec Michael Corleoned the heads of the Five Familes before the battle was basically over.
And after all that, Don Fett and the Getalong Gang are finally running Mos Espy and Fett’s like “maybe this isn’t for me”? Like you couldn’t work that out before you destroyed half the city in a gang war? Or maybe the writers realized people don’t want to watch several more seasons of the Galaxy’s most notorious bounty hunter dealing with zoning permits and town hall meetings?
They were pretty quick to dismiss the first plan of digging into Jabba’s castle where their gunships are parked. Because that seems like a pretty good plan that uses a castle for its intended purpose.
But their actually plan of setting up in the burned out ruins of a bar and scattering what small forced they have all over the city to be ambushed worked out just as well.
And the other Disney+ shows in general. The action scenes in Mandalorian and the various Marvel shows wouldn’t look out of place in a feature film. The big car chase episode of Boba Fett looked like a really ambitious episode of Buffy.
All that talk about Tatooine once being all water I thought maybe they would reveal that Tuskens were the same race as the Pykes (who look like fish people) under their helmets. I guess they still could do that but I doubt it. A reveal like that would have given a point to all that time we spent with the Tuskens and added something interesting to Star Wars Lore.
