No, they worked behind the scenes. Nobody would be ok with mind controlling space wizards being involved in politics. There were a few thousand Jedi, there has to be trillions of people spread around the universe. It makes perfect sense that people would not know of them. Personally I thought they knocked it out of the park with the season finale.
To claim that the Jedi were an obscure local hidden group requires enough handwaving to lift one of those crashed Star Destroyers oh Jakku.
I can’t say I paid too much attention during Phantom Menace - nodded off a few times - but I don’t recall them displaying their Force powers all that willy nilly in public. Not too many broadcasts of Force battles.
It isn’t about being obscure or hidden.
In an 8/18 poll more than half of Americans couldn’t name even one Supreme Court Justiceeven “though 91 percent say the high court has an impact on their daily lives as citizens”. The impression I get of the SW universe is that on most planets most denizens don’t think what happens at the Imperial or Republic level is of much interest or concern to them. If Americans who think that SCOTUS matters in the fairly small universe of the United States can’t even name one SCOTUS justice, why would anyone imagine that those far flung in the SW universe who don’t care about such things would ever pay any attention to some religious order diplomat coming to some planet in some system parsecs away? Politics is local in the SW universe too … The Space News wouldn’t report on them much because viewers wouldn’t have cared.
I’ve gradually come to the conclusion that nothing in Star Wars really makes much sense, but different things stick out to different people. Now that the season is over, my take on the Mandalorian is that lots of the overall story and the individual character decisions don’t make sense at all, but there’s also plenty of good stuff and I quite enjoy watching the show. Like the climax of this episode where Gideon crashes, out of sight, and our heroes are immediately all “glad that’s over and we’re safe forever now”. Or when the droid has the ability to fix up Mando with a 10-second spray but it isn’t brought up until Mando had time to accept his impending death. It expedites the storytelling and it’s not a huge deal, but it does take me out of the story a bit.
Overall, it’s a good series and I’m looking forward to season 2.
Yeah. The episode would have gone a lot longer if the Mandalorian knew Gideon had the Darksaber. That thing’s practically sacred, and finding it in the hands of the Butcher of the Purge would have been too much. He would have had to deal with that immediately.
Well, since he had never heard of Jedi (as I have been grumbling about) and the whole history of the Darksaber is intimately interwoven with the Jedi (and Sith) he probably never heard of the Darksaber, either. Mando either wasn’t taught his history or didn’t pay attention to it.
(The Darksaber reveal was as much of a “holy shit” moment for me as the Baby Yoda reveal.)
Great episode, the best of the season.
I look forward to its return, which was announced to be in Fall of 2020, about a year or maybe less than this one.
For me, the reveal of the pile of discarded helmets was the biggest shock.
Yeah, it was a bit perplexing that you had all these stormtroopers standing out there in the open, and yet our heroes couldn’t just gun them down from their covered position with their automatic blaster weapons.
I thought the two dip-shit scout troopers (one of which apparently voiced by Jason Sudeikis) were the best part of this episode. Although, at this point I have a hard time viewing any sort of Imperial storm trooper as elite space Nazis and more as buffoonish blaster fodder.
I really do want to see more of IG-11
Turns out that was Jason Sudeikis and Adam Pally as the two scout troopers. I thought it would have been great to have one say “these guns are terrible” so maybe the trope is rooted in bad equipment as opposed to terrible troops with bad aim. It seemed like a little too much with the weapons but it was funny nonetheless.
Watching the speeder guys punch baby yoda was funnier than it should have been
Great finale.
So Cara Dune is from Alderaan, huh? I guess that helps explain her dislike of the Empire.
The scene with the two troopers seemed right out of Robot Chicken (in a good way!).
It was the previous episode but I grinned like an idiot when they showed a Troop Transport for real. Would have been even great if it made one of the sounds the toy made.
I thought that wasn’t a darksaber but rather a Vibrosword. Vibro weapons were Star Wars weapons in the old West End Games RPG.
I guess Season Two will be the quest for Yoda’s home planet.
I had forgotten entirely about Troops until an episode review that I read (after I made the Clerks comparison) made a comparison.
Two things:
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I’m pretty certain that was the Dark Saber from Rebels finally showing up in the live action stuff. That’s bound to piss off a Mandalorian when it’s known. Perhaps Moff Gideon is a fallen Mandalorian?
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In the first few minutes of Episode 8 I turned to my oldest and said something like, “I think I could watch an entire episode of these two troopers just screwing around.” and she agreed.
Digression: I find I’ve really enjoyed the few flashes of the people under the white armor we’ve seen over the last few years. Not just in The Mandalorian - though it was great - but there’s a shot in Rogue One early where a storm trooper in the transport craft with Jyn Erso is just radiating that he’s dirty, tired and wants his shift to end and it’s all with body language.
The last we saw the Dark Saber, it was in possession of Bo-Katan Kryze, in Rebels. When Sabine Wren gave it to her, all of the Mandalorian clans pledged allegiance to her, which made her the leader of newly-reunited Mandalore. This was less than 10 years prior to these episodes of The Mandalorian, so something big has obviously happened on Mandalore in the meantime. And Mando would definitely know the significance of the Dark Saber to Madalorians.
So–not read thread in the past couple of days?
Oops, never mind–I see you were quoting something questioning the ID of the weapon. Without completely reading the quote, it looked like you thought you were making the first mention of the Darksaber.
But how would he know that without ever having heard of Jedi or The Force? It would be like “knowing the significance of Excalibur” but having never heard of King Arthur or Camelot or knights or damp tarts.