Editor’s Note: The following contains minor spoilers from Season 3 Episode 4 of The Mandalorian.At the end of 2020, the most talked about thing in pop culture, without a doubt, was The Mandalorian. You couldn’t go anywhere, whether on social media or out in the world, without seeing Grogu’s adorable face everywhere. The Disney+ series had become the next big show we all talked about, following the footsteps of series like Breaking Bad, The Walking Dead, and Game of Thrones. Almost two and a half years later, however, with The Mandalorian now back for a third season that’s almost halfway over, the show feels different. For a variety of reasons, it no longer feels like the huge deal it was at the beginning of the decade. Something has changed.
The First Two Seasons of ‘The Mandalorian’ Changed Television
For the first two seasons of The Mandalorian, everything went right. The Star Wars franchise was in a bit of a downward trend, with many fans having been disappointed by the new feature film trilogy. It didn’t seem like The Mandalorian would be what would change that. If you weren’t a hardcore fan, you might not even know what the heck a Mandalorian was. But producers like John Favreau and Dave Filoni took a risk by exploring the Star Wars world beyond the stories of Luke and Leia, Han Solo, and Darth Vader. Audiences had grown burnt out by familiarity and Skywalker overexposure. The Mandalorian explored that world, one taking place after the events of Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi, where the Empire is defeated and Vader as dead. We now follow Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) in a world that looks familiar but is also completely different.
Then enter Grogu, or baby Yoda as he was affectionately called by fans. He was a perfect character, one so cute that he could be used to sell anything, but he was also fascinating to watch, as we learned more about his capabilities. His father and son-like connection with The Mandalorian was a sight to behold. Their adventures were exciting, especially with the throwback episodic Western-styled stories. It helped as well that they only put out one episode at a time every week, rather than dumping them all at once for us to binge. It kept the intense buzz building every week without a decline, rather than becoming something we consumed and talked about over a weekend, then forgot about.
The connecting story about The Mandalorian trying to find a Jedi to safely take Grogu to was both compelling and heartbreaking. It looked like Din and Grogu would be separated, something that may have needed to happen for the story, but which was also dreaded for what it was going to do to our emotions. As the weeks passed, rumors grew about a certain massive possibility. Would The Mandalorian do it? Was the show, and the duo’s search for a Jedi, going to end up with a reveal of you-know-who. Could we really see him again? And then we did. In one of TV’s most powerful moments, Season 2 concluded with an intense scene in which Luke Skywalker arrives, saves the day, and takes Grogu with him, but not before Din removes his helmet and gets an emotional goodbye with the little creature who meant so much to him. It was perfection. Grown men and women wept, and YouTubers uploading reaction videos to the scene got hundreds of thousands of views.
Season 3 of ‘The Mandalorian’ Doesn’t Seem To Know How To Move Past Its Luke Skywalker Moment
Now we’re two years later, Season 3 has arrived, but The Mandalorian is no longer talked about at that previous fever pitch. That perfect Season 2 finale is part of that. It worked so well that it felt like a series finale. Where do you go after something that impressive? Where do you go after Luke freakin’ Skywalker? One option would be to keep following The Mandalorian on new adventures, but that wasn’t so simple. The show couldn’t exist without Grogu. That would have been impossible. There had to be a way to get The Mandalorian and Grogu back together, but to do so also meant that you would have to wipe away everything that had just happened. Suddenly, Luke Skywalker’s arrival, while still awesome and goosebump-inducing, wasn’t as important from a storyline perspective.
Season 3 could have been an exciting story in which we watch The Mandalorian trying to get back to Grogu for whatever reason, while also showing Grogu in his new life with Skywalker. That’s exactly what we got, but not in The Mandalorian. Instead, it was rushed through in its spinoff, The Book of Boba Fett, in which we leave Boba Fett to watch Din find Grogu with Skywalker, and ends with Grogu choosing to leave him to rejoin Din. It was beautiful storytelling, but it also felt disappointing. We weren’t seeing this drawn out in their show, but rather quickly moved through in a completely different series. It made their reunion less special as if the producers decided that they needed the pair already back together when Season 3 of The Mandalorian started, rather than exploring a compelling story of what their lives would be like without each other.
With Season 3, it feels like, okay, now what? It doesn’t just feel that way for those watching, but the series itself comes across that way. There is no huge, all-encompassing story. Sure, the adventures are still fun. Din needing to bathe in the living waters to atone for taking off his helmet in front of another is intriguing. There are the small beginnings of what might be to come with a recent episode involving Dr. Pershing (Omid Abtahi) and his cloning research, but for the most part, the series is running in place, with Din and Grogu saving the day from some monster, and Grogu threatening to become cuteness overload. While Grogu is still the best part of the series, he is also increasingly reaching meme level, which might lead to a possible jumping-of-the-shark moment with Grogu in a Mandalorian helmet if the series isn’t careful. None of this is to say that the show isn’t enjoyable anymore. It is still fun, but it has also become a series playing the greatest hits while it tries to figure out how to move past what might have been its peak.
‘The Last of Us’ Has Stolen the Spotlight From ‘The Mandalorian’
Then there’s The Last of Us element. In The Mandalorian‘s absence, it has become the new giant show we all talk about. That was inevitable. Something new always comes along. For The Mandalorian though, it didn’t come at the best time. The Last of Us, and its rise to the top of the pop culture world, didn’t happen a year or many months ago. The first season literally wrapped up right before The Mandalorian returned. That took away any building anticipation for the series’ return. All the oxygen in the room was being taken up by something else.
Ironically, The Last of Us also stars Pedro Pascal. Here, we can see his face, and we can connect with him on a deeper level because of that. Even though the series is based on an immensely popular videogame, it’s still new and fresh. It also follows a similar storyline as The Mandalorian, with Pascal as a father-like figure to an orphaned child, as he tries to help them and lead them to safety. Even though The Mandalorian came first and did it first, The Last of Us, because of that newness, is now at the forefront.
To go straight from The Last of Us to The Mandalorian can be exhausting. It’s almost like releasing two franchise movies back to back. That’s not the fault of The Mandalorian. The series’ are in no way connected to each other, but their similarities, from their popularity, the intense familiarity of their stories, and Pedro Pascal in the lead, had us less excited about The Mandarlorian before it even began.
That could have been overcome if The Mandalorian was ready with a compelling story which matched what came before. Instead, it’s a series that’s restrained from its inability to ever separate Din and Grogu. It’s a series that has to deal with the simple fact that they created some of TV’s best moments ever last season. Season 2 felt like the finality of a story. Season 3 feels like the game-winning score happened, the crowd went nuts, but then the game kept on going.
None of this means that The Mandalorian has to end. It’s still exciting, just less than it was. It’s still fun and intriguing and suspenseful, just less than what it was. For all we know, Season 3 has some big tricks up its sleeve that are going to put any of the disappointment felt so far to rest. If it has them though, it’s time to show them. Even the cuteness of Grogu can’t save a series that feels like it’s living in the shadow of past glory.
