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Rated 0.5/5 Stars • Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars 10/03/24 Full Review hans d typical syndrome where they can's stick to things that made season 1 good and hence season 2 dropped it completly for me ...
- (451)
- October 30, 2020
- Jon Favreau
Nov 6, 2020 · One of the first lines spoken in The Mandalorian season 2 premiere is "enjoy the fights." That's good ... We don't need gimmicky cameos by movie characters to tie in with the saga as a whole, and ...
- Overview
- Every Upcoming Star Wars Movie and TV Show
- Every Actor and Character in The Mandalorian
- The Mandalorian Season 2
- How would you score The Mandalorian Season 2 as a whole?
- Verdict
- The Mandalorian: Full Season 2 Review
- More Reviews by Laura Prudom
- IGN Recommends
By Laura Prudom
Posted: Dec 23, 2020 10:00 pm
This is a mostly spoiler-free review of The Mandalorian Season 2 that doesn't include specific plot details for the episodes, but it will mention the characters who have been officially announced to be leading their own spinoff shows. Read our spoiler-filled reviews for every episode of The Mandalorian Season 2 below for a deep dive into each episode, and for a trip down memory lane, check out what we said in our full Mandalorian Season 1 review.
•The Mandalorian Season 2, Episode 1 Review
•The Mandalorian Season 2, Episode 2 Review
•The Mandalorian Season 2, Episode 3 Review
But let's return to the subject of nostalgia, and the ongoing debates about "fan service," since it's clear that The Mandalorian in particular, and the entire Star Wars franchise under Disney in general, has a complicated relationship with both. Now that we have two seasons to look back on, I find myself feeling more forgiving towards Season 1 in hindsight despite its rougher middle episodes, because, for as much as it relied heavily on the tropes and iconography of the Western genre, it also felt like it was at least trying something new for the franchise (there's a reason why the most nostalgia-heavy episode of Season 1, "The Gunslinger," is the weakest).
There weren't any splashy cameos from legacy characters like Ahsoka Tano and Boba Fett in Season 1, and it truly did feel, early on, like the show would be exploring - to coin a familiar phrase - Unknown Regions. Our focus was on Mando as a character and the unlikely Lone Wolf and Cub relationship this gruff bounty hunter was forming with his little green child, and while Din was inadvertently getting swept up in a grand galactic conflict he didn't understand, there was still a simplicity to his mission and the broken band of allies he collected along the way.
You can argue that Favreau and Filoni were always building towards the revelations and character cameos we got in Season 2 and that the show's trajectory has always been intended to tie into the wider Star Wars universe, but there is something a little frustrating (if not at all surprising) about Disney attempting to apply the MCU strategy of "it's all connected" to The Mandalorian.
Following all the announcements in the 2020 Disney Investor Call, we now have an interconnected web of stories that will require completists to watch at least four different Star Wars TV shows in order to get the full picture -- culminating in what Kathleen Kennedy called "a climactic story event," i.e. a crossover in the vein of the DC TV universe's Crisis on Infinite Earths or Netflix's Defenders miniseries. It's a savvy business strategy, especially for a company that's trying to grow its streaming service audience and stop people from cancelling their Disney Plus subscriptions after their favorite show stops airing, but there's the unmistakable hand of a corporate overlord in all of this that detracts from the scrappy swagger The Mandalorian had in its first season, back when Jon Favreau insisted that Disney wait to produce Baby Yoda toys until after the show aired to preserve the surprise, despite it likely costing them millions in lost merchandise revenue over the holidays.
We previously explored Disney's penchant for using companion products like books, comics, and games to fill in the storytelling blanks from their Star Wars sequel movies - check out how much you'd have to pay to get the full story of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker in the video below:
This criticism might seem a little hypocritical coming from me since I gave the episodes featuring legacy characters the highest review scores this season, but that's exactly what makes Disney's strategy so canny. For me and doubtless many other fans, revisiting beloved characters and learning more about events like the downfall of Mandalore is catnip -- folks who obsessed over The Clone Wars never would've dreamed we might see Ahsoka Tano igniting her white lightsabers in live-action, and Boba Fett fans who were disappointed by his anticlimactic death in Return of the Jedi have likely been itching to see the bounty hunter's fearsome reputation redeemed somehow.
That's where the fan in me wrestles with the critic because I want to have my cake and eat it too when it comes to these characters. On the one hand, I'm thrilled to see the Star Wars universe expanding, and to think that these epic characters inhabit the same space and even cross paths from time to time -- that's always been the joy of comic books as a medium, so it makes sense for the company behind Marvel to want to replicate that success with what is arguably the biggest entertainment brand in the world.
On the other, there's a corporate cynicism and greed to it that makes me wonder what a Mandalorian series might've been if it was really just a self-contained, standalone story of a bounty hunter and his kid, rolling into town and solving locals' problems on unfamiliar planets across the Outer Rim, scuffling with local warlords and other bounty hunters, but mostly just minding their own business and staying out of the Empire's political machinations. Maybe that was never what the show aspired to be, and Season 1 was just a misdirect for all the larger Star Wars tie-ins that the creators had in store in Season 2, but it's interesting to imagine what could have been, without the weight of Disney's franchise machinery behind it all. (Or if Disney would just order 13 episodes per season instead of eight, which would allow for more of a balance between the ongoing serialized plotting and the standalone missions of the week without it feeling like one is detracting from the other.)
The plus side of all this is that I'm equally interested in both versions of the story, and if it seems like we're destined to get the one that explores the political drama of Mandalore, the burgeoning establishment of the New Republic, the continuing adventures of Boba Fett, the mysterious schemes of the Imperial Remnant as they stumble towards the formation of the First Order, and a sneaky live-action sequel series to Star Wars Rebels that picks up the stories of Ahsoka, Sabine, Ezra, and Thrawn, that's pretty darn exciting to me as a Star Wars fan, all cynicism aside.
Regardless of the corporate strategy behind it all, it's clear that everyone involved in The Mandalorian loves this franchise, and that reverence is obvious in every frame (even if it's sometimes loyal to the point of slavishness). For as much as people dismissed "The Passenger" as filler, I did appreciate it for giving us something that was tonally closer to horror than most live-action Star Wars projects dare to venture. This galaxy is so wide, and the storytelling possibilities so vast, it does seem like a bit of a waste to continually return to the characters and conflicts we've seen before, or rely on the narrative shorthand of nostalgia to elicit an emotional reaction when Mando and the Child's relationship has been developed carefully and lovingly enough to have the same effect with arguably more narrative impact, as demonstrated by one key scene in the finale.
But when taken as a complete story, leaving aside any corporate puppeteering going on behind the scenes, Season 2 of The Mandalorian is a remarkable feat of both art and commerce. It keeps the focus on the characters and relationships that matter most to advance the overarching plot, while also devoting enough narrative real estate to establish other characters and motivations, laying the groundwork for a sprawling interconnected universe that will give us our Star Wars fix for many years to come. It's a tricky needle to thread, but Filoni and Favreau accomplish it with confidence.
Despite my quibbles, after reflecting on Season 2 and the series as a whole for the past week, the dizzying highs of the season far outweigh my frustrations, which are easier to focus on when a show is being assessed on an episode-by-episode basis. Compared to the heavy-handed writing that bogged down episodes 4-6 of Season 1, there's truly not a dud in the bunch in Season 2; each episode helps flesh out the state of the galaxy in the early days of the New Republic, using established characters like Cara Dune and Migs Mayfeld as well as series newcomers to contextualize the many conflicts and political agendas still simmering even after the Empire has fallen. It's that kind of thoughtful world-building that intrigues me most for Season 3, especially since it seems far more likely that the Ahsoka and Boba Fett spinoffs will connect more directly to previous projects, hopefully leaving room for Mando to go back to blazing his own trail. After the plot twists of this season, your mileage may vary on whether this is the version of Star Wars you want to invest any more time in, but there's no denying that Season 2 was a blast to watch - channeling the very best of the franchise in both new and familiar ways.
Season 2 of The Mandalorian proved to be one of the most ambitious seasons of television in recent memory, impressively advancing the ongoing story of Mando and Baby Yoda while simultaneously laying the groundwork for three spinoff shows and the seismic shift in storytelling focus that will no doubt come in Season 3. After a few subtle easter eggs ...
EDITORS' CHOICE
Review scoring
amazing
The Mandalorian Season 2 pulls off an ambitious and epic sophomore season that has plenty of heart and nostalgia.
The Mandalorian: Season 2, Episode 8 - Finale Review
The Mandalorian: Season 2, Episode 7 Review - 'The Believer'
Dec 21, 2020 · Season 2 dumps viewers unceremoniously in a galaxy on the brink of industrial decline. Ludwig Göransson’s squealing, haunting score pulses and scrapes like chains dragged across rusting iron; droids pound against blast doors and the chime of a staff reverberates through the ground. From armour and helmets to scrap-yard penal colonies, from ...
Oct 30, 2020 · Cobb tells the Mandalorian of how he came to wear the armor and became the town’s marshal, a flashback that further paints a picture of a galactic Wild West, with violent outsiders and lasers that kerrang like bullets in a Sergio Leone movie. One of the first delights that pops in this episode is the excellent score by Ludwig Göransson, who ...
Dec 21, 2020 · The Darksaber and Mandalore. The Season 2 finale also leaves a major plot thread dangling when it comes to the future of Mandalore. By defeating Moff Gideon in one-on-one combat, Din has now come ...
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Oct 30, 2020 · The Mandalorian: Season 2 Review. Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) is a Mandalorian warrior who has sworn an oath to reunite his young ward, The Child, a mysterious, Force-sensitive being, with his own ...
