“The Mandalorian” has always been a dumpster fire, but season three has given up. It’s obvious that they had no direction to take the show, and with the ratings in a free-fall, it is highly likely this could be the final season. With the show’s third season finally over, it seems like nothing has happened at all, and while it produced the best Mandalorian episode in the third episode, everything else has consistently been the worst this show has been, and it was bad even before this season.

The main problem with this show is the showrunner: Jon Favreau, who hasn’t been a good director since “Iron Man” in 2008. He has written every single episode of this show, and the one where he co-wrote it with Noah Kloor, a man who has never written anything of note in his life, wrote an exponentially better episode than Jon has ever done in the three seasons of this show. 

If they were smart, they would’ve stopped the show after the finale of season two, in which Grogu was delivered to Luke, and the notion from the show was that the Baby Yoda arc was over. However, they are not smart. Out of the eight episodes, five are filler with no meaning, and only one episode is even slightly interesting. As with any story, let’s begin with the plot.

Story

Season three’s story is non-existent. For two episodes Mando has to “redeem” himself by jumping into a lake, but the rest of the episodes are just completely meaningless. The third episode is only good because half of it was written by someone else. Also, if Dr. Pershing, a character with little screen time or presense, has infinitely more character and intrigue than the main character of a three-season show, you have a problem. 

The fourth and fifth episodes are boring and filler, and of course the plot makes no sense. When we have chances for dialogue or character the show doesn’t care nor try, and the action is terrible. There are no strategies; it’s just the main characters shooting down mindlessly without ever being in danger or being hit. For reference, Mando has gotten hit with his new ship zero times over 10 episodes of him having it. He cannot be shot down or have his ship be damaged in any way now, which is probably because the special effects budget wouldn’t allow it. 

The sixth episode has already been done to death online, but for those who do not know, it’s a filler episode where Lizzo, Jack Black and Christopher Lloyd pretend to act and Bo-Katan unites the two factions by beating up a random guy. But everyone knows these episodes aren’t good, so what about the two-part finale? Well, it’s even worse and breaks pretty much everything about the show. Mando and the gang go to Mandalore to discover that Moff Gideon has made a base there and is working on cloning himself with the force. However, he has almost made a new trooper but this time they have Beskar armor. 

This is the same as Mando’s armor, and over three seasons Mando has been shot dozens of times in an episode without injuries or anything, so these troopers should be impossible to kill, right? Wrong, they actually die in very few shots, depending on what Jon Faverau wants them to do. This should mean that Mando should have died multiple times; however, his armor, which is the exact same, somehow is better because he’s the main character. 

The eighth episode is just fighting, Moff Gideon dies, signifying the death of this show most likely and Mando and Grogu end up living together in a house, making the entirety of the past three seasons meaningless, as we started on Nevarro. At this point we have ended up on Nevarro. Overall, this story is the same nonsensical sludge spewed out by Disney Star Wars, so whoever likes that sludge will like the show.

Characters

There are over 30 named characters in “The Mandalorian,” but only one of them has an actual character. Like usual, all the characters are blank slates with no complexity or motivation. One guy is the leader of the town and nothing else, one guy is a cool-looking pirate leader and nothing else and one woman is the leader of Mando’s clan. The only one with an actual character is Dr. Pershing, a scientist who was inspired to do his work due to the death of his sister, as the work he does now could’ve saved her. He also wants to help in any way possible, even at the expense of the law in the third episode. That’s a real character, not Mando or Bo-Katan who is just good at everything.

VFX/CGI

The CGI in this show has diminished substantially as the seasons have gone on, which is due to Disney having so many CGI-heavy products that they can’t work on them all perfectly. Considering that this show is filmed on a blue screen for every single shot, this means that the show’s quality goes down when the backgrounds look fake or are so obviously blurred out to the point you can basically see where the blue screen is. Star Wars has always prided themselves on these effects, and ILM used to be the ‘top dog’ when it came to making effects in the first place.

Conclusion

“The Mandalorian” is a pathetic shell of an already pathetic show and shows the decline of Star Wars as a brand. Gone are the days of good, well-told and carefully planned stories. Instead of the heroics of Luke Skywalker for people to be inspired by, we have Mando as he mindlessly shoots enemies. Despite putting out five movies and five shows, only “Rogue One” and “Andor” are good. With the diminishing returns and the viewer count for this show going down, it seems like this may be the final season, and it won’t be sad if that happens.

Rating: 1/5

@griffinshaivitz