The Mandalorian (2019-Present)

Today, I’m staying home for the teachers I had growing up and in college.

Even though I knew Disney+ was going to get me eventually, what with all its MCU shows coming down the pike, the reason I signed up right off the bat was due to The Mandalorian. Fandom-wise, I may only be mid-level when it comes to Star Wars, but I was still excited for the show. The cast list was to die for and promos coming out looked sharp and cool. Watching the show’s first season was something of an unexpected experience, but I still came away having a good time (spoilers for the big ending of episode 1, but if you’ve been on the Internet at all since November, I’m sure you already know what that is.)

The unnamed Mandalorian (nicknamed “Mando” by some of his associates) is a bounty hunter, one of the best in the guild. When a contact approaches him about a major job on offer from a very hush-hush client, the Mandalorian’s main interest is in how much the job pays. But when he tracks down the bounty, which he’s to bring to the client no questions asked, the Mandalorian isn’t sure whether he can go through with it.

We’ll get this out of the way first. As pretty much everyone knows by now, the bounty is “the Child,” a.k.a. Baby Yoda, a.k.a. the Internet’s favorite person/puppet and our best hope for the future. Baby Yoda is very obviously adorable and awesome, and The Mandalorian revolves around the tried-and-tested trope of the tough, loner warrior unexpectedly saddled with an adorable moppet who cracks his gruff exterior. Whether he’s chilling in his hover-carseat, toddling around, teething on a knob from the Mandolorian’s ship, or using his immense Force abilities, Baby Yoda is utterly lovable, and not even the Mandalorian’s mercenary philosophy or general misanthropy can withstand the cuteness.

That said, the show very much knows that the Mando-Baby Yoda relationship is its ace in the hole, and as such, it can kind of coast where other things are concerned. The first season is pretty meandering, mostly consisting of a variety of side quests featuring the Mandalorian taking odd bounty-hunting/protection gigs to fund his and Baby Yoda’s journey from planet to planet. There’s very little throughline, and while things do come together a little more towards the end, the different connective features feel a little self-conscious, like they wrote a bunch of separate stories and then stapled them all together at the end instead of planning it that way.

The show does ultimately feel worthwhile to me, but some may not find Baby Yoda’s cuteness and the fantastic production design (seriously – from a production standpoint, this series often looks nicer to me than the new trilogy does) enough to sustain them. A number of the more self-contained episodes start to drag at a certain point, even though most of them clock in at under 40 minutes, and with the more episodic nature of the season, certain episodes have a lot more going for them than others.

Still, we get to spend a lot of time hanging out in different locales and meet a number of enjoyable characters along the way. My personal favorites include a retired warrior, a local ship mechanic, and a droid that’s way too quick to resort to self-destruct mode. It’s a neat wander through the Star Wars universe, and I’m glad to add it to the canon.

Speaking of the aforementioned cast to die for, the episodic season structure, unfortunately, means that most of these actors only pop up for an episode or two at most. And so, Giancarlo Esposito, Ming-na Wen, Amy Sedaris (Princess Carolyn!,) Taika Waititi, Omid Abtahi (Salim from American Gods,) and Nick Nolte are all great, but they also disappear pretty quickly. Carl Weathers gets a little more to do as Greef Karga, an old bounty-hunter associate of the Mandalorian’s, but for the most part, the only characters we follow consistently are the Mandalorian and Baby Yoda. As the Mandalorian, the part of that duo who isn’t played by a puppet, Pedro Pascal (Oberyn Martell, we hardly knew ye) does a nice job drawing us in, even though his face is always covered by a helmet. He does a lot with just his voice and his body language to make us feel what the Mandalorian is thinking.

Warnings

Violence, a few disturbing images, language, drinking, and thematic elements.