WARNING: SPOILER ALERT There are spoilers ahead in this piece. If you have not — I repeat: HAVE NOT — watched episode 8 of The Mandalorian yet, stop reading right now.
The season finale of The Mandalorian served its purpose. It was very good and put a cap on what was, overall, a pretty fantastic season. Any fan of Star Wars lore should walk away from season two satisfied.
This season had everything. It connected old characters with the new. It dug deep into the lesser-known parts of Star Wars’ lore. It finally gave us origin stories for our two main characters in Grogu (Baby Yoda) and Din Djarin (Mando).
This final episode was also good. And there are lots of things to look forward to for next season. But still, it’s easy to be left unfulfilled after it.
Let’s talk about it.
A familiar face saves the day
So, at the end of the episode, our heroes are on the edge. The droid Dark Troopers are banging on the doors of the bridge where our heros are ready to overrun them. It’s Din Djarin, Bo-Katan, Baby Yoda and the rest of the squad. If these Dark Troopers get in, they’re all cooked.
But then, out of nowhere, an X-Wing pulls up. And you know what it means in Star Wars whenever an X-Wing pulls up — it’s Luke Skywalker and he’s here to save everyone.
And he does just that. Luke begins tearing through all of the Dark Troopers and it looks absolutely incredible. It gives you mad Darth Vader in Rouge One vibes, except he’s slicing droids instead of, well, people.
It’s a pretty epic scene and one of the best showings of Luke’s skill as a Jedi that we’ve seen. It was really cool to watch.
But, also, it was just so predictable.
Luke was the easy pick
We all knew that Baby Yoda was connecting with some Jedi out in the galaxy when he channeled the force at the ruins of a temple on Tortuga. We just didn’t know who it was.
Turns out, it was Luke. This makes a ton of sense. He is supposed to be the most powerful force user in the galaxy at this point. So, of course, he’ll feel Baby Yoda’s connection.
But what makes sense isn’t always the most interesting thing. There were a number of other ways they could’ve gone with this.
This was an opportunity for an Ezra Bridger return. Or maybe even a Cal Kestis sighting. Or maybe there’s a new and exciting character out there that we don’t even know about the universe can finally tap into!
Who knows? That’s what makes this series special.
Star Wars is bigger than the Skywalkers
There are so many more interesting characters with so many fascinating backstories to tap into. In eight episodes, we’ve seen a live-action Ahsoka Tano. We found out that Boba Fett was still alive. We’ve finally gotten Dark Troopers on screen. We even found out that Grand Admiral Thrawn is still alive.
The Mandalorian isn’t afraid to tap into the nerdier minutiae of the Star Wars extended universe and bring that to a bigger audience. There was a real opportunity to do that in the finale, but instead, we just got Luke again.
For once, it’d have been nice to not know where a scenario leads. For Star Wars to just go on a completely new path. Instead, we just got Luke Skywalker. And Luke is awesome. But we’ve seen Luke in six movies now.
This damper on the ending doesn’t sully the finale or the series. It was still fantastic. Let’s just hope they extend the universe even more next season.
