The Mandalorian Ch. 18 reminds us that Mandalore isn’t a place; it’s an idea.
An essay on pog soup.
The Short Take:
A delightfully surprising next step in the season. Get ready for a hefty helping of lore (which I love).
Image Credit: Wookieepedia
[SPOILER ALERT: Not even the living waters will cleanse you of these spoilers.]
The Long Take:
Well, played, Jon Favreau. Well played.
After last week, which ended with Din and Grogu setting out to find a part to repair IG-11 before heading to Mandalore, I was bracing myself for all the ensuing “discourse” around filler episodes and side quests. I, for one, enjoy mission of the week episodes (see nearly every review I’ve written about The Bad Batch), but I definitely thought that the trajectory of the season was that we would gradually work our way to the Mines of Mandalore and Din’s absolution.
How wrong I was! Instead of an extended detour, we got a quick pitstop with the ever delightful Peli Motto. She says that there are no IG parts to be found, and hustles Din into adopting R5-D4 instead. Peli closes the N1 hatch and we’re back on course to Mandalore, just like that. This feels like a deliberate trolling of the audience. A clever fake-out that preys upon and lovingly mocks our impatience for the main storyline. It’s as if Favreau’s saying, “ha, you thought Mandalore would be the finale, didn’t you? Actually, we’re going to do it all right now.” I’m so happy to be wrong.
Image Credit: StarWars.com
The insertion of R5-D4 into Din’s journey is a great callback to the Original Trilogy, as R5, if you’ll recall, is the droid that Owen Lars tries to buy from the Jawas before R2D2. I love that in this episode R5 is actually a huge scaredy cat. Peli tells him not be a coward. Later, Din tells him not to be a baby. It’s a fun bit. I also like how this retroactively provides context for R5’s first appearance in A New Hope, in which he voluntarily short circuits so R2 can take his place. Now we have that added layer that he was actually relieved to not be the one going on the grand adventure.
Everything that follows this opening scene is a grand adventure in Mandalorian lore and culture. We learn so much about the planet’s history through Din and Bo-Katan telling Grogu. We learn about various customs and traditions. And, most poignantly for me, the interactions of these three characters interrogate what it means to be a Mandalorian.
These are three Mandalorians that have three very different relationships with Mandalore: Grogu is just learning about being a Mandalorian and has never even been to the system. Din has never been to Mandalore, but spent some time as a child on Concordia, a nearby moon. And Bo was part of the royal family on Mandalore and grew up during the golden age of Mandalorian civilization. She’s the only one of the trio who knows what it was like before the Empire desecrated it.
This prompted me to contemplate what the relationship between identity, shared culture, and a sense of place might be. And how for some, their identity is wrapped up in a place with which they have no direct relationship. Din has a deep reverence for Mandalore and the sacred power it may hold for him. He says to Grogu: “It’s Mandalore. The homeworld of our people. Every Mandalorian can trace their roots back to this planet and the beskar mines deep within.” But then, immediately after that, he says, “And you know what? I’ve never been there either.” This is an endearing dad moment because he’s trying to make Grogu feel a sense of belonging. But it also highlights how he can have such strong feelings about a place he’s never even seen.
I grew up in a multicultural household. Half of my family is Italian American and half of my family immigrated to the US from Thailand, with my grandparents having immigrated from China to Thailand before that. I have experienced first hand the power of a remote and distant place that you do not know and yet determines so much of your identity. Italy and Thailand loomed large throughout my childhood. Even though I had only been to each country once on a brief vacation, they still carried so much meaning and dictated so much of how I thought of myself in relation to the rest of the world.
And cultural traditions passed down from my family didn’t seem to align with those who were born and have lived in those countries. Pasta in Italy did not taste like anything my Nana made for us. (Though both were delicious.) I grew up celebrating Lunar New Year, with very specific family traditions. We went out to eat at a Chinatown restaurant, and then at home we played card games: one was blackjack and the other was what I knew as “bee” and later found out is a game others call “Chinese Ten.” Now, living in Southern California, and in an area with a lot more Asian immigrants than suburban Massachusetts, I’m learning about all these other traditions that are probably considered more traditional, but I never would have known based on my own upbringing. My red envelopes had a 20 dollar bill, but apparently you’re supposed to give amounts that have lucky numbers 6 and 8 in them. We never ate oranges. We never decorated our doorway with banners. But I’d like to think that didn’t mean my Lunar New Year was any less authentic or meaningful.
Image Credit: GameSpot
I can see Din, Grogu, and Bo-Katan encountering these kind of cultural differences with each other in this episode. The scene in which Bo-Katan makes “pog soup” over a makeshift fire, for example, was so indicative of how the Mandalorian diaspora has made many kinds of Mandalorians. Din confesses that he’s never had pog soup, and Bo, shocked, says that every child on Mandalore grew up on it since they were Grogu’s size. And now, Grogu, the newest Mandalorian, is having pog soup, on Mandalore, as a child. So the cultural practice has the potential come back around to him and his generation of Mandalorians. Cultural practices that Din grew up with and that Bo-Katan grew up with might be totally different, but they’re both equally Mandalorian.
And yet, here, the three of them are trying to negotiate what Mandalorian culture is in this moment. Do you have to eat pog soup to be a Mandalorian? Postcolonial theorist and Harvard professor Homi K. Bhabha describes how colonialism or any kind of inter-cultural contact creates a liminal “third space,” caught in between different peoples and places. In The Location of Culture, he says, “It is in the emergence of the interstices--the overlap and displacement of domains of difference--that the intersubjective and collective experiences of nationness, community interest, or cultural value are negotiated.” This episode, to me, is one of these interstices. A small space through which these three characters, in quiet conversation around a fire, can together define and create Mandalore, even when the physical location is in ruins. I had the honor and pleasure of appearing as a guest on Coffee with Kenobi this week, and subjected poor Dan and Cory to this quotation as well. If you want to hear more of my thoughts on Bo-Katan’s arc, the Darksaber, and just how cute little Grogu is in this episode, give it a listen!
As a part of this inter-subjective negotiation, there is at least one cultural touchstone that immediately connects all of them. As they approach the Mines, Bo-Katan tells Din about when she was a child and had to go to the living waters to recite the Mandalorian Creed in front of her father and his subjects. This harkens back to the scene that opened the entire season: a young child stepping into unknown waters on another planet because the remaining Children of the Watch have been displaced from their homeland and need to recreate this ritual elsewhere. Later in this episode, of course, we see Din recite the same Creed as he steps into the living waters.
I swear on my name and the names of the ancestors.
That I shall walk the Way of the Mand'alor.
And the words of the Creed shall be forever forged in my heart.
This is the Way.
The Mandalorians we meet throughout the Galaxy may diverge in many ways, but this one recitation has somehow transcended place, history, and generational divides. The phrase “This is the Way” has become a fun catchphrase for fans, but here, in this episode, we see the power its utterance can have. When Bo-Katan regales Din with the last time she went to the living waters, she mentions her father, Adonai Kryze (though he is not named here). When Din says that he sounds like an interesting man, she corrects him and says, “He was a great man. He died defending Mandalore." Din stops in his tracks, turns to look at Bo-Katan, and says “This is the Way.” Bo-Katan looks astonished and taken aback by his reverence. This one phrase moves her in a way that is critical to what I’m hoping is her restoration of hope and faith in Mandalorian civilization. I was moved as well. I LOST it in this moment, ambushed by the tears welling up in my eyes.
Image Credit: Decider
I acknowledge that The Children of the Watch are more orthodox and, as some would say, fundamentalists or zealots, which is socially problematic in a lot of ways. But here we see how that Bo has maybe gone too far in the opposite direction. Gone too long without that sense of belonging, community, wonder, and majesty towards Mandalore as not necessarily a place but an idea.
I like the line about Bo maybe coming back to some kind of community. I keep coming back to her formerly being in Deathwatch. She wasn’t too far removed from the Children of the Watch.
The sixth step into the pool is a doozy. There should be sign.