We’re all together now in The Mandalorian S3 finale.

Does it mark the next phase of Star Wars’ MCU-ification?

The Short Take: 

A straightforward yet emotionally satisfying finale brings a clean finish to a season that left many questioning its sense of direction.

Image Credit: Deadline

[SPOILER ALERT: I’m sorry, I don’t speak non-spoilers.]

The Long Take:

Said in my best Anzellan voice:             

Straightforward, NO BACK STABBY. 

On the one hand, I feel like a chump. As this finale unfolded, it became clearer and clearer to me that I had drastically overthought what could or would happen in the finale. I had spent most of my review last week, after all, theorizing about who could be the spy in the Mandalorian ranks. Would the Armorer turn against Bo? Who would secretly try to undermine the reclamation of Mandalore? 

The answer was no one. No one betrayed anyone else in this episode. They all sincerely worked together to defeat Moff Gideon and reclaim Mandalore. During her electrifying duel with Moff Gideon, Bo-Katan grits her teeth and says, “Mandalorians are stronger together.” She openly rejects the narrative Moff Gideon has crafted for her — the narrative that she once believed herself. 

Image Credit: IGN

Her words in this pivotal moment could easily be the mantra for this entire episode, as all of our characters, spread across this conflict, are perfectly positioned to do their part. Axe Woves stays with the Imperial Cruiser as a decoy, and then crashes into Moff Gideon’s base just as Bo-Katan, Din, and Grogu defeat Moff Gideon and the Pretorian Guards. Meanwhile, The Armorer (who was NOT a spy! — and if you’re a Muppet Christmas Carol fan, you know the intonation with which to read that), comes in with reinforcements just at the right time. And, we can’t forget Paz Vizsla’s noble sacrifice that made all this possible. What did the Mad Max Mandos end up contributing? I can’t exactly recall. A shrubbery, perhaps?

Considering all this — that every single Mandalorian faction or family did their part to win the day — this finale had a much more wholesome agenda than I ever would have expected. Then again, that shouldn’t be a surprise; a strong sense of hope and renewal is classic Star Wars. 

I especially loved that we ended with a mirror image of the scene with which we opened the season. We begin on the dangerous dino-croc planet, where Ragnar, Paz Vizsla’s son, tries to initiate his apprenticeship in unknown waters. We end on Mandalore, with Ragnar completing his pledge of The Creed in The Living Waters, just as Bo-Katan told Din she did as a child. These bookend scenes show us just how far The Mandalorians have come this season, from stars scattered across the Galaxy to a hundred hammers ringing in unison, just as they would have in The Great Forge of yore. 

I’m happy to be wrong about the spies if it means we get this moment. I’m especially thrilled that I can sport my shiny new Armorer Loungefly backpack without feeling like I’ve gone to the Dark Side. The aerial jet pack battle sequence was epic and generally satisfying, but my favorite part was seeing the Armorer do her thing with her hammer and tongs while flying. I can see the argument that, in retrospect, this still means that The Armorer’s behavior across several episodes was confusing or inconsistent, but I think that reaction may be more a function of us having too many stoic characters who conceal their potentially more expressive faces with helmets? Regardless, I’m very curious to see how The Armorer’s arc this season holds up on a season rewatch. 

Image Credit: Sideshow

As happy as I am to be wrong about the Armorer and other potential spies, I’ve had proverbial egg on my face before, and that doesn’t feel as great. I typically try to avoid comparing Star Wars to Marvel because, while I love both franchises, I like to think of them as unique and special in their own way. I’ve also said, though, that Marvel fans — myself included! — have to slow their roll with theorizing. We’re doing this to ourselves — overthinking the possibilities and then being disappointed when the answer was simple and straightforward. [SPOILER WARNING for WandaVision and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Skip to the next paragraph to avoid.] When Quicksilver really was just Ralph Bohner all along. Or when the Power Broker was the most obvious character under suspicion.

Does this reflect a massively sinister fake-out on the creators’ part? I doubt it. After I wrote my review last week, I ran across a couple of folks who brought up a possible explanation of “The Spies” that I never would have thought of — that the Old Testament actually references “The Twelve Spies,” or Israelites who were sent by Moses to scout out a new home for their people. This makes quite a neat parallel between these “spies” or scouts and the reconnaissance party that Bo-Katan assembles to investigate Mandalore and set up base before they bring the rest of the Mandalorians down to the planet. 

Even if this explanation retroactively makes more sense of the title “The Spies,” I still feel a little bit of that over-thinking sting here, in realizing how uncomplicated the story actually was. I set my own expectations going into the finale, and, however reasonable that was based on what we got last week, it’s still a dangerous undertaking that can interfere with someone’s enjoyment of a show. Irresponsible speculation is a favorite pastime of mine, and I often have to remind myself that this is just the cost of doing business when theorizing and predicting is your trade.

I’m not sure how we get around this problem. For me, a lot of the joy of watching serialized stories week-to-week comes from discussing it with friends and wondering what will happen next. The sting will fade and I’ll be back at it again once Secret Invasion starts in June and Ahsoka starts in August.

Placing this episode and this season of The Mandalorian into a broader context, it’s hard to ignore that Marvel and Star Wars are both parts of the same Disney corporate machine. As I process my reactions to this season finale, I can’t help but see this as another step Star Wars takes towards becoming more like Marvel. There are certainly signs that this is how Disney and all the creators working within both production ecosystems have been conceptualizing the franchise’s future as well. We can’t forget what Jon Favreau was most known for a decade before he partnered up with Dave Filoni to create The Mandalorian: directing the very first Iron Man film in 2008. I could easily argue that his great work in Iron Man launched the MCU and forever changed franchise film — and now serialized — storytelling. 

With the recent Star Wars Celebration announcement of three different film projects in development, the real headline, as my friend Greg

Eye On Canon

noted on our most recent podcast recording, is that we’re actually getting Star Wars movies again. As an aside, I am checking my hype here because we’ve had heard film announcements that have later gotten canceled or fizzled into obscurity. But, to my point, one of the three films announced was for a film helmed by Dave Filoni that, according to StarWars.com, “will focus on the New Republic, and close out the interconnected stories told in The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett, Ahsoka, and other Disney+ series.” This sounds exactly like the technique that Marvel has had so much success with in the film space: telling individual stories focusing on specific characters, but then coordinating the plots of those individual stories to build towards a “crossover event” that potentially pulls them all together. That is, heroes like Thor or Captain America get their own individual films, but then every once in a while all those characters converge into an Avengers film. 

To me, this is the model Star Wars seems to have planned for all the Disney+ series: Din Djarin, Grogu and this group of Mandalorians get their own story, Boba Fett and Fennec Shand get their own story, and Ahsoka and the Rebels crew get their own story. Even though it takes place much earlier, I might even add Andor to the mix here because we see a flash of an older Mon Mothma’s anxious face in the new Ahsoka trailer. And you could argue that even though they’re a part of The Mandalorian, The Amnesty Program on Coruscant and Carson Teva with The Adelphi Rangers of The New Republic are their own narrative threads as well. Oh, and we can’t forget series that haven’t even started yet, like Skeleton Crew, a Goonies in space style series starring Jude Law that takes place during the same period as The Mandalorian. By MCU logic, all these characters will join together in one culminating film to fight a common enemy, who will almost certainly be Grand Admiral Thrawn, whose absence was the main topic of conversation for Moff Gideon and the rest of the Shadow Council last week. (See, there I go speculating again…)

To be clear, I’m not mad about this at all. How amazing would it be if Dave Filoni’s film is essentially Endgame but for Star Wars?! And, in general, think about the joy of seeing Zeb, a beloved character from Rebels, pop up unexpectedly in The Mandalorian. A Star Wars: Endgame (or maybe Final Battlefront?) would be that times a thousand. 

There is, however, a weird time dilation looming over what appears to be an attempt to imitate the MCU. I suspect decisions made to run Star Wars storytelling more like the MCU likely came about after the massive high of Endgame in 2019 (the year The Mandalorian began, incidentally) and the overall success of The Infinity Saga. The fruits of that decision are starting to fall from The Disney tree in the midst of Marvel suffering from what critics have called a slump. Many believe that in an attempt to start a new massive multi-film and now multi-series story — The Multiverse Saga — Kevin Feige and the MCU have floundered a bit in how to capture that lightning in a bottle again, all while still growing and expanding past that first lighting strike. I’m generally higher on the more recent MCU entries than most, but I do agree that compared to past phases, this one lacks a clarity of direction. 

This may be coincidental, but a clarity of direction that has shaken viewers’ confidence is the main criticism of this season. I’m going to guess that, as I mentioned earlier, where the season was going might be obvious upon a full season rewatch, but that doesn’t change the fact that we all watched this series week-to-week and went on this rollercoaster of "whoa Din already bathed in the living waters can’t wait to see what’s next" to, "I didn’t have 40 minutes of Doctor Pershing on my bingo card," to "what are Lizzo and Jack Black doing here," to "yes, it’s all happening on Mandalore and I am here for every second of it." Perhaps if we had gotten clearer insight into what characters like The Armorer and Din Djarin were thinking and feeling, this wouldn't have been an issue. Or perhaps if we had seen Moff Gideon scheming from the start of the season but didn't reveal that he’s actually on Mandalore until the end (props to

P.T. McNiff

for this idea), the Elia Kane/Doctor Pershing episode would have seemed less random.

Again, these critiques are eerily similar to those made of the most recent slew of MCU series and films.Perhaps, then, we can view Season 3 of The Mandalorian as a microcosm of Phases 4 and 5 of the MCU. We did, after all, take disparate groups of Mandalorians and “assembled” them together to fight Moff Gideon. This begs the question: will Star Wars, years from now, feel more like the end of Phase 3 or more like Phase 4 of the MCU?

Image Credit: Variety

This is not to say that this finale didn’t bring me pure joy — it absolutely did. As I mentioned early on in this review, the conclusion of Bo-Katan’s arc, ending with redemption and victory, was extremely satisfying to me, even though I am a little sad that the Darksaber is toast now — RIP one of the coolest weapons in Star Wars. But what put me over the moon was the moment when Grogu unexpectedly saunters up to Din in his IG-12 mech so they can team up against Moff Gideon.

I’ve heard so many critics of this season citing Din and Grogu as the core, the soul of this show, complaining that there are stretches of this season that lose sight of that fact. Here, though, Din and Grogu’s inseparable bond is stronger than ever as Din tells Grogu that he’s going to have to be brave because they have to defeat Moff Gideon once and for all to be able to have the life together that they want. Grogu coos in acknowledgement and one of the best action sequences in all of Star Wars ensues. 

I’m getting choked up just writing about it now, so I’ll confess that I actively fought back tears when the camera cut to reveal that Grogu had used the Force to create a protective bubble around himself, Din, and Bo-Katan. I think if I hadn’t been successful, I could have gone full ugly cry. This was such a clever use of editing because when I saw Moff Gideon engulfed in flames, I immediately worried about our Mandalorian trio, and there was just enough time for me to get excited that perhaps Grogu had saved them.

Image Credit: Sideshow

What’s more, the father-son relationship between Din and Grogu progresses in a major way by the end of this episode. Maybe it’s all too much to cram in at the end, but at least now it is clear that there was a central arc for these two all season — Grogu’s journey from founding to apprentice, and Din getting to the point at which he can formally claim Grogu as his son. Call me sentimental, but the “Din Grogu” naming bit had me hook, line, and sinker. (Though I did pause to think, wait, does that mean Din is Mando’s last name???) And that final shot of Din reclining on their new Nevarro porch while Grogu quietly catches frogs to eat could not have made me a happier fan of this series. Much like The Bad Batch, which also recently concluded a season, it’s all about fighting tyranny to, as Rose Tico says in The Last Jedi, “save what we love.” Who we love. To try to get to that quiet yard on Nevarro. To try to get to that idyllic seaside on Pabu.

Whatever the future of Star Wars storytelling holds — no matter how smoothly this series, along with newer series, and eventually newer films converge and collide — as long as creators can hold onto these character moments and remember that they are the beating heart of this franchise, it’ll all be okay.