I don't think that many people will argue that Star Wars in a general sense has taken one bad turn after another ever since Disney took over the rights to the one of the most famous franchises in TV and movie history. There are a lot of things they have done very wrong including ruining fond memories of beloved characters as well as installing political "lessons" into the stories and force-feeding them to us packaged inside of something that a lot of us were so devoted to in a nostalgic sense that we begrudgingly went to see everything they threw our way in the hopes that perhaps it would be different this time.
With few exceptions it almost never was "different this time" and Disney just kept at the social-justice overhaul of everything we Star Wars fans held dear for most of our lives. One of those exceptions up until recently was The Madalorian and I feel as though a big part of with was because of Jon Favreau's involvement in its production. I guess even Favreau could only hold back the Disney horde for so long because after watching all of season 3, I can't really say that I am all that excited about season 4.
Throughout this writeup I am going to try to be as spoiler-free as possible but some secrets might end up sneaking through my filter, therefore I want to warn anyone out there that hasn't yet watched season 3 and would prefer to go in blind, that it might be a better idea for you to skip reading this. Just know that I would be very surprised if any long-term Star Wars fan ends up feeling much differently than I did about season 3.
One of the things that made The Mandalorian unique and dare I say, good, was the fact that it was a story about an iconic group of individuals that outside of a very small sector of ultra-nerds, our only real exposure to Madalorians was likely Boba Fett and a few other characters from his kind that appeared in other important, yet small portions of the overall Star Wars universe. I recall as a child that Boba Fett was one of the most iconic and beloved characters despite the fact that his involvement was a rather minor detail and his dispatching was done almost unceremoniously in Return of the Jedi. Looking back it is actually a bit upsetting that they would off such an amazing character in a humous fashion but hell, Star Wars even the original trilogy had its comedic moments.
In The Mandalorian we go full on in depth to the people with the same name and we are introduced to their history slowly but surely through the eyes of Din Djarin, who is played quite well by actor Pedro Pascal.
I did find it amusing that Din Djarin has his helmet on in 95% of the show as is required by his character arc, so it really could be anyone inside that suit and I wonder how much of the filming was actually done with Pedro simply doing voiceover work while some extra walked through the scenes for him.
Season 1 and 2 were dark and quite interesting although I would say that right around towards the end of season 2, the story started to drag on a bit and it seemed like they were intentionally making things take a lot longer than they needed to.
I remained hopeful about Season 3 though and at first, it looked like it was going be end up being reasonably solid... but then someone in the social justice department at Disney must have finally got to Favreau because the story takes a decided shift away from what the first 2 seasons had established, and went down the path that we have come to expect from Star Wars and Disney just generally speaking.
Din Djarin starts to become a bit of a side character in his own show as the focus starts to be put more and more on Bo-Katan Kryze who is played, much to the delight of Battlestar Galactica fans, by Katee Sackoff. I didn't mind this at first likely for the same reason that anyone else allowed it at least at first, but then as she became more and more the center of attention we are kind of left wondering which Mandalorian is actually The Mandalorian in the title of the show? Are we making this The Womanlorian now? Why does Disney have to do this every, damn, time.
Things go from bad to worse when in Episode 6 we are treated to a diversity and inclusion episode with Jack Black, Lizzo, and Christopher Lloyd. This episode is completely unrelated to the overall story and we never needed cameo appearances in order for this show to be good. It was good and I will say much better without this. It doesn't matter to me that Lizzo is black and in this show, it matters to me that her character is completely irrelevant to the story and this seems like Disney is completely wasting the fans' time again.
Too much time is spent on the overall story in Season 3 and there are some characters who are developed over a long period of time that could have been completed in 10 minutes. It takes so long for them to establish that the Mandalorian tribes have been at ends with one another for ages, yet all of that gets thrown to the side when Grogu (baby Yoda) interrupts the one and only battle between two tribes in his robot suit while having the machine say "no, no, no, no"
Look, I like Grogu also and think that the concept of a cute "baby Yoda" is good and adorable. The relationship between Grogu and Din Djarin to be endearing and touching but the more they focus on Grogu being cute rather than an actual part of the story, the more I think that Disney is just trying to sell more merch, which I am sure they are doing a lot of.
All in all, I found the 3rd season to be visually wonderful and that is one of the only redeeming qualities about this season in my mind. The effects team was hard at work and I would say that the ship combat that takes place throughout the entire season is some of the best that we have seen in ANY Star Wars production.
It does get a bit frustrating seeing Empire pilots be as useless as ever but this is the way that it has always been and they don't need to change that. I just feel as though the audience has very good reason to not really be all that worried anytime one of these turns up.
The space combat is incredible, I'll give them that. But the departure away from the main story and turning it into "The Force is Female" just like every damn other thing that that Disney has done with Star Wars has gone beyond predictable at this point. The women don't need to be damsels in distress the way that Leia was all the time, but having them take over basically every role of power across the board has gotten old. Poor Din Djarin would have died several times over if it weren't for him being constantly rescued by female helpers. This reared its head a little bit in Season 2, but it was just all encompassing in season 3.
In the end the series results in exactly what you would expect to happen: A good guys' victory with Grogu being what keeps them safe in the end. I knew that was going to happen as soon as he was introduced into the storyline. It was always going to be that way and I am fine with it. Another thing that is upsetting to me about the finale - and this I will be vague about - was that the entire idea behind Moff Gideon's evil plot is gone into in tremendous detail throughout multiple episodes including massive backstories just for his underlings.... and all of that gets annihilated with a simple flip of a switch that didn't even seem all that difficult to achieve. It was tremendously underwhelming and a rather abrupt ending to something they spent 7 hours building up to.
I don't know if this has anything to do with the impending writer's strike that was about to happen when these were being made but the overall theme of this once great story in my opinion has seriously gone down the crapper.
Of course just like with anything that Disney does with Star Wars there is a massive disconnect between the professional critics and the audience score that we have seen repeated a great deal ever since Disney took over. I'm not saying that Rotten Tomatoes is a great place to go for honest reviews, but it is clear that the professionals are either scared of Disney or are attempting to curry favor with them with almost anything that they release.
I will likely watch season 4 when it comes out but I gotta say that I am about 1 more celebrity cameo appearance episode away from walking away from this for good.
