‘The Mandalorian’ Season 3 Finale: What Happens When Bo-Katan & More ‘Lose Their Trinkets’
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SPOILER ALERT: The following contains details of the Season 3 finale of Disney+/Lucasfilm’s The Mandalorian, episode “Chapter 24: The Return,” written by Jon Favreau and directed by Rick Famuyiwa.
Season 3 of The Mandalorian wrapped with a nice bow versus any grave cliffhanger, or guest appearance from a Star Wars canon character ala Season 2, when a digitized version of Mark Hamill’s Luke Skywalker swooped in to scoop up Grogu for Jedi training.
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Heading into today’s episode, you could say we were all expecting a cameo by General Admiral Thrawn before his big splash in Mandalorian spinoff Ahsoka due out this August; he being one of the big bad Star Wars villains, having debuted in the 1991 Timothy Zahn novel Heir to the Empire, which took place post-Return to the Jedi. Thrawn, the most evil dead in a universe sans Darth Vader and the Emperor, led the remnants of the Imperial Forces against a fledgling New Republic, and was known for his tactical genius and keen sensibility to assess enemies’ tactics. He’s never been portrayed in a live-action Star Wars movie or TV show but was a big part of Dave Filoni’s Rebels animated series.
Why did we think Thrawn would make a cameo? Because he was named-dropped in the last episode of Mandalorian, “Chapter 23: Spies,” during a Shadow Council meeting (Captain Pellaeon declared that Thrawn will “herald in the reemergence of our military,” while Moff Gideon observed that Thrawn is always a no-show).
“Chapter 24” picks up promptly where “Chapter 23” left off with Katee Sackoff’s Mandalore leader Bo-Katan Kryze and her posse retreating from Gideon’s HQ on Mandalore as the group is being pursued by his new white set of Beskar-armor dark troopers. Colleague Axe Woves says he’s flying off to get backup. Speaking of which, the new stormtroopers, Gideon in his new Mandalorian get-up and these Praetorian guards (who look like the Emperor’s royal guards from Return of the Jedi) are just impossible to take down; their uniforms have all the best gadgets of a Mandalorian’s including flame thrower, rope wire, darts and rockets. It takes a lot of guns, punches, darksaber slices and Grogu force maneuvers to take these guys out.
Din Djarin, who is being hauled away by dark troopers, is saved by Grogu manning his IG-12 get-up.
“If we don’t take out Moff Gideon, this will never end,” Din Djarin tells Grogu. “I’m going to need you to be brave for me, okay?”
Um, the kid just saved you from dark troopers you couldn’t even handle.
R5 assists Din Djarin in finding Moff Gideon’s location in the command center and taking down shields as our protagonist advances in the base. Din Djarin and Grogu stumble upon a hallway filled with the Imperial bad guy’s clones in water. Din Djarin punches a few buttons on a side computer thingy and all of the clones explode out of their pods. Moff poured water on the Shadow Council’s notions of clones in the last episode, but he’s been making ’em.
Throughout the episode, there’s a lot of fighting in the sky by Bo-Katan and The Armorer against the dark troopers. There’s a certain portion of the series where Bo-Katan and her people learn that rich tropical farms were being cultivated on Mandalore. As Moff previously expressed, the planet was always rich with resources, which is why he plundered it and made it his Imperial hideaway. What do the Mandalorians think of the lush gardens on Mandalore? I think they’re planning on staying.
Moff is irate that Din Djarin destroyed his clones which included “the best parts of me, but improved, but adding the one thing I didn’t have — the force.” Moff and Din fight, fight, fight. Bo-Katan swoops in and knocks Moff down. Grogu gets cornered by the three Praetorian guards behind closed doors. They destroy his IG-12 get-up, but he’s able to force jump above on a floating light rim as they attempt to slice at him. “I’ve got this, go save your kid,” Bo-Katan tells Din as she faces off with Moff. Ultimately, between fists, guns and Grogu’s force pull, together with Din, they overpower the guards.
Meanwhile, Bo-Katan lights her darksaber at which point Moff ignites his purple spear. “Hand over the darksaber and I’ll give you a warrior’s death,” he tells her.
But then he destroys that which has been so prized over the last three seasons: the Darksaber. Now what?
“You’ve lost everything,” he tells her. “Mandalorians are weak once they lose their trinkets.”
And now the big takeaway per Bo-Katan: “Mandalorians are stronger together.”
If you think about trinkets lost: Din is stripped of his suit’s gadgets (in “Chapter 23”), while in the end, Grogu doesn’t have IG-12.
Axe is flying a flaming, broken cruiser to the rescue; more specifically, diving the ship toward the Imperial base to fully destroy it. He’s able to fly out in time before it hits the command center, creating an enormous fire that swallows up Moff. Grogu is able to create a force field around him, Din and Bo-Katan, protecting them all from the fire.
The season wraps with Din telling The Armorer that he’s adopting Grogu, and the little green guy getting inducted as a Mandalorian foundling. Din and Grogu fly to a remote beach rebel port where they meet up with X-Wing commander Carson Teva. Din insists that Carson hire him on the down-low to protect the outer rim, despite what New Republic rules deem. Din and Grogu return to Nevarro where they’re gifted a home by Greef Karga (Carl Weathers).
As Disney+ Star Wars series’ immediate future is in Ahsoka, The Skeleton Crew, Andor Season 2 (August 2024) and the early days, High Republic-era set Jedi crime series The Acolyte, the question remains when we’ll see Din and Grogu again. It looks like they’ll be at that desert condo for some time on Nevarro. When is the next time we see them? 2025? It’s quite conceivable that Bo-Katan will bring Mandalore into a new era. But when does Grogu grow up? All Jedi-powered people go through an adolescent crisis and his cuteness is wearing thin. That was all good and fun in Season 1 with the whole True Grit Western homage.
While Mandalorian does thrive on the adventure of the week, what’s the longer storyline here? Will Din Djarin bump up against a young Kylo Ren and the destruction of the Jedi temple? Can we intermingle him into Rey’s storyline? That would be cool. Is Grogu related to Yoda for crying out loud? Now that Moff is gone, who is the next dark Imperial rising? It’s time for The Mandalorian to evolve and break out of its Beskar armor.
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