The Mandalorian Season 3 Finale Is a Worthy Series Finale for This Show: Review

Liz Shannon Miller
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The post The Mandalorian Season 3 Finale Is a Worthy Series Finale for This Show: Review appeared first on Consequence.

[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers through the Season 3 finale of The Mandalorian, “Chapter 24: The Return.”]

For the first time, a season of The Mandalorian ended without us getting a single glimpse of Pedro Pascal’s face — and maybe we’ll never see it again in a Star Wars. The Season 3 finale might have set up a narrative path for a potential Season 4, but otherwise “Chapter 24: The Return” plays very much like a series finale, providing the answer to that one haunting, existential question: Can a single Mandalorian, in a galaxy far far away, really have it all?

The answer being, of course, yes — if “it all” can be defined as a nice little cabin of his own, a happy adorable son, and a shiny starship he can use for the occasional hunting of bounties (as an independent contractor for the New Republic). Save going back to that planet from Season 1 and picking up that hot widow, it’s hard to imagine a happier potential ending for the character.

“The Return” picked up on the dramatic cliffhanger of last week with the Mandalorians under attack by Moff Gideon (Giancarlo Esposito) and his forces, and the ensuing battle is an impressive multi-front assault with many thrilling sequences, including Din bare-knuckle brawling through a series of Imperial commandos, no shortage of aerial fights enabled by jetpacks, and Axe Woves (Simon Kassianides) jamming the Mandalorian capital ship right into the Imperial base.

After Baby Yoda Grogu (it still feels wrong) uses the Force to protect Din and Bo-Katan (Katee Sackhoff) from the ensuing inferno, it’s all about wrapping up loose ends: Din officially adopts Grogu as his son, and Grogu takes the Creed; Din offers his services as a bounty hunter to our favorite New Republic captain (like any good freelancer, Din knows that the key to steady work is solid relationships); and Nevarro gets its own robot sheriff, thanks to a retrofitted IG-11 (still voiced by Taika Waititi).

There are maybe one or two loose ends here, still, and as a huge Amy Sedaris fan I’d be thrilled to see Peli Motto return again. But when we met Din Djarin all the way back in 2019, he was a loner with loose ties to a fragment of Mandalorian society, the Mandalorians themselves having been scattered across the galaxy. Season 3 ends, though, with the Mandalorians returned to a place of power on their homeworld (with no judgment if you do or don’t choose to keep your helmet on all the time), and the fires of the Great Forge relit.

mandalorian-season-3-grogu-2
mandalorian-season-3-grogu-2

The Mandalorian (Disney+)

Plus, speaking of fires, the odds of Moff Gideon (Giancarlo Esposito) coming back feel low at best, given Din’s destruction of his clones on top of the big ass explosion which consumed him. Though of course, literally anything is technically possible in a franchise that gave us the line “Somehow Palpatine returned”…

(For the record, the worst parts of Season 3 were the mentions of “Operation Necromancer” — executive producers Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni might be good company men, but The Rise of Skywalker doesn’t deserve their attempts to clean up its biggest plot messes. A TV show dropping hints about Domhnall Gleeson’s dad and the apparently decades-long plan to resurrect Palpatine in a TV show doesn’t fix how catastrophically bad that movie is.)

While there are big question marks around the future of The Mandalorian as a stand-alone series, it’s far from the end for Star Wars on TV — next up is Ahsoka, starring Rosario Dawson as the former apprentice to Anakin Skywalker who will be caught up in her own intergalactic adventure, as teased in the trailer below. (Will we be able to handle the novelty of a Star Wars show where we can see the protagonist’s face at all times? Stay tuned!)

While Ahsoka looks to be tonally very different from The Mandalorian’s Western-infused vibes, both shows take place during the same time period of Star Wars history, and as seen with The Book of Boba Fett, Filoni has no issues with cross-pollinating characters from other series into the mix. (Cannot stress enough how happy I will be if Ahsoka Tano needs some repairs on Tatooine from a certain Ripley-wigged mechanic…)

In the meantime, The Mandalorian Season 3 makes the case for concluding here. No post-credits sequence, no tease of future dangers to come. Just a man with his feet up on his porch, watching his son play with frogs on their land. Again, it’s hard to imagine a happier ending for the character, and perhaps that’s where we’ll leave him, barring future cameos. It might not be the best choice for theme park tie-ins or merchandise sales… but sometimes, it’s good for stories to end.

The Mandalorian is streaming now on Disney+.

The Mandalorian Season 3 Finale Is a Worthy Series Finale for This Show: Review
Liz Shannon Miller

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