The Mandalorian Season 3 SPOILER Review

The Mandalorian Season 3 SPOILER Review

The third and final season of The Mandalorian has come to an end. That means it’s time to share my SPOILER packed thoughts on season 3 as a whole. Let’s get started!

General Thoughts: To be honest, like most people I was pretty underwhelmed and disappointed with this season. Now to be clear, I still thought it was fun and enjoyable. This isn’t the worst of these live action Star Wars tv shows by any means. But compared to seasons 1 and 2 of The Mandalorian, this is easily the weakest. And especially with how bad The Book of Boba Fett was and how meh this season was, I’m starting to get nervous for Ahsoka and other seasons in this world. Especially seasons written by Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni. I liked several of the episodes, you do get plenty of cool action in this season. But the journey and the through-line to get from season to season was really frustrating for me. So now let’s break down the specifics about what did and didn’t work for me. 

The Review:

• Characters: And I thought the characters were handled very well this season, I was very pleased with how they balanced and portrayed the characters. In a lot of ways, this is probably Mando’s least character development. I’m not saying he doesn’t grow in the season, the 100% does but it’s probably the least amount of growth in a single season. Season 1 and 2 gave him this great arc of learning to love Grogu, being his father figure towards him, and then eventually having to give him up to Luke Skywalker. That was a great and emotional arc to give that kind of character. Season 3 his arc was basically him just regaining the trust and joining back into the Mandalorian culture. It was still a solid arc, I still thought it worked but it wasn’t quite as powerful as I think it should have been. Now what really kind of surprised me here was that it did a great job of fleshing out the side characters. In particular with Bo Katan, I was not a fan of her character in season 2. As a point of reference I’ve seen The Clone Wars and the episodes with Bo in them, but that was back when they aired. I haven’t seen the seventh season of the show, so I didn’t really know much about Bo Katan. But I just thought that with this season they did a great job of making her more likable and a character that you like. I thought her journey and arc was pretty solid, her relationship with Mando was pretty good in here. Then they also fleshed out The Armour and made her a far more fascinating character for me. Where she’s much more front and center, there’s lots of debates with her as to which side she’s on. We knew there was a spy and a lot of people were pointing towards The Armour, honestly I was too. And it just did a great job of fleshing all of them out, even some side Mandalorian characters. Like the Mandalorian with the son that they rescued in episode 4, the one that sacrificed themself in episode 7, I liked that character. I was sad when he died, I like that character. 

• The Action: And I appreciated that with this season you get a lot of Mandalorian action. Since this is the season that has the most Mandalorians inside of it, we get the most Mandalorian action. To my knowledge prior to season 3 the only other Mandalorian action scene was in season 1, episode 3. So in four episodes of the show we get this whole cult of Mandalorians tearing guys to pieces, whether it’s Moff Gideon’s troops or evil space pirates. We get a lot of action where the Mandalorians as a group get to fight the bad guy. It’s just really cool to see, it makes the action different and more distinct in this season. In season 2 a lot of the action is just Mandalorian and some friends taking out troopers. But when you have Mandalorians working together, using all of their fancy tech it’s really cool to see. Episode 5, 7, and 8 probably have the best and most memorable action for me. 

• The Story: And this is really where the season felt so frustrating to me is that they didn’t have a compelling story. The season had so many great ideas that could have and and should have been the entire season. Like Mando going to Mandalore should have this emotional weight, you should feel it. But it just sort of happens and you move on from there. Bo Katan gets the dark saber again and just sort of happens, again you don’t feel anything from it. And I think that’s because the season was very side quest filled. The show has always kind of been like this, it’s always had a bunch of side quests in here. But the amount of side quests that don’t tie into anything is very weird. For example they have episode 3 which goes on this complete rabbit trail focusing on Moff Gideon’s scientist buddy. He meets a spy named Elia Kane who pops up in a couple episodes later on. With where they take her character, episode 3 feels kind of pointless. They didn’t need to explain all of that, so episode 3 feels very pointless now. And that’s kind how a lot of the season felt, like they have these side quests to have something important happen in the final episode. So episode 6 is this side quest where it’s like stunt casting the episode filled with cameos. They go to this planet and the rulers or Lizzo and Jack Black. The villain of the episode is Christopher Lloyd, now I'm a fan of those three people but it feels like stunt casting. And basically on that planet are Bo Katan’s old Mandalore buddies that are mad at her and she gets the dark saber at the end of the episode. Do an entire episode where Bo Katan reunites with her buddies that she may or may not trust anymore, do some flashbacks or something. And then have Bo Katan get the dark saber at the end, flesh out the characters and move the plot along. Don’t do this side quest that feels pointless, so pointless to watch. On paper, I can see this season should have been so much better. Like if this season was about Mando going back to Mandalore, having some conflict with Bo Katan. And then Moff Gideon doing his evil things, this season really could have worked. 

• The Conclusion/Set-Up for Season 4: So I thought the season closed out nicely, I liked the way it closed things out. It did a much better job than I thought they were going to. I wasn’t quite sure how they were going to resolve the season, but they did nicely. You have Mando basically being this hired protector for Narvarro. Now that Grogu is his adoptive son he wants to be careful with the kind of missions he goes on. That makes sense, that feels in line with who Mando is. The way it closed out felt like a series finale to me, I heard some other people say that I think that’s true. If they announced this was the final season, I would be satisfied with where this season ended. And it does set-up an interesting arc for season 4. Where season 4 could be the final season and I would be all for it, or have season 4 and 5 close it out. We also now know that we are getting a Dave Filoni movie closing out this Mundoverse, and now with season 3 I’m curious as to what that means. I’m wondering if with Ahsoka it will give us a better idea as to what this Mandoverse movie is going to be. Anyways, I’m getting ahead of myself. Another thing to kind of note here, they set-up that Moff Gideon is creating clones of himself. He wants clones of himself that have the force. They did get destroyed in the finale, but I’m wondering if Moff Gideon has some more that could be interesting. And if you have Moff Gideon with his force clones with the brains of Thrawn, that could be a great scenario for Mandoverse the movie. 

Final Thoughts: In general, this season was still enjoyable, watchable, and fun to watch. It’s not great, I don’t think it deserves a lot of the hate that it’s been getting. I enjoy this show, I enjoy these characters. But it’s still a very flawed and frustrating season. I feel like this season brought out a lot of the issues with the show as a whole. It highlighted the weakness of the side quest filled stories for the show. So I hope with season 4 they get things back on track and we can get back to the great seasons of Mandalorian like seasons 1 and 2.