Processing the Season 2 Finale of The Mandalorian
I was holding off on making any really in-depth analysis posts until after The Mandalorian Season 2 finale, with the original hope that S2E8 would close the narrative loop on what has been set up in the first two seasons of the show.
What I’m going to do instead is break down why I (and many others) are so comprehensively disappointed in the finale. I think the reasons why people are disappointed are complex and merit some serious discussion. This is going to be very, very, very long, and will be broken down into different sections. My intent is to lay out the emotional and narrative foundations of the show in the hope of demonstrating why the finale fails to follow through on those things. The core argument I will make is this:
the Season 2 finale failed to resolve the tensions that had been built up throughout the show; it also failed to stay faithful to the narrative rules of its own universe, and in doing so, retroactively damaged the meaning and value of all previous episodes.
With Season 3 a year out from now, I very obviously don’t know what’s going to happen or what the S2 finale has set up in terms of plot, aside from the obvious: Din and the kid are now split up; Grogu is going to be training as a Jedi; Din and Bo-Katan are going to fight over the Darksaber; Gideon’s survival means he will remain an antagonising force in the series. I am going to treat Seasons 1 and 2 as their own full, complete texts, because there is no other way to go about analysing the show without veering into speculative territory or discussing the endless connections this show has to the broader SW universe. I think that’s an important discussion to have on its own, but it is not what will be done here.
When relevant, I will reference outside SW canon, but only to the extent that it has a direct impact on the show. My reason for this is that, while the show itself is its own full text, it is consciously nested within the broader fabric of the Star Wars universe, and the lore outside the immediate show informs the narrative intent of the writers, even if it is not stated explicitly within The Mandalorian itself.
I say this to make it clear that I know the show is going to continue, so the reasons why the showrunners decided to take it in the direction they did are still unclear. Having said that, I think it is reasonable to treat the show as it exists now (with two full seasons having aired) as a complete product; a story arc within each season and a grander arc spanning both seasons.
If you follow me or have read some of the many, many posts I’ve made about this show, some of this is going to be a rehash of arguments I’ve made previously. I think it’s useful to collect in one place all the core elements of the show in order to demonstrate why the finale is so disconnected from those elements, so bear with me if you’ve heard some of this before. I’m also going to be referring to episodes by their season and episode number (ie S2E8) for clarity’s sake.
The main sections of this post will be:
The meaning of Din’s armour
This is going under a cut. As I said, it’s going to be extremely long, so I will break it into sections and subsections with headers for better readability.
With that preamble out of the way, let’s begin.
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