The Mandalorian Spoiler Recap: Chapter 24: The Return

So Dr. Pershing is just dead, huh?

Not that I am delusional or silly enough to think that a minor character I happen to like is the full focus of the show, I know better than that. What I apparently didn’t know better than to do was go into the finale (presumably season finale though at times it certainly felt like a series finale - more on that later) expecting the biggest, most consequential plot points to be tied up in any way shape or form. 

There is a difference, to my mind, between having the kinds of ridiculous, very niche expectations of a show that tailor to your personal preference (a Ben Solo reference, a cameo from your fave, a concept from a book to take center stage), and expecting a series to pay off what it is laying down. Having zero expectations is not a good thing. That’s a thing people say when they are prepared to be disappointed. Most people, in all likelihood, go into something largely just expecting for a story to stick to its own internal logic, to reap what it has sown, pay off what it has introduced, and if it surprises us in a good way along the way, so be it. Expecting a story to dance to the tune of its own drum is not a bad thing, and when a story fails to do that in service of “no plot only vibes”, that’s where the problem starts to set in, and it became abundantly clear that that’s the problem with The Mandalorian’s Season 3 finale.

The plot of Chapter 24: The Return is fairly straightforward. The Mandalorians face off against Gideon and the Imperial remnants to retake Mandalore. Din escapes from Gideon’s people almost immediately and rejoins the fight. Eventually they succeed. Din formally adopts Grogu, and the two of them head out to work as lower-risk bounty hunters helping the New Republic, settling down in a cabin on Nevarro, while the rest of the Mandalorians rebuild back home.

I’ve been struggling with the best way to tackle my thoughts on the finale, and the season overall. My usually beat by beat recap doesn’t feel like the way to go, purely because so much of this episode was devoted to action scenes, with faceless Mandalorians, droids, and troopers shooting, flying and blowing things up. Action scenes are already a struggle for me to follow without a face to focus on, a character I have come to feel some kind of connection to over the run time. 

A face can say so much, even when the environment is too loud or chaotic for dialogue. Look at the Throne Room scene from The Last Jedi. It’s a lengthy fight sequence, but with a range of emotions playing on Rey and Kylo’s faces it gives me something to invest in. Let’s also put a pin in the throne room, because I’m coming back to that too.

So somewhere along the way, in all this pew pew boom boom, the most surface of plot concerns from the season overall were resolved, with the larger — arguably more interesting — points left to languish. 

So let’s pick it back up at the top of the review. With Dr. Pershing. 

Let’s be real, I was always going to spend this entire season chasing the high of Episode 3. Nearly an hour of meaningful storytime given over to my fave Glup Shitto, Dr. Penn Pershing, was not something I went into the season expecting, and beyond my own bias it was actually a solid episode. It explored themes of redemption, of life after the Empire, and showcased the struggles faced by the New Republic in setting up their new government — one ultimately doomed to fail. 

His portion of the episode ended with him being taken into New Republic custody to be reconditioned after Elia Kane sold him out for her (and Gideon’s) purposes, with Kane going so far as to mess with the mind flayer machine and break his brain beyond what the New Republic had intended. Did it kill him? I don’t know. None of us know. We can make assumptions one way or another, but I don’t think an offhand vangue comment about his fate — uttered by Gideon of all people, to a group he is actively deceiving — is enough to give me any real information. This is something I might expect to see revisited in a Season 4, but we don’t even know that we’re getting that. Not really. Not for sure.

Then there is the matter of Gideon’s clones. Because yes, it turns out Gideon was attempting to make Force sensitive clones of himself (one small mercy: no Palpatine in this series. I’ll take my wins where I can get them). It seems like he might have even succeeded. Only we’ll never find out. Because Din blows them up before they ever do anything but hang ominously in their tubes. Instead of Chekov’s Gun, we have Gideon’s Clones: the clones brought on stage in Act 1 must unceremoniously be yeeted into the audience in Act 3.

While this show might not be the time or place for it, I do hope we eventually get some kind of resolution for why Pershing stayed working for Gideon long after the Empire fell. Are these questions the average audience member is asking? Maybe not. But stories are elevated by not appealing solely to the most passive-watching denominator. Even if they hadn’t thought to ask the question, a thoughtful answer will take them by surprise in a way paint-by-numbers storytelling never will. 

Moving on to Bo-Katan and the Darksaber. I’ll tackle my smaller issue first and simply wonder what the point of introducing the Mythosaur was, and more importantly having Bo be so shady about disclosing it to anyone if it never came to anything. I’m glad no one disturbed it long enough to ride it, but the fact that it was the source of no tension at all reads to me like they wanted the gasps of including the legendary Mythosaur with little thought to what the Mythosaur actually means. 

Was it just that something had survived the purge? That can’t be it, because we see a group of Mandalorians who also survived just a handful of epsiodes later. A hint that the Mandalorians will eventually come together? Perhaps, but it’s hard to feel that emotionally invested in a concept that was literally explicitated not two minutes earlier. I’m just going to chalk it up to shock value and move on.

Now to the Darksaber. Oh, the whiplash of the Darksaber. Season 2 ends with Bo refusing to take it from Din because it must be “earned” in order for her to rightly wield it. So instead Din tries and mostly fails to wield it himself. Bo uses it in a pinch to save Din’s life, but he goes on carrying it until she needs a symbol under which she can unite the Mandalorians, at which point he transitive-properties it into her custody. Which, ok fine. Sometimes you need to tell people whatever they need to hear in order to believe in themselves.

But then, when she’s facing down Moff Gideon, he takes it from her, crumples it like an empty Coke can and drops it to the ground. This does not impact Bo in the slightest, who instead insists the strength of Mandalorian’s comes from their unity, and moves on past this immediately. 

To be clear I have no problems with her sentiment, nor do I especially have a problem with the destruction of the Darksaber. Where my problem lies is in how quickly this blade went from being the be-all-end-all of Bo’s sense of leadership to just another thing she can live without. I do think she might have gotten there eventually, but all of that growth is bypassed in favor of flamethrowers or something. 

Then comes the moment when the Darksaber is actually destroyed. That plus the presence of the Praetorian guards draws some inevitable comparaisons to The Last Jedi, and the destruction of the legacy saber. When Rey and Kylo manage to snap the saber in two, it is a huge moment both visually and for the story. The music and cinematography convey that this is a big moment. The fact that their fight ends when the saber breaks because something here is now fundamentally broken, that says a lot. That Bo-Katan reacts to the destruction of this thing that has occupied her thoughts for decades with the same amount of annoyance I attribute to a broken hairtie is not only comical, it’s frustrating. If she doesn’t care, and if the writing doesn’t care, why exactly should the audience care?

Because I’m not totally incapable of saying nice things, I will say this. Though it took a minute to get there, uniting the Mandalorians on their homeworld and building a future together there was carried out very beautifully. There were a lot of moments where the loyalties of various Mandalorians were called into question (most notably the Armorer), but I can chalk a lot of this up to it being very difficult to read a person’s motivation when you can’t see their face. I sound like a broken record at this point, I know, but how many theories about what the Armorer was up to would never have been made if we had just been able to see Emily Swallow’s eyes?

I also do like the very end of the episode, with Din and Grogu in their little cottage, ready to live a life out in the galaxy with an eventual home to return to. It feels satisfying for their arc as far as a firm, conclusive ending goes. But with so many other plot points left hanging, I have to wonder…if we do get a Season 4, will it perhaps not focus on Din Djarin at all? Will it be renamed “The Mandalorians” and follow Bo around? Is that when we get to check back in with the New Republic, the threats of the Shadow Council, and whatever is going to lead up to Thrawn and that Dave Filoni movie that was teased at Star Wars Celebration? Who’s to say. I remain hopeful for the era as a whole, but if we do get another story for Din and Grogu, I think things will be better served by them committing to either the small bounty hunter story, or the huge galaxy shaking one, since trying to do a bit of both leaves the whole thing feeling confused.

The Mandalorian Season 3 is on Disney+ now.