Everyone’s favourite baby and his space dad return for the biggest television event of the year and that is the sophomore season of ‘The Mandalorian’. After an explosive finale, we rejoin Mando and The Child as they search for the remaining Mandalorian soldiers, hoping to find one on Tattooine. Chapter 9 / ‘The Marshal’ is directed by Jon Favreau.
Over the years I have been finding myself preferring movies over television and the sole reason for it is pacing. I simply do not have the patience to watch a full season anymore. In fact, the only live-action television I consume now is ‘This Is Us’, ‘Euphoria’, ‘Love, Victor’ and ‘The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’. ‘The Mandalorian’ now joins that short list as I have just binged the first season and the Season 2 Premiere. If you notice, just three of these shows air weekly and the rest are available to binge. Unlike those shows however, I am in the minority that like ‘The Mandalorian’ for it’s simplistic approach on storytelling. I don’t watch it for the theories or for the reveals, I enjoy how every episode is a self-contained adventure. It’s honestly refreshing seeing a piece of science-fiction which isn’t dominated by plot but rather atmosphere.
In fact, if I had to compare this show to any other it would be ‘Avatar: The Last Airbender‘. Remember how Aang and friends would travel from one place to another and you’d meet new characters and get some extra lore, that’s exactly what The Mandalorian is doing. It’s really brilliant because when you think of Star Wars you think of this massive, rich universe filled with lore and detail and ‘The Mandalorian’ capitalizes on that. There isn’t a single episode which didn’t feel exciting of interesting because of that. Chapter 9 takes us back to familiar Tattooine for it’s big return. As I said I don’t really watch the show for plot first, so I don’t mind how slow this season decides to take it. If anything I’m just happy to be here when it comes to ‘The Mandalorian’.
That being said, each chapter has something distinct which makes it memorable and worth revisiting. For the Season 2 Premiere there are two moments like that. The opening and a fantastic battle between a town and a sand dragon. One of my favourite shows creatively is ‘Legion’ and that show played around with screen ratio a ton giving an IMAX effect and it worked wonders. Seeing this show pull it off on such a grand level made my jaw drop. The entire atmosphere changed, it really did feel like premium television, this is the best of the best right up there with ‘Game of Thrones’ in terms of scope and visual effects in my opinion. What makes it even more exciting is that this is a show for all ages which really pushes the premium aspect to a wider audience. The camera movement, the shot composition and the visual effects brough the magic of big-screen Star Wars to the small-screen which is insane. The fact that the line between practical and visual effects is so blurred that I can’t tell what is practical and what’s not is a massive win considering how much praise the original trilogy has in that regard. This is definitely one of my favourite Mandalorian moments.
Now for the moment everyone is talking about, the Boba Fett reveal! Sadly I did not make the connection at all. I only found out it was Boba Fett after my Star Wars expert friend told me. I’m that type of viewer that accepts everything that happens in movies. So when Boba Fett “died” in ‘Return of The Jedi’, I accepted it, I never questioned it. So this was just a ‘wow guess not’ moment. If Dave Filoni can resurrect Darth Maul and give him the much needed attention in ‘The Clone Wars’ and ‘Rebels’ then I’m confident we’re in for a treat with Boba Fett’s return. Timothy Olyphant’s Marshal didn’t have the same impact that some of the other side characters from Season 1 did but I definitely want to see more of him in the future.
Overall, ‘The Mandalorian’ returned with quite a bang! This is really proving to be the way for Star Wars at the moment and I couldn’t be more excited to see how this season unfolds weekly. I’ll be here to cover each episode so see you next week!
owen is a filmaholic 