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Matthew Belinkie, Peter Fenzel, Mark Lee, and Matthew Wrather overthink The Mandalorian, think about the balance of fan service, storytelling, and franchise-burnishing that went into it, and speculate about where Disney Plus could take the franchise from here.
Spoilers for both seasons of The Mandalorian.
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I was less excited for the reveal, mostly because it narrowed the storytelling possibilities, whereas Luke collapses the space into “only this half dozen people ever matter.”
Plus, the lack of emotion nails a different problem, which is that, behind the fun action, every trilogy carries the message that the Jedi “never love and always stifle your feelings” cult of toxic masculinity is a failure. Anakin feels trapped until he becomes a mass murderer. Luke succeeds when he tells his mentors to stuff it, so he can save his friends or extent love and compassion to the villain. Ben Solo gets murder-y, quite possibly due to being kept from the love of his family. And Rey is gloriously powerful, because Luke’s fake-training is a combination of “do or do not; there is no try” and “skip all that Jedi crap.”
I’m guessing that the Uncanny Luke-y, though, was a combination of “we need to placate the fanboys since The Last Jedi” (they don’t) and “Solo proves that recasting the original roles is bad” (rather than “mocking civil rights fights is bad”).
If Luke hasn’t figured this out at this point, Grogu might be in trouble, and I’d be thrilled if some future release of The Rise of Skywalker CGI’d him into the background of Adam Driver scenes as a short Knight of Ren, munching on eggs instead of doing anything plot-related.
Anyway, as they try to build their equivalent of the MCU, I hope that the other mass of spin-offs can keep the energy of The Mandalorian, so that their inevitable Avengers-style crossover is a fun thing to look forward to, rather than a source of anxiety that it’s going to rely on plot points from the boring shows.