Editor’s Note: The following contains minor spoilers from Season 3 Episode 6 of The Mandalorian.The third season ofThe Mandalorianhas developed in many ways fans did not expect. At the end of Season 2, viewers saw Grogu leave with Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) for Jedi training. We also saw Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal)unintentionally inherit the Dark Saberafter defeating Moff Gideon (Giancarlo Esposito), becoming the defacto leader, and usurping Bo-Katan Kryze (Katee Sackhoff).The Book of Boba Fettalso added a few chapters to The Mandalorian and Grogu’s story. Din struggles as an apostate from his faction of the Mandalorians after removing his helmet to say goodbye to Grogu, and his insecurities about his identity made him unable to wield the Dark Saber. We also saw Grogu training with Luke and becoming much stronger with The Force, but when given a choice to become a Jedi or return to Din, Grogu abandoned his training to be with The Mandalorian again. With all of these new abilities and character growth, what have we seen from Din and Grogu so far in Season 3? Spaceship battles. More often than not, we see Din piloting the new N-1 while either escaping or chasing his enemies, and it seems to have completely stalled the development of the two main characters.
Din Djarin Keeps Flying in to Save the Day
The amount of skirmishes The Mandalorian gets into this season while piloting his N-1 far outweighs the number of battles he fights without his ship. He takes out twice as many pirates flying his N-1 away from Navaro than he did while visiting the planet in the first episode. After Bo-Katan rescues him twice in the mines of Mandalore, he returns the favor by helping her battle an invasion of TIE Fighters in his N-1. He comes back to Navaro to save them from a pirate invasion by attacking the pirate’s base ship in his N-1. It’s as if The Mandalorian’s spaceship is the only weapon he wants to use anymore.
A Star Wars franchise introducing a saber and then never using it is a mistake. There’s beenno use of the Dark Saberby its new owner except when battling the Alamites where he seemed to struggle with it just as much as he always has. We’ve seen none of the armored technology he has used against foes in the previous seasons. He has proven time and again this season, though, that he is one heck of a pilot with a spaceship that’s, according to him, “faster than I know what to do with”. There are really only so many times, however, that audiences can be exhilarated by chases through the air twisting through caverns, or flipping around asteroids.
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The Mandalorian Needs to Return to Its Roots
There have been moments where The Mandalorian has taken action on his own two feet, but his success rate is extremely low. He did manage to take out three pirates with a quick draw in episode one, but in episode two he nearly walked into his own death twice and was saved both times by Bo-Katan. In episode 4, Din used his jetpack tohelp rescue a foundling, but Bo-Katan led the mission, so she got the credit for that success. In this week’s episode, we got to see Din in action on foot as he and Bo-Katan investigated crimes on Plazir involving refurbished imperial droids, but even then Bo-Katan took the lead on the investigation. This season has made its main character seem weaker unless he’s piloting his spaceship.
While Din has done some impressive fighting piloting his N-1, there should be more of a balance between the different types of action. The Mandalorian is a character who fought his way out of an Imperial lab full of stormtroopers as well as a city of bounty hunters to save Grogu. He was purposely eaten by a giant sandworm, so he could blow it up from the inside. He fought four ships full of stormtroopers with Boba Fett and Fennec Shand. He single-handedly defeated a Dark Trooper. We hardly ever saw Din fighting in the Razor Crest in the first two seasons, so swinging the action scenes in the opposite direction now that he has the N-1 throws the series off balance and changes the show more audiences expected. We need more action scenes featuring our two main characters and less of a focus on spaceship battles.
