What better way to spend your Easter holidays than taking long walks outside while listening to podcasts and audiobooks, and then in the evening rewatching great sci-fi shows?
Inspired by The Talk Show’s fabulous 3h holiday spectacular “Star Wars: The Mandalorian”, where host John Gruber together with guests Guy English and John Siracusa talk about season two of the show, I decided to rewatch the ending for the 20th or so time.
I firmly believe that the season finale titled The Rescue will go down as one of the best moments of sci-fi history on television and here’s my breakdown of the ending where most of the magic happens.
Warning 1: This article contains major spoilers, so stop reading now if you haven’t yet seen S02E08 of The Mandalorian.
Warning 2: This article mostly just celebrates the final episode and it contains way too many superlatives with almost no criticism whatsoever, so if that’s not your cup of tea, please move along.
The look and feel
There’s no way around it, The Mandalorian season two looks and feels great. Each episode is like a mini film, almost as well produced as any Hollywood blockbuster movie. I thought season one was already impressively done, but season two brings everything to a new level thanks to a much larger production budget.
The secret sauce is what the creators refer to as The Volume, which is a 21-foot-tall (6.4m) set that was 75 feet (23m) in diameter, surrounded by a 360-degree semicircular LED video wall and ceiling. Thanks to the high resolution and quality of the video wall powered by Unreal Engine, the creators are able to create compelling sets quickly (instead of shooting against a green screen) with realistic interactive lighting for the actors.
The music
Music has always played a major role in Star Wars and the original soundtrack album to the first film in 1977, composed and conducted by John Williams and performed by the London Symphony Orchestra, is a masterpiece and it rightfully won numerous awards, including an Oscar.
Enter Swedish composer Ludwig Göransson, who has done most of the music to The Mandalorian, but who in particular in the season finale nails it. From the techno/cyberpunk beat that accompanies the dark troopers to the final emotional moments of the episode – the soundtrack is simply a piece of art itself.
The beginning of the end
The Mandalorian (“Mando”) has just beaten the evil kidnapper Moff Gideon in a spectacular fight, sparing his life, and now returns to the bridge of the imperial light cruiser with Gideon’s Darksaber in one hand and “Baby Yoda” Grogu in the other.
Fellow Mandalorian Bo-Katan, portrayed by none other than the great Katee Sackhoff, looks at the Darksaber and realises the trickiness of the situation. The Darksaber, which is key to the throne of Mandalore, must be won in battle – and now Mando is in possession of it.
Bo-Katan turns to see when Mando enters the bridge with the Darksaber, Grogu, and Moff Gideon. Image credit: Disney / Lucasfilm
Introducing the Darksaber and Bo-Katan’s aspirations over Mandalore is a great move by the creators and it opens up a lot of possibilities for future seasons of the show.
Return of the dark troopers
Suddenly an alarm goes off and the dark troopers, who already once were flushed out of an airlock, return to the cruiser. Of course they have jetpacks – should have seen that one coming.
Fennec: “The ray shields have been breached. We’re being boarded.”
Bo-Katan: “How many life forms?”
Fennec: “None.”
Of course the dark troopers have jetpacks – should have seen that one coming. Image credit: Disney / Lucasfilm
Yeah, those dark troopers are killer robots and the design is clearly an homage to the Cylon toasters of the original Battlestar Galactica.
This is where the music really takes off and we realise that the heroes are in deep shit. They had troubles taking care of one dark trooper, but now they must face an entire platoon.
One X-wing? Great. We’re saved
The dark troopers reach the bridge and are now rhythmically pounding on the blast doors, the only thing separating the heroes from the enemy. It’s just a matter of time before the blast doors give up. It doesn’t look good.
Another alarm goes off.
Bo-Katan: “An X-wing.”
Cara Dune: “One X-wing? Great. We’re saved.”
“One X-wing? Great. We’re saved.” Image credit. Disney / Lucasfilm
If she only knew who’s piloting that X-wing. Grogu seems to know and he can feel it. Remember, he’s the one who made the phone call in the first place at the altar on Tython.
The dark troopers stop pounding on the doors. The music changes. We know there’s a plot twist coming up.
The robe, the green lightsaber, and the black glove
As the robed X-wing pilot makes his destructive way across the ship, we’re witnessing most of the action through security monitors on the bridge, just like the heroes, who realise that something strange is going on. The monitors are (of course in a galaxy far, far away) monochrome displays, so we can’t yet see the colour of the lightsaber the robed mystery man is wielding.
But you get a sense that it must be a Jedi, because nobody else moves like that. And then the thought strikes you: “Could it be? Noooo, it can’t be. They wouldn’t … and yet, why couldn’t it be?”
Having watched numerous reaction videos on YouTube, this is the place were people really start to lose their minds.
And then of course we get a close-up of the robed Jedi from behind and we see the green colour of the lightsaber and the black glove on the right hand. We know it’s him.
After that, the big question is: “How the hell are they going to pull this off?”
The robe, the green lightsaber, and the black glove. Image credit: Disney / Lucasfilm
Mando saves Baby Yoda
On the bridge the heroes realise that there’s a Jedi making his way to the bridge. Even Moff Gideon understands this and grabs a blaster (which conveniently nobody saw he was sitting on) trying to kill Grogu. Without Mando throwing himself in front of Grogu, like a Gianluigi Buffon during his glory days, Grogu would have been toast. It’s a great moment.
Seeing that there’s no way out, Gideon points the blaster towards himself, but just before he can pull the trigger, Cara Dune knocks him out. Suicide attempts in Disney productions are not often seen.
The Rogue One hallway scene
Arguably the most memorable scene from Rogue One was when Darth Vader made his way through the hallway in an incredibly bad-ass way.
Now, the mystery Jedi has entered an elevator and awaiting on the destination level, in a hallway, there’s a bunch of dark troopers.
And so we get version two of the legendary hallway scene, which is masterfully executed and amazing to watch. The movements, the music, the tension – just incredible. By the way, this Jedi is using some serious Dark Force tricks too, for example when he crushes the scull of the last remaining dark trooper.
Rogue One hallway scene on the left and The Mandalorian hallway scene on the right. Image credit: Disney / Lucasfilm
Entry and revealing the face
No more dark troopers to decapitate and the Jedi has reached the blast doors leading to the bridge.
Mando: “Open the doors … I said, open the doors!”
Fennec: “Are you crazy?”
Eventually they open the doors and we get a stunning shot of the Jedi master, still robed and wielding this green lightsaber, entering the bridge through a veil of smoke. That’s an awesome scene, a perfect desktop wallpaper motif.
The Jedi master makes his entrance in an iconic scene. Image credit: Disney / Lucasfilm
Now the question on everybody’s mind is: “Will they show his face?" Is it going to be CGI? Who else could it be? Could it be Sebastian Stan?”
And it’s a young Luke Skywalker. Exactly the way we remember him from Episode VI, Return of the Jedi. He’s even donning the same outfit with the same belt buckle and all.
I still don’t know exactly how they did it, but it must be mostly CGI. The voice is pitch perfect. We know from ending credits that Mark Hamill has somehow been involved.
The dialogue is minimalistic yet beautiful:
Mando: “Are you a Jedi?”
Luke: “I am.”
I know lots of people feel conflicted about the face revealing scene, but I thought it was very well made and it was extremely emotional, not just for me but for many die hard Star Wars fans.
Finally, Luke (or rather the character of Luke") got what he deserved in the Star Wars universe. Like so many others, I didn’t appreciate the treatment Luke got in Episode VIII, The Last Jedi, but now we finally got retribution.
The goodbye
Everybody knows that the child Grogu must be taken care of by a Jedi master and needs proper training. Mando knows it too.
Here’s where we get the sad goodbye, because clearly a strong bond has been established between Grogu and Mando during their adventures across the galaxy. Once more Mando removes his helmet and tells Grogu:
“All right pal, it’s time to go. Don’t be afraid.”
Mando says goodbye to Grogu. Image credit: Disney / Lucasfilm
Finally, when everything is already deeply touching, we hear a familiar beeping sound as R2-D2 enters the room. Grogu and R2-D2 immediately hit off and you can see they’re going to have a great time together.
It’s almost too much to handle.
As Luke prepares to leave together with Grogu and R2, he takes a final look at the heroes and utters the most famous line from all of Star Wars. It’s absolutely corny but also the perfect ending.
Luke: “May the Force be with you.”
Conclusion
The reason the final episode was so emotional is that it was masterfully written and executed. Everything came together, the story, the acting, the music, the way it was directed – and last but not least, the special effects.
We suspected beforehand that this might be the episode where Mando and Grogu part ways, but I personally never expected that it would be Luke who answered Grogu’s call.
As for many of my generation, Luke Skywalker represents a major hero that I grew up with. I must have seen the original trilogy dozens of times, to the degree that I knew all of the lines spoken by Luke, Vader, Leia and Han by heart.
On the surface Start Wars is a simple story, a tale of good versus bad, but in the end it’s got so many layers and complexity.
I salute the way Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni have paid tribute to the original ethos of Star Wars while creating something completely new and unique in the Star Wars universe. It was a bold move by Disney to allow them to do it. Who would’ve thought the first real Star Wars television production on Disney+ was going to be a Spaghetti Western inspired lone gunslinger story?
In any case, I’m very happy that we’re here and I can’t wait to see what season three of The Mandalorian has in store for us.