The finale of the first season of The Mandalorian managed to up the action while still providing a compelling conclusion to the storyline of the first season and giving us an emotional cliffhanger to get us excited for next season.
As always this review will include both spoiler and spoiler-free sections, so if you have not watched the episode be sure to stop reading before the spoiler warning.
The Mandalorian's final episode of this season picks up right where the previous one left off, in a standoff. This gives us our first action sequences and introduces us to a new war criminal from the former Empire.
During the episode we get a lot of backstory, expanding on previously shown scenes of our title characters past.
The concluding battle is likely the best of the series so far, taking full advantage of the widened scope of Mando's abilities as well as the strengths of the new overarching villain of the entire series.
This was a strong conclusion that feels like the end of this part of the story, but just the beginning of a much larger tale revolving around the title Mandalorian and The Child.
Spoiler Warning
The standoff at the beginning of the episode reunites the Mandalorian with The Child, bringing the survivors of his team back together for the remainder of the episode.
The action sequences during this part of the episode are typical for what the series has shown us so far, leading up to the Mandalorian being injured to the point he must have his helmet removed to prevent succumbing to his injuries, which he refuses to do.
Once the living members of his team leave, he willingly lets his helmet be removed in the presence of a droid to prevent his own death, gradually healing throughout the episode.
We travel back to the home of the other Mandalorians, to discover only one, the leader and smelter of the clan has survived an Imperial attack. She helps Mando before fending off the remaining Stormtroopers, allowing him to escape with the child through a visually stunning lava river.
Yet again we lose someone in the protection of The Child, this time hunter turned nurse IG-11, in an act of self-sacrifice.
We leave the show with the Mandalorian alone once again and in the care of the child. He has instructions from the sole other living Mandalorian to attempt to return him to the Jedi at all costs.
But then we get the cliffhanger, the reintroduction and first live-action appearance of the Darksaber. The Darksaber is a Mandalorian-Jedi weapon first appearing in the Star Wars The Clone Wars animated series, used by Jedi taken from the Mandalorians. What this means for Moff Gideon as the owner of said Darksaber we will have to wait until season 2 to find out, but it is certainly nice to see the series digging deeper into the pre-established lore of the Mandalorians.
This was not the best episode of the first season but it did what it needed to do, it gave the show a way forward beyond the episodic nature of the first season.
Are you excited for an eventual second season of The Mandalorian? Let us know in the comments and be sure to check our reviews of other Disney+ original content!
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