Almost three years after Disney+ released The Mandalorian Season 2 finale, the wait for a new full season finally ended earlier this month. In between Seasons 2 and 3, I found something to like in each of the other Star Wars shows I watched.  However, to me The Mandalorian barely remained the overall most appealing live-action TV serial about the galaxy far, far away.
Now that I’ve begun reviewing Pedro Pascal performances in media without AAPI co-stars or directors, I could review any of Din Djarin’s appearances.  The Book of Boba Fett provided a disheartening choice for the last Star Wars TV series to receive its own articles from me, yet my difficulty finding any Obi-Wan Kenobi or Andor Season 1 episodes that stand well on their own prohibited me from writing whole articles about any of them.  Despite these, I feared that covering Mandalorian Season 3 from to start to finish would turn me into a generic Star Wars blogger.  So, the only chapters I will cover at length include Chapter 19 – directed by Korean-American Lee Isaac Chung – my favorites among any others in which an Asian, Hispanic, or other Latin American actor plays an important and ostensibly human role, and maybe the season finale. The remaining chapters will still receive a sentence’s worth of coverage from me.
As of this writing, two installments of The Mandalorian Season 3 gave Asian-descended actors a chance to shine. Due to other obligations – such as honoring Pedro Pascal’s next birthday at Tumblr on Sunday – I might or might not finish writing about these chapters before Disney+ releases #22. In order to keep my look at Chapter 19 focused on #19 for as long as possible, I decided to put my thoughts on its predecessors on a separate page.
- 17. The Apostate: This fizzling third season premiere delivers a rudimentary re-introduction to Din Djarin and Grogu, disjointed setup for Din’s latest problems, and an inadequate replacement for the Book of Boba Fett chapters his clan hijacked.
- 18. The Mines of Mandalore: Despite my concerns that Din’s journey of atonement regresses too much of his character development, his group executes a fascinating and creepy exploration of Star Wars locales and lore previously overlooked by live-action media.
Plug
- On my Tumblr page, I spoofed “The Mines of Mandalore” with this video using audio from the Saturday Night Live sketch “Waking Up” to give Din a new personality when he awakens: https://www.tumblr.com/dsneybuf91/711467277008191489/following-the-attack-underneath-mandalore-din?source=share
