The Mandalorian season 3: Mando and Baby Yoda return for more winning Star Wars comfort viewing
The Mandalorian season 3: In a world of peak TV and limitless series offerings, The Mandalorian continues to soar and provide one of the most necessary storytelling experiences - true blue escapism at its finest.
Mando is back to show us the way. But before we dive into what the first two episodes of the long-awaited third season have in store for us, let us take a moment to look back at what came before. Not just because it's been over two years since the last season and embarking on the new season demands a heavy Mandalorian recap, but also because of the truly ridiculous way we got here.
As you may remember, season 2 ended with Mando (Pedro Pascal who continues to become the definitive face of event TV) rescuing Grogu (urf Baby Yoda) from bad guy leader Moff Gideon (Giancarlo Esposito). The finale ended with who else but a digitally de-aged Luke Skywalker turning up to whisk Grogu away to resume his Jedi training. (If you, like me, need yet another reminder of where The Mandalorian fits in the larger Star Wars timeline, it takes place after the events of The Return Of The Jedi and before The Force Awakens).
It was a thrilling finale, but this new season 3 doesn't pick up from there. Mando's tale was continued in the impressively pointless spin-off series The Book Of Boba Fett, which centred on The Mandalorian fan-favourite character Boba Fett. But it's almost as if the makers knew they were onto a major dud, and thus decided that the penultimate episode of that show should ignore Boba Fett's dull story entirely and randomly switch focus to Mando. We saw him traveling to find Luke and meet Grogu once again because, well, he missed him. (Who wouldn't). That random episode of an altogether different show served as a pivotal continuation of the Mando-Grogu story in which Luke made Grogu choose whether he wanted to pursue the Jedi way or return to foster daddy (played by the internet's daddy) Mando. Grogu chose our favourite helmeted hero of course, which brings us to this third season that promises more missions, more monsters and more Mandalorians.