So at time of writing, we re a couple of episodes into the new season of the Mandalorian, and
something feels different this time around. I m sure there s about a billion people saying
that, but I ll do you one better, and try to explain, y know, why. I think we could
be seeing a fundamental shift in how this show functions. And I know we ve only seen
two episodes so far but I think if you compare these two to the first couple last time around,
difference is visible. This is just a shorter video, in part because I m working on a bigger,
meatier, real Star Wars video essay which should be out before long but let s talk,
just a little, about serialisation. Super-fast rundown for anyone who doesn t
know what that means serialisation is basically how interrelated the episodes of a TV show
are. If a show s very serialised, it s not telling a bunch of little stories, so much
as it s breaking one story up into chunks, sometimes arbitrarily. Think of all those
Netflix shows designed for the binge model and compare them to your procedurals, most
of your sitcoms, the type of show you can tune into at any point and know what s going
on. That s serialised vs. episodic storytelling. It s not a binary, more a spectrum, that every
show sits somewhere on and sometimes where they sit changes from season to season. Sometimes
a show will go forward and back on this like the way Seinfeld season 4 kinda shook things
up with a year-long story about the NBC pilot but often, it s one-way only. I think that
s what we re seeing here. Think back to season 1. The selling point
of this series aside from Baby Yoda, that is was that this wasn t a saga, some grand
interstellar tale. It was looser than that. It was the opposite of all the Star Wars we
d had before it was individual stories, lots of new characters, who we d meet and then
leave. Now this show was never truly, fully episodic there were always some sort of ongoing
narrative, like Din s search for Grogu s people, or other Mandalorians but that ongoing narrative
would be in the background, almost as a frame upon which these individual stories could
be hung the village defence episode, the mercenary prison break, and so on. The first few season
1 episodes are connected but they re setting up the show s status quo. By the time we get
to season 2, episode one s the Timothy Olyphant western one, and episode 2 s the frog lady
ice spider cave one. There s some narrative connective tissue at the start of the latter
chapter, Din continuing his search for the other Mandalorians but once we re past what
s essentially a cold open, this story is pretty much independent of the season premiere, and
that type of loose linkage is representative of the rest of this season.
Let s flip back to the new episodes. It doesn t seem like this is the case here. Episode
one? Aside from that IG-11 stuff which doesn t really go anywhere, this one feels less
like a standalone story, and more like a re-introduction, a setup. We check in with a bunch of known
characters and places, and reaffirm Din s next medium-term mission cannonballing in
the sacred swimming pool. Episode two has its own feel, it s own flavour, it s when
we first touch down on Mandalore, when Din begins the purification ritual but even so?
That creepy robo-fella s only defeated when Grogu goes back to the Bo-Katan s gaff from
the previous episode and ropes her in to the action, bringing that storyline back to the
forefront. And crucially? The episode ends on a cliffhanger of sorts. The ritual is not
complete. It seems we ll spend another episode here, at least partially. So if these two
episodes are as representative of season 3 as that other couple were for season 2, it
seems like the structure of this new batch of episodes could be quite different indeed.
Add this to a few comments Jon Favreau made about the show and its future recently, and
serialisation, a buildup to some new, large-scale, dedicated narrative may be the name of the
game going forward. Maybe the plan here was always to do this,
to do what the Witcher books did, to open with a collection of more standalone stories,
to introduce the tone, the world, some of the characters, and then build into a more
conventional overarching storyline. Again, the show was never fully episodic, and even
when comparing season 2 to season 1? Continuity is emphasised, characters reoccur, and the
prominence of the ongoing narrative grows. Maybe what we re seeing with season 3 so far
isn t difference, so much as it is that we ve reached the tipping point for a serialising
tendency that s been present, growing, all along.
But the elephant in the room here is the Book of Boba Fett. More specifically, the way 2
episodes of the Book of Boba Fett were essentially just Mandalorian episodes and not just that,
but that these bonus episodes resolved the big question season 2 had ended on. If you
ll forgive an understatement pretty odd choice there! I think everyone s on the same page
here, so I m not going to whine about it but I do want to think about it here, because
it wasn t an accident. It s not like some grunt at Disney slipped and dropped the reels
for those episodes into the wrong Content Pipe and they ended up in the Boba Fett series
by mistake. And let s not forget that Ashoka pops up there too those episodes, and the
merging together of these new Disney+ Star Wars properties they seem to reveal, exist
because someone in a place of authority wanted them to. And if this merging process started
with the Grogu Jedi resolution well, we can only imagine where it'll end. It s hard to
say if this direction was set in stone from the start, or if it is, in part, a reaction
to just how much fans and audiences liked this show. But the upshot of all this is that,
for better or worse, it doesn t look like the heightened interconnectivity of season
3 so far is some freak occurrence. It seems like difference will persist, and likely intensify.
And, you know what? Maybe it ll work. I mostly liked these new episodes, I think a large
amount of complaints fans have had are rather silly, and maybe most importantly, it still
felt like The Mandalorian. If we re now moving into the second phase of the Mandalorian,
a stage of pulling things together, abandoning low-stakes, flavour-of-the-week episodes,
and heading towards some big conflict or other, maybe the show will do this without losing
that spark. Book of Boba Fett weirdness aside, I think the quality s still there, for now,
at least and if nothing else, these new episodes have really delivered on the Cool Little Guys
front (clip BABU FRIK NOISES) Ever since last year, when I made a Boba Fett
video and a Ms. Marvel video two episodes in, praising those shows for doing specific
things, and then each following episode stopped doing those things, I ve been hesitant to
come down too strongly either way on shows as they air. So I don t want to just assume
the Mandalorian is going to commit decisively to serialisation, and I definitely don t want
to assume that if so, that transition won t be handled well. But I really hope the minds
behind all this don t see the style of those early years, the more episodic structure,
the looser, more independent, less epic focus which made us fall in love with the Mandalorian
as a means to an end, as disposable buildup to a new, small-screen universe, as only valuable
insofar as it sets up another ongoing pump of franchise sludge. Because let s be honest,
it would be just like Disney to strike gold with a more low-key, more idiosyncratic property,
to then react by spinning it into a big, bloated franchise, and in doing so lose everything
that made it unique in the first place. So, you know. Fingers crossed. That s all
for now, folks, so obliterate that like button and make sure to come back in maybe a few
days time for a big juicy Star Wars video essay! Big up as always to all my own personal
cool little guys onscreen now Grogu s got nothing on you lot especially Daniel Goldhorn,
Heather Long, Ryan Emerle, and WeirdyBeardy.