No, The Mandalorian Season Finale Doesn’t Correct the Sequel Trilogy.
By: Red Leader Run
Tags: Star Wars, Disney, Skywalker, Lucasfilm, The Mandalorian

No, The Mandalorian Season Finale Doesn’t Correct the Sequel Trilogy.

In the closing minutes of “The Rescue,” the second season finale of The Mandalorian, Jon Favreau and his team bring back a fan-favorite character for a stunning sequence that drops an exclamation point on a crowd-pleasing collection of episodes. It feels inevitable that a season that ended its first episode, “The Marshal,” by revealing that legendary bounty hunter Boba Fett had survived the sarlacc pit would go out with an even bigger gift for long-time fans. And while the show’s first season offered fans deep-cut easter eggs, this most recent batch of episodes put fan service in the heart of the action. A question that arises from these high-profile cameos is why the characters work so well in The Mandalorian, but spark controversy elsewhere in the Star Wars canon.

At this point, if you haven’t seen Chapter 16 of The Mandalorian you should stop reading, because we’re talking about the jaw-dropping ending that closes the book of Grogu.

Question: would the cameo have been as universally praised if this moment hadn’t worked?

I’m sure we all had similar, overwhelming and joyous reactions while watching “The Rescue,” which is as close to an atomic-bomb as any piece of Star Wars content can be these days, because Luke Skywalker graces the screen as the hero we’ve all imagined since the end of Return of the Jedi.

This, of course, is a depiction of the hero in stark contrast to the vision we see in the Star Wars sequel trilogy, where the once-protagonist barely even holds a lightsaber (not physically or in the present, anyway). Looking at Luke Skywalker in The Mandalorian from a structural point of view, the key difference between him and his sequel trilogy counterpart is that he is removed from a dramatic character arc. This Luke appears solely as a plot point in another character’s story.

This Luke is free from the burdens of character development. His visit to Gideon’s light cruiser carries no personal stakes, nor is it an obstacle on some greater quest. The battle doesn’t need to be a challenge or provoke personal growth, so the filmmakers are free to unleash him onto a platoon of saber-fodder droids. The sequence isn’t about still-young Skywalker confronting a personal antagonist, it’s about our heroes — Din Djarin and his allies — witnessing a Jedi Knight at the height of his power, and feeling the appropriate levels of awe, reverence, and fear.

Heroic, low angle, gloved hand, green light saber, but no emotional access to the character. This is a shot to make us feel what Din Djarin and his allies are feeling in the moment, which, thankfully, is exactly what it feels like to be a kid watching Star Wars for the first time.

Putting things simply, if Luke were the protagonist here, the fight would’ve had to be hard. It would’ve needed subtext and a purpose beyond just giving him a collection of enemies to cut down with his iconic weapon. And most of all, it would’ve needed to be a step toward a greater goal in a journey where Luke grows and evolves. Instead, he’s at a fixed moment in time, a pure distillation of who Luke Skywalker is at this particular point in the galaxy far, far away.

Many have already compared this sequence to Vader’s menacing epilogue in Rogue One. Aside from the clear visual qualities that link these breathtaking scenes, Vader’s merciless assault on those rebels is also divorced from a meaningful character arc. He’s a pure menace, free to appear as the Vader we’ve always feared at the end of a story that, even from the antagonist’s point of view, belongs to someone else.

Meanwhile, the Luke Skywalker we see in the sequel trilogy is not a fixed character. Putting aside any potential criticisms of the filmmakers’ execution of their respective episodes, the continuation of Luke’s story demands that he be burdened with a condition that changes as he moves through the unfolding narrative. He isn’t a static thing. He is in the process of transforming from one state to another, so the expectation that he only appear on screen as the legend of our collective imagination is an unrealistic one when Luke is bound to the demands of a dramatic structure and character arc.

Much like the believability of the digitally-constructed face, the thrill of this scene relies on Luke being a static character, removed from the rise and fall of a dramatic character arc.

In short, Luke’s appearance in The Mandalorian isn’t a juxtaposition revealing the flaws of other portrayals of the iconic character. Instead, it’s a scene that only works in isolation. It occurs at a moment in The Mandalorian’s story when the lead characters’ experience of witnessing Luke’s dramatic appearance is emotionally similar to the long-time Star Wars fan’s. And as more analytical viewers will observe, the point of view of the directing firmly aligns the audience with Din Djarin and his allies, not with Luke.

Star Wars fans approach the saga from all different angles, with infinite perspectives and preferences. The Mandalorian has been successful at giving fans what they want, particularly in its portrayal of Luke Skywalker and other beloved characters, precisely because they’re giving us so little of them. When Luke’s just a fleeting glimpse, he’s free to be as powerful and astonishing as the character from the now-legends stories, or even the ones we made up in our own minds.