The dramatic climax of the second season of The Mandalorian had its impact on the audience. When Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) and his allies were at a low point, Luke Skywalker (a CGI Mark Hamill) appeared with his lightsaber and offered to take Grogu away. “He is mighty in strength, but untrained talent is nothing: I will give my life to protect the boy but he will not be safe until he masters his abilities,” the jedi explained. “He’s the one you should be with,” the Mandalorian told Grogu before betraying his faith, removing his helmet and letting his ward get a good look at his face and touch it. The main question that the series left was what would become of Din and Grogu separately (and, consequently, what would happen to the series) and, against all dramatic logic for those who do not watch the other Star Wars series produced by Disney, the new season began with the protagonists together.
There were those who expected a flashback that would justify that meeting of the characters. There were also those who interpreted that it could be one of the mysteries of the season: gradually discovering what had happened between their farewell and their reunion. But the answers had already been given, only in another series: in the final installment of The Book of Boba Fett, the crime spin-off set on Tatooine with Temuera Morrison and Ming-Na Wen, who had appeared in The Mandalorian, in the leading roles. In fact, in 2022 it had attracted attention that this spin-off deviated from the main plot to suddenly resolve the personal situation of the Mandalorian. “Why was Din and Grogu’s emotional reunion inserted at an arbitrary point in the middle of the final battle of a different series,” criticized one user.
In an interview with Empire, creator Jon Favreau explained that it would be interesting to see how viewers who hadn’t seen the spin-off would handle the resolution of the conflict: “The Boba Fett book let time pass. You got to see what Mando was like without Baby Yoda and we saw what Grogu was like without the Mandalorian, and neither of them were doing too well.” In this way, they could rewrite The Mandalorian without having to dispense with the “central relationship” that had started from the second episode. In another interview, he also explained the amount of time that had passed between saying goodbye to him and the start of the third season: about two years. Whether Grogu spent most of this time training with Luke is an unclear point.
And, for those who want to know what happened to the two characters in The Book of Boba Fett, it’s simple. Din acknowledged in front of the Armory that he had voluntarily removed his helmet in front of third parties and that, as the Mandalorian indicated, he no longer belonged to his community. He had to go to the Mandalore mines and wade into the sacred waters to redeem himself for this unforgivable sin. Din visited Grogu on Ossus, where he met both Luke and Ahsoka. Later, Grogu was presented with a choice: he must choose between training as a Jedi or returning to his protector. And he chose the Mandalorian.
Jon Favreau’s creative decision can be understood from a practical point of view: The Mandalorian is a series that depends on the chemistry and ties between Din and Grogu. But, by resolving the situation in a different series, The Mandalorian betrayed a basic television principle: resolve the plots in the work itself. And it is that, despite the fact that the creation of fictional universes allow more complex viewings and complementary views and nuances, a conflict as main as the separation of the protagonists had to be developed and resolved in the same series. But this, seen what has been seen, is a problem that Disney drags on more than one of its franchises: Marvel movies are also losing weight in movie theaters as they are sold as fractions of stories instead of solid stories by themselves. same.
An audiovisual work should never make the mistake of being unable to stand on its own. And it is that, given the desire to expand, add and enrich (and above all enrich oneself), the result can be the opposite: erode that universe.