star Wars it has had many times where it has been changed forever. The start of a major new movie addition to the Skywalker Saga was always going to do that. The general reboot of the continuity before those movies does that, too. As star Wars has grown and expanded into books, comics, movies, TV shows, and games over the years, each addition has the potential to have a major impact on everything we know about it. star Wars at that time. But maybe there is no time star Wars changed forever became the most powerful in modern history that on this day five years ago, November 12, 2019: the first day of live action star Wars tv show, The Mandalorianit started.
The Mandalorian he just didn’t change star Wars for many reasons that we may see in the next five years. At the time, everyone knew that the debut of that diminutive, big-eared green creature at the end of the episode was going to be huge, but no one could have predicted that Child, aka Baby Yoda, aka Grogu, would eventually find pop culture mainstream as a fully-armored and merchandising behemoth. It just didn’t prove that star Wars live material can work on the small screen, starting years of broadcasting in a galaxy far, far away. Revisiting the first episode of the series five years later, out of control, one thing is clear The Mandalorian it flourished when it first started and perhaps now it’s the thing that struggles the most: the youthful energy it put on the screen.
star Wars it’s as much about navigating discovery as it is about Empire vs. Rebellion, or Jedi, Sith, and the Force—has endured and is repeated for generations now because part of the creative power of the world created by George Lucas is that people see the power of many different ideas and types of stories that can exist in its sandbox. And that first episode, simply titled “The Mandalorian,” and the first season itself, speaks volumes about the inherent excitement of that ability.
As subdued as the story is for the most part, The MandalorianThe first episode is an almost endless mystery. Even before we get to the reveal of Mando’s gift to Child, it gives the audience a chance to keep asking questions about it. Who is this masked hunter we are following? What happened to the Mandalorians, that they now resort to hiding in hidden places away from the prying eyes of the galaxy? What are these Imperial remnants that we encounter through our heroes’ interactions—and are we really meant to trust a “hero” willing to work with the Empire in the first place? Is it star Wars are they even allowed to have this kind of flawed, human perspective on the main character?
“The Mandalorian” didn’t just ask these questions, it just reveled in them. Its slow establishment of a world focused on familiarity star Wars it looked and looked—a picture of Mandalorian helmets and Stormtrooper armor, a rough-and-tumble world of dive bar cantinas and new technology—while still giving the space a sense of what we’d never seen off-screen up to that point. The Mandalorian it wasn’t just new, it was there interested in that youth, in introducing something that was not just a combination star Wars‘ a great tapestry, but it also asks the questions of that wider world that opened it up to become even more powerful.
As we were sitting on the road to the end of the sequel trilogy in Rise of Skywalker after a month The MandalorianHis debut, culminating in a new saga that was unfairly balanced—and painfully fed into the eternal culture war—to push and pull new and fan the flames of nostalgia, The Mandalorian felt like a great vision of the future of what star Wars it may be after the conclusion of the Skywalker Saga, that the average person has the chance to ask big, new questions about this well-trodden world, through the lens of a character completely cut off from the ups and downs of the galaxy.
It took a while for that to stop, though The Mandalorian I finally got there. Undoubtedly the signs were there when Moff Gideon ignited the Darksaber at the climax of the first season, signs that became even bigger as the second season arrived and faded into familiar faces like Bo-Katan Kryze and Ahsoka Tano before releasing a dangerous record. big guns in its finale starring Luke Skywalker. By the time we got to the third season, and the show already had the weight to support a spinoff in it The letter of Boba Fett (which itself briefly became a series of The Mandalorian episodes), The Mandalorian it had changed itself as much as it had changed star Wars. This was no longer a matter of asking too many questions, about the added allure of star Wars in the world, but it’s a matter of asking one thing: what action can we take out of the playbox next?
Many of its revelations have been less about adding something new to that world, and more about drawing lines and connecting dots, as it has elevated its central pairing of Din Djarin and Grogu to the same circles of star Wars to stand out as figures like Boba Fett and Luke Skywalker, who goes from a lone bounty hunter roaming the edge of the galaxy to a key figure in the Mandalorian community in its wake, from a dubious shadow lurker to a shameless and unflinching hero, an officer. a counterpart to the New Republic with all edges smooth and encased in amber. Even Mando’s ship—a new design, shocking and minimalist and featuring a man crossing the universe in the only place he had, was blown up and replaced by a fighter who put the rudder in his former life as a lone mercenary. launch a shiny new hero ship. And of course, it was a design we already knew from somewhere else.
The Mandaloriandouble success as it has continued with this change for the past five years shows star Wars‘ uncertain intensity here and now, as Lucasfilm is still struggling to define what it wants the saga to be, and where it will go next, after a heated response Rise of Skywalker. The norm has been mined, time and time again, and while there are still sparks of potential in the TV empire that is The Mandalorian Let’s put it this way, we’re five years into the soul-searching era defined by this game’s nostalgia and the franchise as a whole continues to have a pillar and a string of announced and rumored projects that have yet to materialize in any tangible way. . One of the few you have? More The Mandalorian in the form of The Mandalorian & Grogu– now a large animated image is made for importing star Wars‘ return to the silver screen, no longer fresh and new and exciting, but wrapped in the familiar and reliable cloak of its great connection star Wars‘nostalgia.
Five years ago, it’s safe to say that The Mandalorian he really changed star Wars forever. Whether it was good or bad is still a question you have to ask.
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