Mandalorian S2 Climax- Super or Sellout? (Warning - Massive Spoilers Ahead)

No one who knows anything about the Skywalker saga can deny the final scenes of The Mandalorian Season 2 are anything but spectacular. The arrival of the mysterious X-wing, the green lightsaber, the black-gloved hand, all build toward an exhilarating and surprising reveal.

Personally, I thought the return of Luke Skywalker in the prime of his Jedi powers was an awesome sight. My partner on the other hand? Not so much. My partner isn't a long-time Star Wars fan. She doesn't know much about the Skywalker clan and doesn't much care to find out BUT, she loves the Mandalorian and she especially loves little Grogu. 

Toward the end of season two's final episode, while I was getting more and more excited as clues began to drop as to what was about to happen, my partner was becoming frustrated and confused.

"What's going on?" she asked, bewildered at the sudden and unexplained turn of events. "Who's this guy?"

At the time I was too overwhelmed with childish excitement to understand her confusion. "What?" I said. "That's Luke! Luke Skywalker! Holy fucking shit!"

But for some reason this explanation didn't seem to impress her as much as I thought it should. It wasn't until later, when I tried to see things from my partner's point of view, that I understood why she thought the end of season two was the absolute worst. 

Unlike every other episode, it completely ignores new fans in favour of service to long-time followers. Writers up to that point had been very careful to provide context for Easter-eggs and call-backs, and until now it's been a lot of fun for ALL FANS. But the last scenes of season two abruptly and completely abandon new fans, no explanations, no context.

Worst of all, for viewers whose primary motivation for watching the show is the Baby-Yoda cuteness overload machine, it appears as though their favourite character has just been stolen away by a weird-looking (is that a real guy? What's wrong with his mouth?) wizard with a terrible hair-cut. 

In short, while I loved the entire episode, my partner -- who adores Baby-Yoda, couldn't give two shits about Luke Skywalker, and who is now under the impression her favourite character is exiting the show -- may never watch it again.

Was the price of alienating new fans worth the payoff for long-time Star Wars stalwarts? I suppose time will tell...

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Flies in the Soup: John Scalzi Part 2

Image
  Interview: John Scalzi Part 2 By Chris Large Interview first appeared in Aurealis #82. Welcome back John. At the moment your new book Lock In, [discussed in the last issue] is a standalone novel. Are you considering writing more in this world? Or is this it? No! I’d be happy to write more in this world if there was a desire from my publisher and from my audience. I don’t ever write anything but standalone novels. Old Man’s War was a standalone novel. I wrote that one book, right? And then it took off and my editor said, “You need to write another one,” and gave me some money. I said “Okay. I see how this works.” That’s how Old Man’s War became a series. Android’s Dream was supposed to be a series. I’d signed a contract for a second book but when I started writing it, it was terrible so I stopped doing that and wrote something else. So Lock In is currently a standalone book but if my publisher comes to me and says, “Yeah, I want you to write the second ...
Read more

Aurealis #74 - Out Now

Image
Aurealis #74 is a great read, and of course, contains some thoughts from me on The Empire Strikes Back and Raiders of the Lost Ark . The blurb reads thus:  In this issue we feature Imogen Cassidy’s ‘Soul Partner’, an urban fantasy gumshoe pastiche with some original touches, and Leife Shallcross’ creepy and engrossing ‘Music for an Ivory Violin’. Chris Large brings some thoughtful silliness* with his ‘When a Jedi Should Think Twice About Bringing a Knife to a Gunfight’ , and Stephen Higgins continues his SF’s Sacred Cows with Asimov's Foundation. *Read: awesomeness!  BUY IT.
Read more

I Decided to Make Money From Writing - And it's Working

Image
I've always wanted to be a full-time writer, but I've never had a clear understanding of how to make enough money from my writing to survive. In fact I read an article on the ABC news website this morning stating that authors in Australia earn, on average, $11,000 to $13,000 per year , which sounds about right. I can't live on that. No one can. So my fears are clearly justified. Regardless, in 2017 I decided to throw caution to the wind and try to come up with a way to make enough money from writing that I could start to think about transitioning from my regular job to the coveted holy grail of full-time writer . I had this vague idea of combining two of my great passions, writing and gaming, to see what would come of it. I had no real understanding, at that point, of what I was getting myself into. The answer, of course, is interactive fiction. Interactive fiction - or digital gamebooks - are the modern version of Choose Your Own Adventure stories, which were among m...
Read more