The Book of Bobalorian

Last week I wrote, “I think Favreau must not have had any real engagement with the show until a few months ago and that brief contact left him reeling. “Oh my god, what has Rodriguez done? This disaster is actually worse than any of the Marvel shows. I have to save this situation somehow or Kennedy is back in charge!“

I was only half-joking when I wrote that.  I am no longer joking, I am now absolutely certain that is what happened.  This show was originally supposed to be six episodes and now it’s seven.  I figured last week’s digression was just a brief interruption before we got back to Boba.  That no longer appears to be the case.  Again, we see Boba Fett for maybe five minutes tops and I’m not even positive he said anything.  I’m certainly not going to watch this thing a second time to find out.

Half of this show had old West elements that I liked, and the other half was obviously written by Dave Filoni.  The days when we thought Dave was going to be the savior of Star Wars is long over.  Kid’s shows are pretty much Filoni’s speed. He’s never going to have any business in the fast lane.

The show starts with the Marshal from the last season of The Mandalorian having words with members of the Pyke Syndicate that decided to conduct their spice smuggling in his town.  They aren’t nice words.  That was the good old West stuff I was talking about. 

By the way, when did “Spice” come to mean “Heroin” in the Star Wars universe?  Honestly, I had no trouble at all when I thought Han Solo was smuggling Space Cinnamon and Space Safron.  Luxury commodities that the Empire would tax heavily and therefore attract a smuggling trade.  But now it appears that good old Han was trafficking horse.  Maybe, I’m old-fashioned but it kind of makes him look bad in my book.

Anyway, Mando flies to where Luke is building his low-rent Jedi temple.  And here Filoni took over the script from Favreau, we get to see Ashoka who tells Mando that he can see Baby Yoda if he REALLY wants to.  

It turns out that if Baby Yoda is going to be all the Jedi he can be, he’ll need to not see Mando again.  Oh, and we get to see a ton of CGI Luke Skywalker.  This supports a worrying rumor I heard, that Disney is looking to “eternalize” all of its characters.  Meaning they will try to strike down Public Domain in total and CG every actor that ever worked for them.  CGI Luke looked better than he did last season.  At least when he wasn’t talking.  When he was, the uncanny valley made its appearance. Consequently, he was shot from the back of his head whenever possible.  I presume the Clone Wars fans wet themselves over Luke and Ashoka finally talking together on screen but then she buggered off into the starry infinite so she could be in her own show.

Luke does a lot of fairly boring Jedi training stuff with Baby Yoda.  Although that did give the BY fangirls something to squeal about, I’m sure they’re happy with what they got because they really aren’t that demanding.  Anyway, the end of this sequence has Luke offering Baby Yoda, Daddy Yoda’s lightsaber (Maybe he tossed the hut on Dagobah until he found it? Which is less of a stretch than the miraculous repair job Anakin’s lightsaber got in the Rise of Skywalker).  

Where was I?

Oh, yeah.  Luke offers Baby Yoda the choice of the lightsaber or the Beskar chainmail shirt that Mando brought him as a gift but couldn’t deliver in person for reasons of plot contrivance.  They need to put off the reunion until season 3 of The Mandalorian.  If Grogu picks the Beskar his Jedi training is apparently done and he’ll go off with Mando because This Is The Way.

Hint: Mando’s new fighter has no room at all for cargo (like a criminal bounty for instance) but does have a Baby Yoda-sized mini-cockpit right behind Mando’s seat.

I’ve heard the complaints about the starfighter’s obvious drawbacks, and they are valid. Which is why I strongly suspect there is going to be a Be-Bop in the next season of Mando.

However, we don’t see any more Baby Yoda this episode, so we will pretend there is dramatic tension instead of something obvious coming.  Back to Tatooine and more old West stuff, which is good.  Mando’s friend the Marshal who was getting some help together for Boba Fett gets shot down by somebody who was probably in the Clone Wars. (*googlegooglegoogle*) Okay, he is from the Filoniverse and is named Cad Bane.  If that means something to you, don’t admit it in public.

Shooting (although apparently not killing) the Marshall and his (definitely dead) deputy finally did the important business of having the Pyke Syndicate do something bad so we won’t like them.

Also, some casino got blownup good, but I only cared about the Marshal getting shot.

Okay, F&F have done the impossible, I’m actually interested in next week’s show.  

UPDATE:

“Why is Luke endorsing the “attachment to people leads to the Dark Side” thing from the prequels? Didn’t he save Darth Vader thanks to the power of his Love, thus proving Obi-Wan and Yoda were wrong about this?”

The sad thing is, that could make for a decent storyline for Luke. It would provide a way for his character to grow. In the EU he gives up on the “Jedi shall not love thing,” and gets married.

The problem there is Disney. They won’t give up the third trilogy. Never mind that it is a franchise-wrecking narrative trainwreck, they will not part with it.

Two reasons: One, the Wokelings still love it, and Disney is an extremely Woke company.

Two, companies are the same as people, they value the most what costs them most and Disney drastically over-invested in the third trilogy. They think there is still money to be squeezed from that malinvestment. A damaged asset is still an asset.

But if Luke falls in love and marries Mara Jade that is the death of the Reylo timeline. That is also why there is suddenly all this speculation over “Grogu’s choice.” Keylo was supposed to be Luke’s first student. If Baby Yoda chooses the lightsaber then he becomes Luke’s first student thus disrupting the Reylo timeline.

The only thing F&F can do is ignore the Reyloverse to the extent they can for the next decade until the fuss dies down.

I hate to break it to you Doomcuck, but there are no plans for a Luke Skywalker show, so Baby Yoda is going to follow The Way because there is a third season of the Mandalorian coming and the puppet has to be in it.