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The Season 1 Finale of ‘The Mandalorian’ Reminds Us Why Baby Yoda Needs to Be Protected at All Costs

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Welp…the finale episode of season one of The Mandalorian was released today, marking the end of quality television for 2019. The Mandalorian was the last on-air show everyone was talking about, and now we are left with a void in our weekly television calendar until The Bachelor premiers in about a week and a half. And I just want to say that while I love being able to binge a show, I do love the hype surrounding each episode when they’re released weekly.

Now let’s get into the episode *Spoilers*

The episode opens with the storm troopers that killed Kuiil and captured Baby Yoda. They are riding toward the town to deliver Baby Yoda to Moff Gideon, who has Mando, Cara Dune, and Greef Karga trapped and surrounded by dozens of Storm Troopers. What I liked so much about this scene was that for the first time I can remember in the Star Wars franchise, we see the human element of the Storm Troopers. At times we forget that they’re people under there and they shoot the shit just like the rest of us. The one Storm Trooper was obsessed with seeing Baby Yoda, which would be an actual human reaction to this whole situation. However, I can’t seem to figure out why Baby Yoda didn’t choke their asses after they hit him in the head MULTIPLE times…stand up for yourself dude??!

Then we see our metal hero Bounty Droid approach from the distance like Pam Anderson along the California coastline, and at this point we know it’s over for those child-beater Storm Troopers.

He proceeds to fuck them up using his nursing/assassin capabilities, which only leaves me with one question: where was all this when they were hunting down Kuiil? You can’t tell me IG-11 (B̶o̶u̶n̶t̶y̶ ̶D̶r̶o̶i̶d̶ ̶  Nurse Droid) didn’t hear all that ruckus outside as Kuiil was riding up on the Blurrg + the Storm Trooper’s speeder noise. His ONE job was to be on the lookout, and because he was probably off WD-40-ing his rod (as bored men do) in the depths of the ship somewhere, Kuiil is killed, and Baby Yoda is almost delivered to Moff Gideon. In the words of Mando (paraphrasing)…”fucking droids, man”.

Sidenote: We find out Mando’s birth name is Din Djarin after Gideon shouts it from outside the building they are hiding out in. Mando realizes the man is Moff Gideon because he used to be a high ranking official on Mandalore, which is the only way he would know Mando’s real name. Mando abandoned his birth name after his parents were killed by an imperial droid fleet and he was saved and taken in by the Mandalorians. 

Now it’s time for IG-11 to fully redeem himself. In classic droid fashion he calls up Mando and notifies him that Kuiil is dead and provides no further details of what happened, leading Mando to freak the fuck out because he thinks IG-11 has gone rogue. However, we know he hasn’t, and he takes the Storm Trooper speeder and makes a beeline for town to, in the words of 21 Savage, go “savage on these hoes”. And that is exactly what he does. He rides into town like a bat outta hell and starts murkin’ Storm Troopers left and right.

Mando and the squad take advantage of IG-11’s fiery entrance and start fighting as well. But, this whole time, IG-11 has Baby Yoda on him like so, which made me extremely nervous:

I knew nothing would happen to him, but if the droid’s purpose is to keep Baby Yoda safe, in theory wouldn’t the best way to keep him out of harm’s way be to avoid an all-out battle with storm troopers?? One blast to the chest that the little guy is done for. Not really sound logic if you ask me, but I knew nothing was going to touch him.

As the battle is raging on, Mando takes over a giant Imperial gun that the Storm Troopers were using and begins to wipe out dozens of them. Moff Gideon, who has been absent since IG-11 entered the town, appears and shoots the energy source for the weapon Mando is using, which promptly blasts him twenty feet away. He’s dead. Okay, he’s not dead thanks to all that Mandalorian armor, but he’s hurt bad. IG-11 drags him into the building they’re hiding out in, and it appears they are outmatched…

As Mando is writhed with pain, Cara attempts to take his helmet off but he doesn’t let her. He wants to go out a Mandalorian, and that can’t happen if he lets a person see his face. As all this is happening, IG-11 is lazering through a sewer grate that leads to an underground tunnel that the Mandalorians built. And as if they aren’t beaten up enough, a storm trooper with a flame thrower enters the picture and starts flaming the room they’re in through a then slit in the wall! Flame Thrower Trooper makes his way over to the door to finish the job. Mando, Baby Yoda, Cara, Greef, and IG-11 are all about to burnt toast. That is until Baby Fucking Yoda joins the party! As the trooper begins to flame the room, Baby Yoda steps up and fights the flames back with the force…eventually knocking the fire back on the trooper and promptly blowing him to smithereens. Basically went something like this:

Baby Yoda has saved the day…for now. Cara insists that Mando come with them…but he can’t…he simply doesn’t have the strength. He makes them go without him, and to my surprise, IG-11 stays behind with Mando.

IG-11 has now turned his attention on saving Mando, but that requires him to take off his helmet. Remember when I said that he is no longer a Mandalorian if he lets a person see his face? Well that just became very important. In what could go down as the most anticipated scene of the season, Mando lets IG-11 take off his helmet to reveal the face of….MUSTACHE-LESS Pedro Pascal.

I knew we’d see his face eventually, and I think this was a great way for them to do it. For him to survive, they took off his helmet for a couple minutes just to verify that it is indeed Pascal under there. 

Then boom…IG-11 sprays some healing spray on his head and they go on to meet up with the rest of the group, who assumed he was going to die.

In the tunnels they come across the blacksmith Mandalorian who makes Mando’s beskar steel armor back in the earlier episodes. She is rounding up spare helmets/parts of Mandalorian armor that is down there, revealing that many Mandalorians were killed and/or fled due to rogue Imperial insurgents. Mando is devastated and tries to stay with the blacksmith, but she does not let him. She tells him that it is his duty to get the child (Baby Yoda) to safety. However, she does point them in the right direction, and they head toward a lava river that will bring them to *safety*.

One thing that irritated me about this whole scene in the blacksmith’s lair was that they were acting like there wasn’t an army of storm troopers trying to kill them. Like, right after the flame thrower guy blew up, the rest of the brigade would’ve stormed the room to get them all. And they were just taking their sweet ass time to figure out a plan and just debating too much for my liking.

Nonetheless, they head toward the lava river and as they’re riding this ferry, Mando spots a clan of Storm Troopers waiting for them outside the tunnel. To complete his redemption arc, IG-11 realizes what he must do – blow himself up to save the group. He walks in the lava river to the outside of the tunnel and initiates his self-destruct setting and wipes out the entire group of Storm Troopers. What a selfless act…it could bring a tear to my eye.

But of course, the battle is not over. Moff Gideon shows up flying his TIE fighter and begins shooting at the group but misses of course. Mando was gifted a jetback by the blacksmith back in the tunnels and realizes it’s time to use it. He straps it on and flies toward Gideon, hooking himself on the vehicle and manages to stick a bomb on it and blow it out of the sky. Mando lands safely and for some reason they don’t investigate the crash?? They just assume he’s dead, which if any TV/movie has shown me, it’s that the bad guy isn’t dead until you literally see him die. If they just allude to the bad guy being dead, they’re never dead. So, if you can see where I’m going with this, the last scene of the episode is of Gideon managing to get out of the TIE fighter with only minor injuries. Looks like he’ll be back for season two!!

All they had to do was go over to the wreck and MAKE SURE he was dead. But I guess that never occurred to them. We find out that Mando is going to try and find the Yoda species and reunite Baby Yoda with them. Karga and Dune look like they’re staying on the planet to make a life for themselves as bounty hunters. If the last scene showing Gideon’s survival is any indication, season two will continue the storyline that he is after Baby Yoda, which I much prefer to the Space Western we were seeing in episodes 4, 5, and 6.

We were also gifted with some of the cutest Baby Yoda moments in the show so far:

 

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