The Mandalorian Season 1 Review

December 31, 2019 at 4:12am
By Jason Stettner

In a time of Star Wars expansion, The Mandalorian shines. It presents a gritty, yet hopeful look at the universe. It follows a lone warrior Mandalorian (Pedro Pascal) who completes bounties and contributes to his people.

Things change however when he comes across a special child, the heart of this series. This creature is what most refer to as baby Yoda, I call him Yiddle and that’s the naming scheme from here on out.

It’s just an adorable critter, that has a strong sense of force usage and no training. A lot of this series is based around absolutely charming little moments with this creature, and the main character also doing things. It’s basically a mission of the week sort of situation, with an overall arc that a few episodes feed into.

This presents a balance of both great, and generally alright episodes. Some come across as a bit cheesy, others have a lot of heart to them. It’s an in-balance at times, but Yiddle is a delight the entire way through. This series definitely does have the heart of Star Wars, and that shines through during many moments. I also really liked a number of these episodes.

The last one was particularly great, I also loved the almost horror-esque situation aboard a Republic jail ship. This series did a great job of creating a sense of mystery around the lead, while expanding the lore in new unique ways. It was nice not to have every little detail revealed, gave us some wonder as this character obviously has a rich history far beyond the scope of where we meet him.

The quality of this show is definitely high end, that being said some of the CGI could have been better considering the budget on this. For the most part things look great, it’s truly authentic to the main series. It feels like something that came before the modern era of Star Wars, it’s almost magical.

It has a lot of heart too, Yiddle is just simply adorable. Every moment Yiddle hits the screen is filled with a laugh or something sort of awe. There are some good laughs to be had in this series, various moments of high end action and definitely hope, as this is the way. It feels expansive, there are many characters and you never are sure what might happen next. It’s neat to see this look at the universe, and to get an understanding of how things are after the fall of the Empire.

The performances are excellent, despite being masked the Mandalorian really does deliver and emotes perfectly well. I really like Carl Weathers’ Greef and the IG-11 (Taika Waititi) is perfect in that last episode. They play around with things a lot in this one, and it’s neat to see something fresh again.

The Conclusion

The Mandalorian Season 1 is a really great expansion to the universe of Star Wars, it has excellent lead characters and does some new things with the source material. I really like that we’re getting this fresh perspective on things, to get a look at the broken society after the fall of the Empire. It’s still got the themes you would expect, but presents them on the journey of a bonded two.

A tough warrior, and his little companion Yiddle. This is probably the most adorable creature in this universe, and it’s shocking how magical that critter is in capturing the attention of the screen. That aside, the distribution of episodes was interesting. I liked how most were just a day in the life, at the same time they could have structured this like a more cohesive narrative.

I would have really liked to see what that could have been like, at the same time it wouldn’t have left room for creative situations like what we received with this season. I really liked what they did here, not every episode was strong and honestly these could have been longer. It’s the best thing on Disney+ and I can’t wait to see how this grows over time as there’s a lot of potential here for more.

The Mandalorian Season 1 Review at Home with Streamed Viewing
Screening was Provided by Disney (Episodes "Chapter One")

Rating Overall: 8.0