You know I said a few months ago that Andor was so good it made me re-evaluate my opinion on the Mandalorian. I guess the showrunners felt the same way because that last episode reeks hard of them trying and FAILING to do political intrigue.
Just putting aside the fact that every single person in the "Amnesty Program" should have faced a firing squad: whose bright fucking idea was it to house them all together???? "Oh golly gee wiz, let's just stuck a whole bunch of space fascists and collaborators in a tiny little neighborhood. Surely nothing will go wrong!!!" I suppose its technically canonical that the new republic is incompetent as shit given how things play out with the first order but sheesh guys.
Just stick to what you know guys. More pew pew and vroom vroom. Leave the political drama to the adult writers in the room. You will never ever be as good as Andor....and that is OK.
only tangentially related nerdass complaining
I kinda hate the Mandalorian for multiple reasons but my most petty is that it made people love the mandalorians themselves. Like, they’re a fascist death cult that waged a quasi-genocidal war that killed billions+ in universe, but everybody loves my uwu smol bean honorable warriors. Happened in legends too but people at least admitted they were bad guys.
The only reason Mandalorians exist at all is because people looked at Boba Fett, a relatively unimportant character who does nothing and dies the first time he's in any danger, and went
:soypoint-1: WOW COOL ARMOR :soypoint-2:
It's all about the aesthetic!!!!
So I never watched clone wars and am not up to date with a ton of that continuity. My familiarity comes from legends and specifically the Kotor games mostly. I definitely get the appeal they would have to fascists...but are they themselves explicitly fasch? I read them more as like space mongols or something.
Definitely depends on the leader at the time.
Spoilers for Clone Wars
In Clone Wars, Mandalore has recently come out of a civil war, banished the worst fascists to the moon, and elected a pacifist leader, Satine, who led a coalition of neutral systems opposed to the Clone War. She later gets killed and overthrown by the aforementioned fascists (a group called Death Watch) assisted by Darth Maul, who immediately gets overthrown by Sidious. I’m pretty sure Death Watch’s Mandalore folds into the new Empire but after a few years Mandalore gets a bit too uppity and the Empire nukes the whole planet. Also Satine and Obi Wan Kenobi 100% banged.
See...people tell me clone wars is awesome and I'm missing out by not watching it...but then I read this stuff and I'm like "...but am I really?"
Oh if that’s the stuff that makes you go “Idk if I should watch it” then you definitely should not lmao, those are some of the best episodes of the whole series. My description is pretty reductive though.
If you are considering watching it, I’d recommend following a filler list because there are some arcs that are just not good and don’t give any important information. I’m honestly pretty lukewarm on the show as a whole but the last 4 episodes of the final season are some of my favorite episodes in all of television, not even just animated shows, so if you like Star Wars I do recommend it. And Rebels just rules and Clone Wars sets up a lot of stuff for it.
I’d also recommend listing to A More Civilized Age along with it if you like podcasts, it’s a leftist criticism podcast of the show (which is currently playing in my headphones)
Just watch the Gendy version from the early 00s
Is it just Samurai Jack but Star Wars? Yes
Is it the best Star Wars media released between the original trilogy and Andor? Also yes
Just listen to a more civilized age.
Yeah you can see it as either depending on the Mandalor at the time (the person that becomes their Warlord or whatever). Like they cool with other people/species becoming mandos and such but there's also the fact that they fluctuate between some form of permanent warrior caste (even though Boba Fett is from a mando clan of farmers), to mercenaries, to just a straight up evil empire or assistants to an evil empire since they teamed up with the Sith in Kotor lore. It's honestly a mess and instead of trying to tackle and breakdown aspects of such a weird, stratified, violent, yet also at times open, society would have been cool but instead they got the Disney retcon/simplification ray.
this is a good read, there used to be a nomadic component of the worldbuilding but im quite unsure if that's still true. but in the same way as mognols, you've got the contrast of brutal conquerors who're very syncretic with alien species & cultures but only so long as they abide a few iron principle (chief among them being bowing to the Khan-i mean mandalor)
i dunno if thats canon anymore (assuming kotor mandalorian war), but the pacifist mandalorians getting the can is the worst creative decision ever. bo katan (?) and her not-wear-a-helmet-all-the-time gang are not diametrically opposed to the main guy's weird cult. they disagree on the window dressing of the violent hierarchy.
what's actually interesting is people who think prising warfare and killing is fucked up. and the pacifists are proven right. the empire wouldn't have fucked with them [ok it would've been just as interesting if the empire had genocided the pacifists & survivors retreated to warrior culture, but that is not what happened] if they weren't so belligerent & unruly. the whole idea of satine and shit was a culture reckoning with almost killing itself through honor culture (sands outside the dome-cities were implied to be due to warfare) & taking a progressive stance against the reactionary terrorists who liked the old ways.
but pacifists dont have jetpacks and go pew-pew so the terrorists win & the cool cool space samurai get to return for y'alls's stupid tv shows
KOTOR 1 & 2 aren't canon anymore.
In legends the military campaign with massive casualties were the mandalorian wars (which have been adopted into canon so who knows where that stands really). In canon as you mentioned the fascist mandos did basically wipe out most of the planet so it works in either continuity.
Yeah like bo katan is explicitly a terrorist in the clone wars. The mandalorians do a terror bombing. And Pedro pascal's mandalorians are even more culty than clone wars ones.
where is that from? the clone wars cartoon? i thought the mandalorian wars were like... pre-KotOR.
Agreed, they're Space Spartans which is unfortunately catnip for nerds