The Mandalorian: Joyful Simplicity instead of Beautiful Complexity
I enjoyed The Mandalorian, I’ve watched it loyally, but I am surprised when people gush about how it is the best thing in Star Wars since The Empire Strikes Back. I agree it is better than the prequels, it is hard not to be, but it is basically just a guy trying to get a baby back to its family. An adult protecting a child is pretty basic morality, even if in this case it takes more work and courage than usual. It pales in complexity next to Luke’s struggle between failure and hope rooted in the basic structure of the universe, or the triangle between Leia, Han, and accepting responsibility for galactic freedom.
The moral simplicity of The Mandalorian is probably its charm; fans are relieved that there is so little to argue about. It’s a tour of the Star Wars universe. Fan favorites are being imported from non-canonical sources, and sometimes the past is revisited for newer understanding, like the episode giving the Tusken Raiders a culture. And, of course, there is the ending that excited everyone on my social media, the ultimate tie in ending wrapped up with a bow for Christmas, and to be honest, I wasn’t sure which future Baby Yoda would choose; it’s been a long time since I really wondered what choice a character would make at the end of a show. The most exciting thing for me about the post-credits scene was learning Ming-Na Wen will still be working.
The show further illuminates the dual nature of that far, far away galaxy, half western, half pulp science fiction imperial. The vastness of space is the first line of defense against the human desire to control the rest of humanity, since the Evil Empire’s grasp has outreached its capacity for control, just as the British Empire fell after it expanded so far that taxation couldn’t pay for its administration. Perhaps one reason the Chinese civilization never gave way to something completely different was because geographical barriers never allowed their empire to grow beyond the Confucian capacity for bureaucracy. Mando, our Mandalorian hero, practices his profession as a bounty hunter in the parts of galactic civilization where policing isn’t cost effective.
The Mandalorian also follows a comforting premise of the Star Wars universe that even after developing the technology to travel the stars, humanity will still be better than robots, clones, or any of the other SF horrors that haunt our fears of our own limitations. C3PO and R2D2 are a far cry from Skynet and its Terminators, and the clone soldiers aren’t as good in a fight as the replicants in Bladerunner. Star Wars sustains our belief that we will always matter, no matter how advanced our technology, even if we need “restraining bolts” and the Force to make sure of it.
But the moral simplicity that makes The Mandalorian so easy to swallow is also why it is merely good television; it is too dependent on nostalgia and shout outs for its excitement, despite its superb craftsmanship. The punch of that borrowed power, and the show’s dependency upon it, was perfectly illustrated in the climax and fan reaction to it. I realize not all, or even most, TV shows are reaching for the philosophical stars; most crime shows are just about the constant effort of the police to brush back the sea of human vice from the shore of civilized life while rarely addressing the underlying causes of chaos except in passing (although it is nice to see All Rise making the attempt and giving their regular public defender real character of her own; West Wing talked a lot about social issues, but if the Bartlett Administration had solved problems it would have become an alternative history).
Without a philosophical underpinning, it is just a matter of time before The Mandalorian “jumps the shark,” because without bigger questions, it will be dependent on ever bigger villains. A New Hope had Darth Vader and the Death Star, The Return of the Jedi had Darth Vader, the Emperor, and the Death Star, then Force Awakens had the Vader stand in, the Emperor stand in, and the Star Killer Base, at which point some fans accused it of just being a pale imitation while I just enjoyed the fact that it felt like Star Wars (undoubtedly the director’s intention). The Empire Strikes Back broke that pattern and is often rated as one of the best Star Wars movies because instead of escalating the physical danger, it increased the emotional stakes. Meanwhile some fans are joking online that The Mandalorian plot pattern was just going from one planet to another chasing solutions that turn out to just be the next clues.
I’m not saying The Mandalorian is a bad show. It’s just a normally good show, and such shows have had long lives in the past, like Gunsmoke, The Big Bang Theory, and the various incarnations of NCIS. But let’s compare it to an episode of Star Trek: Discovery titled “Unification III”. I wrote the rough draft of this essay after watching Michael Burnham visit the planet formerly known as Vulcan and try to convince its leaders to give Starfleet some vital research and as it turns out her mother is there. The episode had some weird flaws, but the mother-daughter relationship was tied into the science-diplomacy plot so that the mother had to pry out personal revelations about Michael’s motives to emotionally sway the supposedly logical council. Along with solving the plot problem and developing the heroine’s character, it illustrated that without trust, logic is only a shield against someone else’s arguments, a problem that plagues our blogosphere today. That is more thematic complexity packed into a single episode than this entire first season of The Mandalorian.
Another example would be the fan favorite Star Trek episode The Best of Both Worlds, in which Riker has to contend with a junior officer who wants his job and a captain who wants him to accept promotion to being a captain of his own ship, causing him to recognize the tension between his own ambition and feeling too much at home too much to leave, but deal with all this while the Federation is being attacked by its biggest Big Bad, the Borg. Then the Borg kidnap and absorb the knowledge of the person who taught him everything he knew about being a great officer, forcing him to think outside his own box again to defeat his father figure.
Perhaps the ultimate television example of paralleling emotional development with increasing plot stakes were the first five seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. With each season, the villains became more powerful (more or less), and Buffy’s emotional questions were well tied into her epic quests. The threat of the Mayor was intertwined into Faith’s counter example as to the nature of being a Slayer. Buffy’s relationship with Reilly was tied into her contest against the Initiative and then Adam, forcing questions of love and loyalty. While Buffy fought Glory over Dawn, she also had to ask herself if Dawn really was her sister. They dropped the ball with season six, using the villains basically as filler until Willow finished her development into being the Big Bad, but even then when Willow held Tara’s corpse in her arms and her eyes filled with vengeance that sparked her last struggle with her own dark magic, it was one of the most spine tingling moments I’ve had watching TV, right up there with Riker ordering Wesley to ram the Enterprise into the Borg cube or Angel explaining to his Wesley that the murderous escaped lunatic they were looking for wasn’t demonically possessed, but an activated vampire slayer who had suffered abuse as a child, and doing so right as Spike faces off against her. All such emotionally powerful moments require layers of emotional and thematic development most television shows don’t even attempt.
But at least Star Wars fans had something to watch without sparking off a flame war.