The Mandalorian, Chapter 24: The Return – episode analysis and series review

Luca Fontana

20/4/2023

Translation: Katherine Martin

In the epic finale of The Mandalorian season three, the Mandalorians launch an offensive on my tear ducts. Let’s start with this episode, then do a season-by-season ranking.

Welcome to my last episode analysis! Let’s get one thing straight before we start. This episode breakdown includes spoilers!, so make sure you watch The Mandalorian – Chapter 24: The Return before reading on.

Inches from the finish line, the world is about to come crashing down for us Mandalorian fans. Just as a vanguard of Mandalorians led by Bo-Katan Kryze is poised to set up a base camp in the Great Forge of Mandalore, allowing them to plan for the recapture of their home planet, their enemy reveals himself: Moff Gideon.

Gideon is cunning. Since his mysterious disappearance between seasons two and three, he’s been hiding out on the very planet he once threatened to destroy during the Great Purge – basically the last place we’d expected him to be. He’s secretly built a new mini-army and enhanced the Dark Trooper armour, which he’s now started wearing himself. He even manages to capture Din Djarin in the end. What’s more, the hardy Paz Vizla sacrifices his own life in a one-sided battle against the Praetorian Guard.

And then? The end.

The gardens of Mandalore

With no time to take a breather, the finale begins where the penultimate episode left off: in battle. Bo-Katan and her squad are in retreat as they fight their way through hordes of Gideon’s Imperial foot soldiers. I still can’t figure out whether these are Dark Trooper clones or bog-standard minions with Beskar armour, but I’m leaning towards the latter.

The retreat is a success. Bo-Katan leads the Mandalorian splinter group of Great Purge survivors to one of her many hideouts. There, she’s surprised to discover that the planet, thought for decades to be inhospitable, still has places where plants grow and thrive. Turns out her hideout isn’t so much a hideout as it is a large, underground garden.

Bo-Katan is immediately aware of how extraordinary this is. After all, even before the Great Purge, she would only have seen gardens like this inside Mandalore’s numerous bio-domes. Why? Because the Mandalorian Civil War almost devastated the planet decades before the Empire. Where the surface of Mandalore was once green, lush and full of life, the war left it with nothing but deserts and dunes. This saw the creation of bio-domes we’d already seen in The Clone Wars, including those in the capital city of Sundari, the ruins of which we got to see in Chapter 18: The Mines of Mandalore.

However, there’s no time to dwell on that – the Armorer has come on the radio to say, «Lady Kryze, your reinforcements have arrived.»

The clones

Meanwhile, Grogu has tracked down and freed Din Djarin from inside his mecha robot IG-12. There was, of course, some teamwork – Din had already succeeded in wearing down his guards. «YES», I thought as I was watching it, «finally some proper Din Djarin action again!» As if that wasn’t enough, R5, the little astromech droid from Chapter 18: The Mines of Mandalore joins the trio too. In true R2-D2 fashion, he taps into the Empire’s systems and opens pressure doors to guide Din and Grogu through the corridors. Their destination? The command centre, where Moff Gideon is already waiting.

Before that, Din has to get past a few waves of enemies. Once again, this is really well staged. After all, Din is a real Mandalorian fighter. I cheer at the TV like I’m watching an MMA cage fight. In the next room, Din finds tanks with clones growing inside them – Moff Gideon clones. What the–?! Without hesitation, Din destroys them. All he has left to face is Moff Gideon, now standing in front of him in his Dark Trooper armour. Gideon finally reveals what he’s been planning for three seasons:

a super army.

No, the terrifying Dark Trooper droids from Chapter 16: The Rescue weren’t the endgame for him. Nor was it the henchmen in Beskar armour from this chapter. He wanted to create an army using himself as the basis, combine it with Mandalorian Beskar armour and refine it with an ability that would make him invincible – the ability to use the Force. The Force! It’s now become clear why Gideon was so interested in capturing Grogu. He is, after all, one of the last known living beings in the galaxy with the ability to use the Force. But now that the clones are (seemingly) dead before being able to take their first breath, Gideon is seriously pissed.

The last battle ensues.

A battle for Mandalore

What comes next is Star Wars at its finest. Epic battles both in the air and on the ground, with small, one-to-one duels raging in the middle of it all. Just how I like it. And as is only right for Star Wars, the computer effects are beyond reproach. The mere sight of the onslaught of jetpack-flying Mandalorians, led by a Darksaber-wielding Bo-Katan, had me cheering at the TV.

Then a lot happens within a very short time: Din vs. Gideon, Din vs. the Praetorian Guard, Grogu vs. the Praetorian Guard, Bo-Katan vs. Gideon, Din and Grogu vs. the Praetorian Guard... until we end up with Din, Grogu and Bo-Katan vs. Gideon, while jetpack air battles between Mandalorians and Imperials continue raging in the background. It’s as if someone at Lucasfilm had asked, «How epic should the finale be?» only for The Mandalorian creators and writers Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni to go, «Yep!» in unison.

While the battle on the ground seems never-ending, someone has one last ace up his sleeve: Axe Woves, former Nite Owls member and former right-hand man of Bo-Katan Kryze. His mission was to use a Mandalorian light cruiser to distract the Empire’s airborne fleet. Not that he’d have the slightest chance against their numerous bombers and interceptors on his own. But having a chance was never the plan. With the ship now unable to fly on, his mind is set on one goal only: to crash it directly into the Imperial base.

Bo-Katan seems close to meeting her maker; her Darksaber destroyed by Gideon. His armour has allowed him to outdo her not only physically, but also in terms of weaponry. Din and Grogu, too, are almost powerless against it. But then, Axe Wove’s light cruiser crashes into the base, throwing Moff Gideon to his fiery death. Din, Bo-Katan and Grogu are very nearly caught up in it too. But Grogu wouldn’t be Grogu if he hadn’t honed his Jedi skills with Luke Skywalker. With all his might, he manages to surround them with a Force barrier that keeps the flames away.

Finally. Finally, Mandalore is free again, the supremacy of the Empire in tatters. And Gideon is no more.

The apprentice

The third season is heading towards its ending, full steam ahead. Bo-Katan Kryze assumes her old role as leader of the Mandalorians – even without the Darksaber – as she ceremoniously ignites the Great Forge. Meanwhile, Paz Vizsla’s son swears the Mandalorian creed, the Way of the Mandalore, just as his late father did before him. And Grogu? Grogu is granted the most beautiful honour of all.

Since he can’t speak yet, he’s unable to swear the creed which would allow him to rise from the level of foundling to apprentice. Unless he has the consent of a parent. And that’s what he gets – from Din Djarin, who officially adopts him. In the process, Grogu gets Din Djarin’s name. From now on, he’ll be known as… Din Grogu. Hooooold up! Din Grogu!? Does this mean I’ve spent the last sixteen episode analyses wrongly believing that Din Djarin’s first name was Din?! Hahaha!

In my defence, hands up if you’ve been getting it right all along. Yep, that’s what I thought.

Din... uh, I mean, Djarin... Djarin and Grogu won’t be staying on Mandalore. Tradition requires that the pair travel the galaxy so that Djarin, Grogu’s teacher, can teach his apprentice the ways of the Manda’lor. «Just as your teacher did for you,» says the Armorer. I almost think I see her winking under her horned helmet. Is she talking about herself? Or is Djarin’s teacher someone we’re yet to meet?

Djarin and his apprentice travel to the Adelphi Base we last saw in Chapter 21: The Pirate. There, Captain Carson Teva is at the helm of a New Republic outpost. And yep, I clocked Dave Filoni making a cameo in the background. The base is also where Djarin makes Captain Teva an offer he can’t refuse – an offer of his services as a bounty hunter to track down fugitive Imperials alongside his apprentice. Uh-huh, that’ll be a rough synopsis of season four.

The last stop, however, is Nevarro – a once rogue planet which, under the leadership of High Magistrate Greef Karga, has become one of the most prosperous independent territories in the Outer Rim. Djarin takes spare parts along with him to Nevarro so that IG-11 can be reassembled and maintain law and order as city marshal. As a thank you, Karga gives Djarin a hut just outside the city so that he can rest between adventures. Djarin and Grogu gratefully accept the offer.

All is well.

Season 3: a rollercoaster of emotions

What. A. Finale. From epic battles to deep emotions, this episode had it all. And not to worry, the almost suspicious lack of a cliffhanger or post-credit scene at the end isn’t supposed to insinuate that The Mandalorian will end after season three. In fact, co-creator Jon Favreau confirmed last February that he’d already written season four. What’s more, we’re sure to see Din Djarin in other Star Wars series. Skeleton Crew or Ahsoka, for instance. And he’s definitely going to be in one of the upcoming feature films. So for the moment, all this season’s happy ending means is that it’s time to take a breath.

My guess is that the fourth season will fall back in line with the first. In other words, Din Djarin and Grogu will once again encounter all sorts of friends and foes, new and old alike, on adventures across the galaxy. You know the score. Minor stories. I’ll wait for Ahsoka to get my fill of more significant stories. At the same time, I’ll wager a bunch of galactic credits on a Bo-Katan Kryze series being announced soon.

Speaking of whom, the Darksaber has been destroyed. Thank God. In this very season, Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni wrote themselves into an impossible corner. On the one hand, it was constantly emphasised how important and symbolic the weapon was, and that the Mandalorian clans couldn’t be united and led without it. The person wielding it, and why (it could only be won during a duel to the death) seemed to be particularly important. On the other hand, the splinter group of the most important clan in the series – the Children of the Watch of all people – didn’t seem to give a damn about it. As Din Djarin put it, they simply followed whoever possessed the most «honour, character and loyalty». This is despite the fact that it was originally forged by Tarre Vizla, one of their ancestors. Well, is the saber important or not? Dramaturgically, the story kept shooting itself in the foot.

And the third season as a whole? It had its highs and lows. For me, this doesn’t come as a surprise. Even in the early days, the eight-part seasons of The Mandalorian had their weak episodes. The Dr. Pershing special episode, for example, may have felt very similar to Andor, but that’s exactly why I liked it so much. In retrospect, however, I have to admit that it delivered little in the way of context important for the plot, besides a more detailed picture of the New Republic. In my opinion, The Mines of Mandalore and The Pirate were even more brilliant. The Apostate and The Foundling were alright. The only pretty subpar episode was Guns for Hire, which, even for one of those weak Mandalorian episodes, was substandard in terms of writing, acting and pace.

At the same time, however, Kate Sackhoff’s Bo-Katan Kryze developed well. Having voiced Bo-Katan as a young and overly-spirited heir to the throne in the animated shows The Clone Wars and Rebels, Sackhoff swapped the recording booth for a warrior’s helmet in The Mandalorian. Nowadays, Bo-Katan is just as fiercely determined as she is mature and forward-thinking. A worthy leader who I’d love to see in a series of her own.

To finish off, I’ll say one last thing. In my opinion, the best season of The Mandalorian is still season two, followed by seasons one and three respectively. I personally would have liked to see Moff Gideon show up and unveil his plan earlier. I mean, imagine the threat of a Force-sensitive Gideon, lurking like a shadow over the entire third season... In reality, though, Gideon dies at pretty much the very moment his plan is revealed. I’d have liked to see the story play out a little more – that is, unless a clone survived somewhere after all. But that «twist» would be flat-out cheap, not to mention predictable.

What do you folks think?

Luca Fontana

Senior Editor

Luca.Fontana@digitecgalaxus.ch

I'm an outdoorsy guy and enjoy sports that push me to the limit – now that’s what I call comfort zone! But I'm also about curling up in an armchair with books about ugly intrigue and sinister kingkillers. Being an avid cinema-goer, I’ve been known to rave about film scores for hours on end. I’ve always wanted to say: «I am Groot.» more

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