So it was inevitable that I would get around to watching this eventually even if it’s so much later than everyone else. I was amused that our cinephile hated this with uncommon intensity earlier this year. For my part, I love how it absolutely nails the Star Wars aesthetic, perhaps better than any of the new films, and it makes for a rather fun romp. However it is admittedly very shallow so it’s best to take this as light entertainment which is great as the episodes tend to be rather short.

The premise here is so minimal that I’m just going to give the bare-bones. Shortly after the fall of the Empire, an unnamed Mandalorian starts making a name for himself as a bounty hunter. On the planet Nevarro, his guild contact offers him a contract from a group of Imperial remnants to recover an asset in exchange for the beskar metal that Mandalorians use to forge their characteristic armor. After tussling with a large group of defenders and an IG-11 droid who is also after the same target, he finds that the asset is an alien infant despite being supposedly 50-years old. No one in the show knows what species the alien is but Star Wars fans of course immediately recognize it as being the same species as Jedi Grandmaster Yoda. The Mandalorian honors the contract and turns in the baby but almost immediately afterwards has second thoughts.

The first thing to understand about this show is that it is essentially a cartoon shot in live-action. The showrunner may be Jon Favreau but alongside him as executive producer is Dave Filoni who is the person behind such shows as Avatar: The Last Airbender, The Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels. That’s why the show employs cartoon logic and characterization. Aesthetics and style win out over plausibility and worldbuilding. That’s how we have a weird animal with legs shorter than those of a human being the only way to reach a location, why the tracking pucks have seemingly infinite range or why the Mandalorian uses his awesome rifle for a couple of episodes and then seems to forget it exists. It is frustrating how sparse the show is with the story. For example at the end of the season we still don’t know what the Imperials wanted to do with Baby Yoda or how it ended up with a group of thugs who weren’t smart enough to just hand it over to the Imperials for the lucrative reward. We just have to roll with it and to be sure, not every high-profile show needs to be a complicated puzzle box, and we do enjoy watching cartoons as well so why not.

And the show does look good. They have a big budget to play with and apparently they’re even pushing the technology forefront. It is impressive how they absolutely nailed the aesthetics of the original Star Wars trilogy, much more so than any of the prequel or sequel films, and it is wonderful how much fanservice there is in it and how steeped it is with the lore. For example the lore keeps saying that the IG assassin droids are greatly feared but we’ve never seen them in action and they look awfully spindly. So when we watch IG-11 break out the gun-kata, it feels so right and satisfying. There are still limitations of course and this is still far from a feature film level of quality. A lot of their action scenes seem limited to an arena instead of ranging dynamically across a larger area. I also have issues with the plausibility of the action. A shot of a stormtrooper armed with a flamethrower waddling over might look good in a cartoon but feels silly in live-action as you wonder why none of the good guys bother to take a shot at him given how slow he is. The trailer for the second season looks like it will have more dynamic, cinematic action however so that’s something to look forward to.

This show is obviously not aspiring to be high art and it’s a fact that it is probably at its best when there is no dialogue at all with just the Mandalorian emoting by tilting his helmeted head and Baby Yoda making soft cooing noises. But the point here isn’t to reinvent Star Wars or to subvert it. It’s just to rekindle the sense of adventure of the original trilogy and in that I think it succeeds.