Probably not, because the slow halting walk and head-tilt acting is by design. There was some interview where they said Mando's movements are supposed to be a callback to Clint Eastwood films, where everything is slow as fuck to build tension, which then intensifies the moment where he snaps into action lightning fast.

 

@KHAAAAAAAN!!

It's not that he walks slowly, it's that it looks ridiculous. When I see it, I'm not thinking "there's the badass bounty hunter", I'm thinking "Pascal can't fucking see out of that thing".

 

I wonder why he even accepted role if he was such a Diva about having his face on the screen.

I mean, they must have told him that the role would require he wears a helmet for most of the scenes right?

The good thing is that they can easily replace him with another actor, and just chalk it up to another Mandolin taking up the job.

 

From everything I've seen, he was/is all for it and all this stuff is just some bullshit someone started for internet points. Like, if you check his twitter, he's going ham on the hype train for season 2, and I don't think he'd be doing that if he and the production team got into a fight.

It's certainly possible he's professional enough to still promote it despite being pissed off at them, but I don't think that's particularly likely.

 

You guys do realize that Pascal wasn't in the armor for like 99% of Season 1, right? He only provided voice acting. And his facial scene.

 

Dawson and Olyphant finally officially confirmed. I really hope Olyphant plays Cobb Vanth and we get a Boba+Mando vs Vanth story.

 

Box art for The Black Series 'Ahsoka' toys has changed this year. Since 2016, it used to feature an artistic rendering based on Ashley Eckstein's face.


Now there are two box art images that are pretty clearly using Dawson's face as the model.





If they can make Dawson look half as good as this does with prosthetics in Mando (hopefully they'll put in a little more effort than they did with Xi'an and Qin), that will be a big win.

I hope they're going to give her a fuck load of money too, because doing those 4 to 8 hour makeup sessions is murder.

 

Just binged the whole series, been on my list for a while but I was just scared of another dogshit Disney Star Wars production. Absolutely loved it all the way through, it really makes me want to go back and play KotOR 2 again to visit Mandalore. Can't wait for S2.

 

Haven't been following this at all since shortly after I finished with season 1.

What's the go here? I heard they're bringing in 'fan favourites.' NGL, This made me a little disappointed. I kinda hate how everything in SW has to be linked as if it was set in a city, instead of an entire galaxy...

They definitely earned the benefit of the doubt though after S1.

 

The plotlines were pretty much written so they would tie-in to some of the established stories.

The darksaber / fall of Mandalore stuff makes it hard to avoid intersect with Filoni's Mandalorian focused Clone Wars / Rebels stories. There is probably going to be an arc about that. Bo Katan is confirmed to be making an appearance (Katee Sackhoff).

Then there is 'guy wearing Boba's armor in the desert' stuff. It's a bit unclear what's going on here, but with Olyphant confirmed, and Temura Morrisson casting sorta maybe leaked, the safe bet is that we'll get a Boba / Cobb Vanth arc.

Then there is the main arc of Mando's search for the Jedi / Yoda species, which pretty much has to lead him to someone who would have knowledge of such things. Limited options here. Since Disney is trying to move away from the Skywalkers, and with Dawson confirmed, pretty clear they're going to go the Ahsoka route. Probably won't be a huge part, more likely an opportunity to set up an Ahsoka/Sabine/Ezra/Thrawn show.

You shouldn't be afraid of tie-ins and interconnectivity. This is how we get something similar to the EU back, albeit piecemeal.

 

I have to admit, I'm curious how they're going to handle the fact that the whole "never take off the helmet" tradition wasn't a thing for the Clone Wars era Mandalorians. I've thought from the start that that was a massive continuity problem, not to mention kind of idiotic from a practical standpoint (and Mandalorians are supposed to be very practical people). It's seems clear to me that the show's creators just wanted to make the main character more exotic and mysterious, and they just didn't put whole lot of thought into how their idea didn't mesh with pre-existing lore and media.

If they are including Bo-Katan, possibly Ahsoka, and other characters from Clone Wars/Rebels, that implies that the events of those shows happened in the same continuity, despite how none of the Mandalorian characters in either show had any compunctions about removing their helmets in front of others. Seeing as how Rebels takes place maybe a decade before The Mandalorian, that would mean that the helmet thing is either very new, or was only ever an extreme fringe tradition upheld by a tiny minority of fanatics.

I also have to confess a bit of annoyance that the titular character had no idea what the Jedi were. From his flashbacks, he lived on a Republic world during the Clone Wars, which means that even if he never actually saw a Jedi, he would certainly have heard a few stories. And that's aside from the fact that the Mandalorians have a long and bitter history with the Jedi Order that all of them seemed to be aware of in the Clone Wars series. So it's more than a little baffling that the Mando who raised him apparently never taught him about any of that history. The Clone Wars, the Mandalorian Civil War (which featured heavy Jedi/Sith involvement), and the Great Jedi Purge all happened within his lifetime, and were all events of galaxy-wide importance, but we're just supposed to accept that he knows nothing about any of it?

In general I like the series so far, but I'm really starting to wonder how (or even if) they're going to address these issues.

 

My read on that is that the "don't take off your helmet" thing started after the Empire's purge, as a way for them to ensure no one actually knows what they look like. Then, when shit hits the fan and the Empire finds their enclave, they can do what they did in the show and ditch their armor, disappearing into the civvies. It just sorta became tradition, with a whole generation raised on the idea, and solidified into what we saw.

The timeframe for that process was definitely more than a little quick, but that's true for basically all of Star Wars. Nearly everything that happens during the Empire's reign is stuff that should, by all rights, take a couple hundred years and/or multiple generations, not <20 (see: everyone forgetting about the Jedi, multiple species-wide genocides, etc, etc).

It very much makes sense if you think about it as "How does a proud culture like the Mandalorians respond to being actively hunted for generations?", so I've just been chalking the Mandalorian helmet thing to the same kind of hyper-accelerated cultural evolution that saw everyone forget about the Jedi.

 

@Agayek that is basically my take as well on helmets.

Also, while it definitely happens too fast for my taste, if you add in the Empire's systematic suppression of all things force/Jedi and the elimination/indoctrination of force users into their inquisitor ranks, it's not too much to think they could have largely wiped out the concept of the force from much of the galaxy post Clone Wars.

 

I think it's worth nothing that, beyond the core worlds, Jedi were pretty mythical figures for the majority of the galaxy. I don't think it'd take too much work to stifle most knowledge of them.

They were this esoteric order of diplomat warriors that wasn't that large. While obviously more were killed off during the clone wars, it's estimated that there were around 10,000 Jedi at the time of Order 66. 10k...in a galaxy of trillions.

 

I mean, you're not wrong, but at the same time, Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker, HERO OF THE REPUBLIC, was featured heavily in like all of the major media networks and Republic propaganda during the Clone Wars. Not to mention that, as depicted in the movies/shows/comics/literally all Star Wars media set pre-Empire, literally everyone recognizes the Jedi on sight and knows both what they are and what role they fill in the Republic.

It's not that big a deal or anything, it's pretty easy to ignore or handwave that stuff, but let's not pretend Lucas was great at realistic chronology. He wanted the Empire to be simultaneously an ancient evil of long-term oppression and Anakin involved in its rise, so the timeline is severely compressed from anything approaching realistic to get his desired setting.

 

Very fair.

Man...I miss the EU. The new trilogy following Jacen and Jains would’ve been lit.

 

@Agayek : Okay, that helmet logic does make some sense, even if the timeframe doesn't.

Yeah, that would work for most places/cultures that didn't have a lot of historical interaction with the Jedi, and who didn't have much in the way of Holonet access. But for Mandalorians? Coruscanti? The people of Naboo? I don't buy it.

It would be like me (a thirty-year-old American) having no memory of the Oklahoma City Bombing, or the Lewinski Scandal. I mean, sure, I was just a kid when those things happened, but I sure as hell remember enough to name many of the critical figures involved and some of the facts of each case without having to look it up. Now factor in that the majority of all those populations in the immediate post-Endor years would have been grown adults during the Clone Wars, fully capable of following and understanding what was going on.

The logic really starts to break down, and I think it was a major continuity error of Lucas' when he established the Jedi as well publicized and known galaxy-wide in the prequels. It probably would have fit better if they were more insular and mysterious - more of a mystical Secret Police force than a super high-profile bunch of warrior/diplomat monks.

This^. For sure. It never fails to piss me off that they cancelled the Jaina Solo-centric 'Sword of the Jedi' novel series, and gave us a garbage trilogy starring an insultingly obvious Mary Sue instead. I can't even read any of the new novels or comics, because they're ultimately all based on elements of the sequel trilogy, which was so bad (imo), that it has almost destroyed my desire or any new Star Wars projects of any kind. I'm basically down to The Mandalorian, Jedi: Fallen Order, and possibly Squadrons (not sure, haven't played it yet). Those things and nostalgia for the old EU are pretty much all that's keeping my love of Star Wars alive at this point.

 

2nd season 2 trailer.



There's not much to unpack here other than the reveal of what is likely the unifying arc. He's looking for more Mandalorians, to help him find Baby Yoda's peeps. Not difficult to see how that could potentially tie together all the various teased tidbits of Bo Katan, Boba(and Cobb Vanth), and Sabine (and Ahsoka).

 

I am wearing my Baby Yoda socks.

 

That time of the year again, figuring out the show's plot from memes. If Mando walks less awkwardly this time I might even watch it.