Review: The Mandalorian, "Chapter 24: The Return" | Season 3, Episode 8
A simple show reaches a simple season finale, for better or worse
“If we don’t take out Moff Gideon, this will never end.”
Close to the halfway point of “The Return,” there’s a fight scene that’s a micro depiction of The Mandalorian, intentionally or not. Mando and Baby Yoda are working together to find and kill Moff Gideon, as the quote above implies. Mando has convinced, through his soothingly bland tones, the cowardly R5 unit he was given earlier in the season to help him find Gideon’s command center. Presently, Mando and Baby Yoda are faced with a series of shields, behind which are new sets of Dark Troopers waiting to attack. Every few steps, Mando has R5 unlock a new shield, and every few steps, Mando then dispatches the Troopers with relative ease. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Thus is The Mandalorian: in every episode, there is a new quest, and no matter how short or long the episode is, there is relative ease in depicting the threat and in Mando dispatching said threat. I’ve discussed the simplicity of this show in most of these reviews, and it’s very much a part of this season finale, somewhat to its detriment. As many of us expected last week, this is a very action-packed episode that eventually culminates in director Rick Famuyiwa intercutting between three different battles on Mandalore. But the purpose behind each of those battles remains the same no matter who’s on screen duking it out. The joint result? Well…the good guys win, the bad guys lose, and that’s that.