The Prestige TV Podcast - 'The Mandalorian' Season Finale Exit Survey

Episode Date: December 21, 2020

Chris Ryan and Mallory Rubin answer a few questions about 'The Mandalorian' season two finale and what's to come for the series. Hosts: Chris Ryan and Mallory Rubin Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

He go on. That's who you belong with. He's one of your kind. I'll see you again. I promise. Hello and welcome to TV concierge. My name is Chris Ryan. I'm an editor at the ringer.com,

and I am here to talk to you about season two of the Mandalorian with the only person on planet Earth I want to do that with. It's Mallory Rubin. Chris, Grogo and I are here with you. I don't know if you can see him because he's popping in and out of my... somehow also breaking your Zoom background, which is also the Mandalorian. He's very powerful, you know, a very powerful force user with Baby Yodes. Mal and I are going to do this exit survey style.

So if you want a super in-depth conversation about the finale of the Mandalorian and the whole entire second season, you can listen to binge mode. When is that posting? Should be going up overnight on Monday, so it'll be live on Tuesday. And if you want to listen to two idiots talk to Mallory about the Mandalorian. You can listen to the watch on Monday afternoon. We're just going to do kind of a quick fire run through this season using the questions from the ringer.com's exit survey because I thought that would be the best way to format our conversation Malah. So, Fool's Arend of Fools Arens, I will ask you, what is your tweet length review of season two of the Mandalorian? And just to be clear, tweets can be the length of a novel now. It can be a 75 tweet thread. Yeah, sure. You can screenshot a

a note doc from your phone and it can be longer than the character count. Let me try to actually honor the spirit of the exercise and be precise. Whatever you're ready, John Adams. Good preamble.

Like, I have not prepared this. This is off the cuff right here. It's an authentic emotional response to your prompt, Chris. My tweet length review of the Mandalorian finale, season two of the Mandalorian, the Mandalorian experience to date,

all of it is as follows. Holy fuck. I'm lucky to be alive, watching this. Scream emoji. Flushed iPop emoji. Saab emoji. Hashtag stop the steel.

Orgo exclamation point. Asoka exclamation point. Dinn. Cryface. Bow. Yeah. Dark Sabre. Hashtag mandilor.

So this is good because obviously Mal's tweet length response gets at just how deep the connection is. between the show and the fans of Star Wars and how it, not I wouldn't say only serviced fans, but that it was such like an enriching and powerful experience for people who are deeply, deeply invested in the lore around Star Wars.

My tweet-length review of Star Wars of the Mandalorian season two is simply, if you're going to do it, do it like this. Yes. Absolutely. If you were going to make, Chris. Star Wars and its best. How about that? Star Wars universe, if you're going to make this show,

I'm sure if you're going to make a dozen shows like it, please do it like this. Please have this sort of level of respect for your audience, make it look like this, make these performances stick like this. And this is just the tone that I think that people who fell in love with Star Wars with the original trilogy

have been waiting for for a very long time, whether they're young or old. And this does give me fumes of when I was obsessed with my VHS copies of New Hope and Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi and like feeling like I was being transported to another world, but yet also watching things that were like inherently familiar to me as like a fan of Westerns, as a fan of Knights in Shining Armor, as a fan of Samarizes,

fan of all these like myths that we have and all these like stories we tell each ourselves. I just thought if you're going to do it, do it like this. I could not possibly agree with you more. It's absolutely Star Wars at its best. and that is a product of every single aspect of what they've created. And so much of that, I think, connects to, you know, obviously it's about the characters indelible at this point, the bonds that they have formed, the actual plot points, the the simultaneous blueprint that exists across almost every episode and yet this unique

identity that they managed to cultivate week after week, depending on who the guest star is, which planet we're visiting, what the exact nature of the side quest is, et cetera. But all of it connects back to the spirit. spirit of the enterprise and how fundamentally that spirit connects back to and stems from loving Star Wars and wanting to make something for people who love Star Wars. And it's honestly just been a joy to watch. I'm going to miss it so badly. I know we have a million new Star Wars things coming and I can't wait. But the days now after this ended until it's back in our lives, I don't know what I'll fill them with. I miss Groko already. What was your favorite moment

of season two. That's the second question. It's difficult. So the way we structured the binge mode episode that we did on this is our eight favorite moments. And in classic, undisciplined fashion, I crammed about six sub-moments into my top two moments and tried to unite them because I just couldn't pick. I think I would have to say that even though Asoka's arrival and everything that happened in that episode, the Thrawn mentioned seeing Asoka in live action, learning Grogu's history through Asoka with Asoka in the Obi-1 Yoda role of telling us about the force, telling us about somebody,

was something I thought could not be topped for me and we'll still go down as one of my favorite things in Star Wars history. It has to be for me the end of the finale. The Din and Grogu farewell, obviously mixed in with Luke fucking Skywalker arriving at Gideon's Light Cruiser. When I saw that X-wing, my body started to respond in a way that I was like shaking. I was telling Gaia right before we started to record. I was actually like shaking, watching it.

And I had a pretty strong hope heading into the finale that Ezra for all the Star Wars rebels heads out there would be the Jedi who who Grogu reached from the seeing stone when he called out through the force. I have, this is a short podcast, so I won't get lost in the weeds here of sequel talk or anything, but I have a little bit of dissonance

about the Luke thing because there is a part of me that worries about how much of recent Star Wars storytelling has felt a compulsion to connect back to the Skywalker saga at some point. However, I actually think

that's what's such a remarkable achievement about it, is that despite the fact that that is broadly, often something I think about with Star Wars, that was not a problem for me at all here. It was so masterfully, deftly handled, and it was done by people who I trust

to tell a story expertly at this point. And so most of the questions that I have are not why did it have to be Luke there? What does it mean moving forward for our story and the characters that we love, our plan of two, our clan Mudhorn? Seeing Luke was just, it was thrilling. It was this distillation of the essence of Star Wars.

It was honestly incredible. And then for him to be standing there as the single favorite moment that I'll pick with in that is Grogu reaching out to Din. Which people can't see this, but is your Zoom background? Oh my God. And touching his helmet and then Din lifting his helmet, which he had obviously taken off in the penultimate episode with Mayfeld during the Imperial Base expedition to get the coordinates of Gideon's light cruiser.

But to see him take it. That was for Grogu too. Right? So to see him take it off and the way that they looked at each other and Grogu touching his cheek and didn't crying and his lip quivering. It was so beautiful and moving. I just couldn't believe it. It was incredible. It was amazing. My favorite moment of Mandalorian season two was the introduction of Assocato, who I am somebody who has not watched the cartoons. I'm not really that well versed in the sort of deeper parts of Star Wars canon stuff. But that whole episode was just basically like a Kurosawa movie in 30 minutes. And I thought that was my favorite episode of the season. And her introduction in that sort of dead forest and just her lightsaber moving around in the fog was just, that's how you introduce a character for sure.

The iconic white lightsabers. What was your least favorite part, Mal? My least favorite part, I'll say my least favorite part probably predictably. it was all of the moments that my darling Grogu was in a real peril. I don't like seeing him in harm's way. And I think especially in season two, it often felt like those moments were deliberately there to prime us for a separation or for something terrible befalling him at some point,

you know, whether it was the knife to the throat in the second episode before he ran to Mandu, the entire spider incident, Gideon holding dark saber above his head, actual shackles on my little guy in the brig. Mando asking him to rewire the razor crest and electrocuting him in the process. I'm out on all of that. I want Grou to thrive. I want him to be healthy and well. You mentioned Asoka, again, one of the most incredible episodes of television in a long time.

She's an immensely important character to me. And one of the things that sticks with me most from that episode was hearing her. talk about Grogo's pain and the way that he had hid his abilities over the year to avoid, over the years to avoid detection, his fear, his anger, obviously they direct anachian illusions and the path to the dark side. I'm very worried about what awaits, especially now that he's off to Luke's school, which we know is destroyed and 28, A-B-Y. Not a great educational experience. I'm hoping that he's long gone by then. There's still a couple decades to go, but I just don't like

seeing bad things happen to him. I love him. My least favorite part of the season was probably the fact that the, in the last episode of season two, they inexplicably repeatedly kept Moth Gideon alive like for five scenes. Yeah. Every time, first he like loses one of the coolest battles I've seen in a really long time against Mando. Mando's got a spear, a Baskar spear up to his throat. And he was like, Ooh, you're going to keep me alive. And then they take him into the bridge where everybody who is important on the show is standing.

And he twice tries to escape once by shooting at Baby Yoda and shooting Boatatana and then trying to kill himself. And each time they're just like, no, no, no, you're a prisoner. But what his real purpose is there, is to narrate what's happening. Here's the thing.

He did it expertly. It's John Carlo Esposito. You can't really ask for more. I'm just saying that in just like... Feels like one they might want to do over with. Yeah, maybe just put him in a jail cell. It would be fine with me. I could see some of those characters regretting that decision.

Who is the MVP of season two? Oh, boy. I'm going to go with Dave Filoni because I think that... And obviously, Favs as well. But I think that we talked about this on the watch when I had the pleasure of joining you a few weeks ago. Yeah. The high wire act of the canon unifying that they did this season,

the threads that they brought in. I mean, we haven't even talked about Boba Fett, but putting Boba back in his armor, like this is this thing people have been waiting for for so, so, so long? And the amount of things like that that they did and that they pulled off and that felt like they could actually completely served the story that they're trying to tell. I just think it's incredible.

And again, everything that we see on our ends and the final product stems from that real deliberation and care, what do we want to do and how are we going to do it and how are we going to make this all work together so that this can be the launching pad for all of these new explorations on Disney Plus and elsewhere in Star Wars. But so that the thing that we are making remains nearly pitch perfect. And I just think that's so, so, so hard to do. We have a lot of recent examples of how hard that is to do. So they're my vote. What about you? I think I'm going to go Pedro Pascal. I think that there's a lot of debate about like, not a lot of debate like in terms of like real

hardcore investigative journalism or whatever. But I don't know how often he is in that suit. You know, I assume that he is usually the person in it. But there's been, you know, I think that there's a lot of jokes to be had about the fact that like he shows up in Manhattan Beach like two times a year to do the, like the helmet reveal. But I actually found him quite affecting in the last few episodes, especially once he takes his helmet off in the episode with Bill Burr to get clearance from that computer. And then clearly he really delivers in the second, in the, in the last episode of the second season. And it's not easy being the flagship

character of a Star Wars story, you know, like ask any of the people who were in the sequels. You know, it could have gone wrong in a lot of different directions. And, you know, you know, you He got a helmet on for most of this show. Like the fact that he has become kind of this indelible and iconic character just from his voice and from saying this is the way. And just having these few scenes where he's allowed to really express himself, I think is a real testament to him. You know,

and it's a testament to their choice to make him the sort of the lead actor in this show. So that's the MVP. Let's get to the thing that everybody was talking about on Friday and all over the weekend. Finish the sentence. D-Hed Luke Skywalker was? Working for me. Okay. Honestly.

I know there's a lot of uncanny Valley talk out there and questions about, oh, could somebody else have been cast? I think that the weight of that question probably will be revealed in time when we realize whether Luke and Grogo are getting their own show or whether their teachings are going to be a huge. focus of this show moving forward, but for this in this moment, I just don't think you can put anybody else in that Jedi robe. I mean, think about the timeline. Mandalorian is set 9ABY, nine years after the Battle of Yavin. That means we're a half decade after Endor and Return of the Jedi, which means this is Luke Skywalker at his peak in his prime. It's Luke Skywalker

at his most identifiable for us as viewers. It just had to be. I think it had to be Mark Hamill's face and I got a real thrill out of it. I honestly did. What about you? I thought it was just... And then you had an R2 by the way. I honestly thought it was just cheesy enough

and flawed enough to be perfect because I think that if it had been really, really, really convincing, I would have actually felt a little bit off about that. You know, like I think that if they had the technology where it was where they could be like, we're going to make a Luke Skywalker show, I would have been like, guys, can you just cast Sebastian Stan or something?

Like, can we, can we like keep it still like within the realm of like non-Philip K. Dick world for a minute? And I think that there was a little bit of like awkwardness to it in the same way that there's a little bit of awkwardness to the Irishman. But in the same way that the Irishman deployed that, I think appropriately, they did it that way for this. And I would be surprised if we saw Luke again, especially a young Luke. I think we might see a slightly younger looking Mark Hamill at a temple, you know, in seasons or shows to come. So you think Grogo's just off screen now for a really long time? You got to, so we're going to talk about this on the watch, too. I don't want to spoil it too

much, but I was going to ask you, like, it doesn't. We can save it for then. Yeah. I mean, my point is basically like, you explain to me how you get him back on the Mandalorian, because it seems like their paths just took a really, really diametrically opposite. you know, direction. I have a few thoughts, most of which stem from just a desperate desire to not be away from him for too long. I basically can't accept it.

But I don't know. It's a tough one because I agree with you that this separation felt deliberate and definitive. We also, though, the counterpoint is that we have din promising him that they'll be together again. And I think that their emotional bond is the heart of this show. I also think, though, that it's probably equally true that. this was not the show as magical as it has been that they intended to make. The baby Yoda thing became bigger than the Mandalorian or really anything else in pop culture in real time.

And I think that the emphasis in season two in episode three, the heiress and then with Bo Katan's return in the finale on Bo, on the kind of let's align, but also we're not really on the same page here dynamic between. Dean and Bo, everything with Gideon, the stated intention to revive Mandelor for Bo. Din's saying, like, that's not really what I'm looking for or interested in. And of course, the role of the Dark Sabre, which I care about deeply and have a lot of thoughts on.

I think that seems like what the next season of this show is probably going to be about. It's crucially called the Mandalorian. And there are a couple of quote unquote Mandalorian out. there. You could make this show about any number of people. Okay, Mal, thank you so much for joining me on TV concierge. Like I said, you can listen to Binge Mode probably on Tuesday. You can listen to the watch late on Monday, and we're so glad you guys joined us for TV concierge today. We'll be back. I'm sure later this week with more TV content. Thanks again, Mal.