Din Djarin and Grogu, better known as Mando and Baby Yoda.
The trailer for the 3rd season of Disney’s The Mandalorian has dropped online, and casual viewers might be confused to why the titular Mandalorian is suddenly reunited with “Baby Yoda,” after the season 2 finale saw the two separated.
The plot of The Mandalorian took an unusual turn in season 2, as a youthful Luke Skywalker (uncannily recreated in VFX) arrived to take Grogu (affectionately known as Baby Yoda) from the Mandalorian, Din Djarin, who even removes his sacred helmet to bid his cute companion farewell.
For some reason, the set-up for Din and Grogu’s inevitable reunion was randomly inserted into another Disney+ Star Wars series, The Book of Boba Fett. Grogu’s story wasn’t even connected to Boba Fett’s - amusingly, the series simply switches to “season 2.5” of The Mandalorian for episodes 5 and 6, before returning to Boba’s boring problems on Tatooine.
Those two episodes are a strange blend of fan service from Star Wars new, classic and animated, as Grogu undergoes Jedi training by the de-aged Luke Skywalker, whose voice was generated by an AI, trained using old audio clips of Mark Hamill (the performance is as listless as one would expect).
Meanwhile, Din is despondent without his big-eared buddy, thrown out of the Mandalorian cult and struggling to master his legendary weapon, the Darksaber. Hence, Din decides to reunite with Grogu, clearly regretting his choice to give him up; he even has a piece of Mandalorian armor for the little guy.
Then, Din meets Ahsoka Tano, an animated fan favorite appearing in live-action for the first time (now played by Rosario Dawson), who convinces Din that it’s a bad idea to interfere with Grogu’s Jedi training.
Din reluctantly agrees, but leaves the armor for Grogu behind, which inspires Luke to offer Grogu a choice between Yoda’s lightsaber and Mando’s armor, a decision that will send him down the path of the emotionally stunted Jedi, or the fierce, loyal Mandalorians.
As we can see from the trailer for The Mandalorian season 3, Grogu chose to return to his armored father figure. Despite the emotional impact of the two saying goodbye in the season 2 finale, Disney was never really going to separate the two; they’re a winning combination.
But it was an odd choice to insert this important plot point into another spin-off series that casual fans might not have watched, or even be aware of; The Book of Boba Fett wasn’t a particularly popular, or compelling series.
Disney Star Wars has pulled a similar move before, in the lead-up to Rise of Skywalker, in which a huge plot point (the resurrection of Palpatine) occurred not during the movie, but during a game of Fortnite.
Disney’s Star Wars is clearly going the MCU route of having dozens of interconnected storylines, but with a haphazard execution; all you need to know is that “Baby Yoda” and “Mando” are back together, because The Mandalorian simply wouldn’t be the same without the little guy.
