hbenthow said:
While Luke's victory is chronologically last in the episode, all he did was take out a bunch of robotic minions and take Grogu off of Mando's hands. Mando captured the main villain and confiscated the Dark Saber.
Yup. Mando went on a quest to deliver the child to the Jedi, which led to him getting the child to call out to a Jedi, and one answered at the last possible moment. That's not a cheat or premature ending to Mando's quest, that's the
fulfillment of his quest.
musiced921 said:
Nothing dark about killing human-less droids in a cool way.
Quite. Luke's entrance might rhyme with Vader's rampage in
Rogue One, but Vader was killing sentient beings in order to kill far more beings, and Luke was scrapping non-sentient murder bots in order to rescue several sentient beings. There is a passing visual similarity, yes, but in character terms, it's nothing alike.
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I was spoiled on Luke's appearance when I watched it tonight, but still found it quite moving - this was indeed my childhood hero being heroic, something the Sequel Trilogy didn't give us until Luke was already dead in
TROS. No disrespect to those who like the portrayal of Luke in the ST, but it's not for me.
As a mild fan of
The Mandalorian and a huge fan of the Thrawn Trilogy, I'm certainly cautiously intrigued by the prospect of bringing Thrawn back to this time period in the new canon. (I gave up on
Rebels before he showed up, and haven't looked back.) I have no idea if Lucasfilm would ever diverge from the ST storyline and/or recast Luke/Leia/Han, and maybe Luke's appearance here was a total one-off. Maybe Thrawn will be the big bad across several Disney+ shows without the OT heroes facing him down. For now, I'm simply happy to have seen Luke be a Jedi, plain and simple, no ifs, ands, or buts, and I'm very pleased that Hamill is also pleased with it.
The Mandalorian series grade so far:
B+