As Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu debuts on Disney+, we’re left with the feeling that maybe that’s where it belongs. After all, the big-screen Star Wars adventure is a spinoff of small-screen serial The Mandalorian, which was a big hit during its 2019-23 three-season run. TMAG director Jon Favreau and series co-creator/new SW creative honcho Dave Filoni originally developed a fourth season before the 2023 Hollywood labor strikes nudged them back to the drawing board to develop a feature-length theatrical film — which we must admit sorta functions like a few TV episodes stapled together.
Perhaps the overall feeling that Mando is best watched at home fueled the relative ennui among audiences, who made Mando/Grogu the lowest-grossing Star Wars movie yet, at $375 million worldwide. Certainly, Disney’s likely hope that Baby Yoda Fever, now in year seven (gasp, pant), would maintain its pop-cultural relevance was miscalculated, considering the squirrelly attention spans of the public. Either way, the movie’s failure to fully recapture the zeitgeist was undermined by the notion that people would be just fine waiting to watch when it hit the streaming service they’re already paying for.
As for me, a Star Wars lifer? IN THIS HOUSE, BABY YODA IS GOD. To see the little critter-fella — once again oh-so-endearingly-and-obviously brought to life via good old-fashioned Muppetry — be hilarious, heroic and gross on the big screen was a treat, like chilly soft-serve on a summer day. And I assert that anyone treating Mando/Grogu like a Star Wars meal instead of a snack is a gross miscalculation of expectations. Fans, as ever, were divided, not sure whether they wanted a standalone story or one carrying significant relevance within franchise canon, leading to a confusion of conversations about how the movie disappointed them on either level, the takeaway from which is obvious: Movies can still be entertaining without reading knuckleheads arguing on the internet!
Now, let’s ignore the irony that this pro-The Mandalorian and Grogu argument you’re reading is on the internet, and delve into what happens in the movie, and how it fits into the vast Star Wars mythos. And in case you missed the words “ending explained” right there in the headline, that’s another way of saying, “heads up: pending spoilers.” So you’ve been warned. More than once, even!
What Happens in The Mandalorian and Grogu? Plot Description:
We open in a snowy mountainous region on a planet that isn’t Hoth. Notably, this cold open (please laugh) isn’t detailed in the Wikipedia summary because it has very little to do with the overall plot besides establishing the Mandalorian, a.k.a. Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal, with significant assistance from stunt doubles Brendan Wayne and Lateef Crowder, thus making us wonder how often Pascal was even under that helmet beyond the scene where the helmet comes off — more on that in a sec here), as an independent contractor whose main client is the New Republic. So: Hooray! He’s officially one of the good guys! Oh, and Grogu is hopefully getting paid proportionately for his contributions, e.g., using the Force to dismantle a mouse droid, or trying to steal Sigourney Weaver’s food cuz he hungy. (That’s the thing, Cap. Grogu’s always hungry.)
Yes, Sigourney Weaver. She’s the commander giving Mando and Grogu assignments. Don’t get too excited about that. She’s in about three scenes and is pretty much phoning it in, although it’s neat to see her all garbed up in a flight suit and piloting an X-wing. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves: In the snow, Mando and Grogu take out a few massive AT-AT walkers and send a bunch of Imperial jerkfaces to the afterlife. Mando’s still got mad skills, yo, and Grogu still makes you giggle like an 11-year-old cutting a fart at a slumber party, as long as ye of the puckered sphincters can loosen up and actually enjoy things once in a while.
Anyway, their next mission? Rescue Rotta the Hutt (voiced by Jeremy Allen White, not that you can really tell), son of Jabba the Hutt, from a gangster named Janu Coin (Jonny Coyne). Mando and the Groges first have to consult with Rotta’s aunt and uncle, the creepy Hutt Twins, and a four-armed monkey thing who sounds like Martin Scorsese, because the voice actually belongs to Martin Scorsese. This is the most surreal thing in a movie chock-full of slimy space slugs, wee little thingy-guys who are mechanics and spew Minionish gibberish and the now-76-year-old star of Alien, Galaxy Quest, and Avatar flying an X-wing. It’s no mean feat.
Occasionally assisted by the purple furry guy Zeb (voice of Steve Blum) for no reason other than Filoni’s dogged insistence upon resurrecting Clone Wars characters, Mando and Grogu learn that Janu has enslaved Rotta, forcing him to fight in gladiator battles. Rotta is conflicted. He’s kept in a prison, but also soaks in the glory of being the reigning champion. He also apparently has been hitting the weights and balancing his macros, because unlike most flabby, morbidly obese Hutts, he’s frickin’ ripped. Imagine Jabba as played by John Cena. And yet, Scorsese having anything to do with any of this is still weirder.
Mando’s attempt to free Rotta finds our armored hero captured by Janu and forced to fight Rotta in the ring. Rotta — who’s so whiny about being the son of a notorious dead gangster, I dubbed him Angsty the Hutt — doesn’t realize that Janu plotted to kill him by throwing every monster in the tri-state region at him, so the Hutt and Mando team up. They smash their way out, the monsters running rampant through the city-planet Shakari, where they apparently still are wreaking havoc, because the movie doesn’t address what happened to them. Must be all manner of innocent civilians being chomped. But never mind. We’re too busy being thrilled by a car chase rather obviously informed by The French Connection, except instead of cars, it involves jetpacks and speeders.
When Mando turns over the captured Janu to Sigourney Weaver, it marks the end of whatever act this is (act 1? Act 2? Act 1.736?). Here, it’s worth mentioning that part of Mando’s payment is a new Razor Crest, just like the beloved ship that got destroyed in the Mandalorian series, except with more yellow on it. He needs to fix it up, so he hires four Anzellans to help, and no, none of them is Babu Frik, who’s condemned to forever only be in The Rise of Skywalker, god help him. This means Grogu has four little weirdos to cavort and gambol with, because puppets, they stick together.
One fateful evening, Mando and Grogu are snatched by Embo, a CGI character who never speaks and also is a bounty hunter employed by the Hutt Twins (and also also is one of Filoni’s stupid Clone Wars castoffs). See, Mando chose to let Rotta go free instead of delivering him to his shitty, abusive aunt and uncle. And now he’s in trouble, about to be executed by the blecchy siblings by first having his helmet removed — as you’ll recall, a big no-no for devout Mandalorians like Mando — being tossed into a watery cave and first attacked by the Amanin, a cadre of nasty creatures that look like humanoid iguana-turtles, and then assaulted by the humongous Dragonsnake, which is impressive enough to make you wish the filmmakers had come up with a better name for it than the Dragonsnake.
The Mandalorian and Grogu Ending Explained: Does Baby Yoda Save the Day? Do Our Heroes Defeat the Hutt Twins?
Now who will rescue Mando? (Insert very tiny-sounding triumphant trumpets here) Grogu and the Anzellans, of course, and in the cutest manner possible. Turns out the Groges is pretty resourceful for a baby incapable of comprehensible speech. But Mando was bitten by the venomous Dragonsnake, and he lapses into a coma in the middle of a dense jungle. Grogu then not only rescues his adopted papa from a bunch of disgusting bugs (he eats a giant scorpion whole and raw — mmmm, pointy), but then nurses him back to health in a lengthy dialogue-free section that’s easily the funniest, sweetest, and most narratively innovative part of the movie. Grogu: He’s hungry. He pushes the wrong buttons. He gets in and out of varying degrees of trouble. He somehow swims in his bulky swaddling robe and mini-Mando armor without drowning. He saves Mando from certain death. ADORBS!
Once Mando feels better, he’s obligated to rescue Rotta from the Twins, who want to kill their nephew so he won’t threaten their reign as King Assholes of Nal Hutta. So he and Grogu fight the living crap out of all their flunkies — big clunky robots, battle droids, various cretins, Embo, Embo’s scary dog — and get a little help from Sigourney and some of the creatives behind the TV series (Filoni, Debra Chow, Rick Famuyiwa, Lee Isaac Chung) dressed as X-wing pilots. Everything explodes. Then Mando and Grogu hop in the new old Razor Crest and zoom through the galaxy: Further adventures await! And I think those monsters are still tearing Shakari apart.
How Does The Mandalorian and Grogu Fit in the Star Wars Timeline and Canon?
Perhaps you already know that the Mando series and film are set about five years after Darth Vader bit it in Return of the Jedi. There are no cameos by Han Solo, Rey, C-3PO, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Leia or any of the franchise favorites (although maybe, just maybe, that one droid in the background of that one shot is R2-D2). This movie and Rogue One are notably the only Star Wars movies not to bring back the old characters in a grossly transparent attempt to sell new, slightly different versions of the same old action figures.
Outside Feloni awkwardly inserting the few aforementioned Clone Wars forgettables into the plot, Mando/Grogu pretty much stands outside the overarching Star Wars narrative. In fact, it abandons the resurrection-of-Mandalore arc that the third Mando season dramatized, prompting us to wonder what’s up with Bo Katan, or if Katee Sackhoff will ever turn up anywhere outside the comic-con overpriced-selfie circuit (we hope not!). Some were upset about this; I was not, considering the season sidelined Mando and Grogu for overwrought melodrama. Keep the focus on Mando, and keep drawing our eyes away from him via Grogu’s cheeky-monkey hijinks.
As for the gripe that the movie avoids being overly cluttered by the ins, outs and what-have-yous of the greater canon? I’m having none of that hooey. Standalone Star Wars stories like this should be welcome. The world created by George Lucas and carried by many others since is rich and deep enough to encourage side missions like the wonky, weird monster-mash that The Mandalorian and Grogu tends to be. Most will be like me — catch the film once at the theater, and now that it’s available at home, watch it a bunch of times at their convenience. This is the way.
John Serba is a freelance film critic from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Werner Herzog hugged him once.
