The Mandalorian and Grogu Had No Character Arc or Lore Weight, So Here Is How I Would Have Fixed It

The Mandalorian and Grogu is pretty disappointing. The best thing you will hear about this movie is that it was just fun, and yes, it was fun at times, but considering the history of this franchise and of The Mandalorian itself, this movie could have done so much more than just be content, which is what it feels like.

There are two macro problems I have with this movie. One is that it is incredibly shallow, and the other is that it does not justify its existence with any sort of lore weight.

Mando and Grogu never go on a character arc in this story

The movie doesn't have anything to say. Mando doesn't go on a character arc, Grogu doesn't go on a character arc, and the film doesn't have any remote theme it's trying to convey. It's just action sequence, smaller sequence, bigger sequence. It opens with the Empire still around and Mando and Grogu trying to stop them, and the AT-AT sequence on the snow planet is genuinely great, better than anything in the show other than maybe the fight on Mandalore. But that's the extent of it. It's not setting up a character moment later on, and that's a missed opportunity.

The plot is straightforward: Sigourney Weaver's character sends Mando to rescue Rotta the Hutt in exchange for information on the Empire for the New Republic. Rotta doesn't want to go back to the Hutts, which angers them, Mando gets captured, Grogu saves him, and they all take out the Hutts together. This entire movie is just plot and no story.

Someone could argue this loosely ties into a theme about the young growing up to protect the old, since Rotta wants nothing to do with his father Jabba's legacy, and Grogu ends up rescuing and nursing Mando back to health. But this is not an arc and is frankly not even a theme. This is the writers realizing their movie has no deeper message, so they threw in a few lines of dialogue to give the impression of depth. In order for there to be an arc, something needs to be tested and characters have to grow, and that simply doesn't happen here. The first two seasons of the show gave Mando real growth, and even season three, which I am not a fan of, gave Bo-Katan and the Mandalorians something. If there's ever a season four or a sequel, you could skip this movie and not miss anything, because nothing meaningful happens to these characters.

The film adds nothing to Star Wars lore despite easy opportunities sitting right there

There is nothing new about the lore that you learn in this movie. I know the counterargument: not every Star Wars project needs to tie into the Skywalker saga or have galactic consequences, and that's fair. But if you can tie into the larger universe without hurting your main story, why not take that opportunity? Andor is a character-focused show that still adds real weight to the lore of the Rebellion and the Empire, and even The Mandalorian series ties into the Imperial remnants that lead toward the First Order.

This movie takes place between Ahsoka season one and season two, right after Grand Admiral Thrawn returned to lead an Imperial campaign, a threat the entire Ahsoka show was built around preventing and failed to stop. Why not tie into that? The Mandalorian season three even ended with an Imperial council discussing Thrawn's return, so this isn't purely an Ahsoka concern. I'm not saying Thrawn needed to be the villain here, just an element.

It's also hard to ignore that Ahsoka features nearly every main character from Star Wars Rebels except Zeb, and Zeb happens to be a prominent character in this movie. Ahsoka season one ended with Ezra returning to the New Republic, so I kept wondering whether Zeb has seen Ezra yet. That's probably not important to this film specifically, but as a deeper fan I can't help but think about it. If that thought wasn't meant to be in my head, don't put Zeb in the movie at all; using him here reads as easy fan service.

Setting Star Wars Rebels aside entirely, this movie is also set between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens, and it does nothing to bridge how a defeated Empire becomes a new Empire and a new Rebellion. What if the snow planet from the opening had actually been an early, unfinished Starkiller Base, ignored by the New Republic because it isn't yet a threat? Or what if the information the New Republic wanted from the Hutts revealed that Imperial remnants were gathering under a name like the First Order? We are never even told what the information Sigourney Weaver's character is after actually is. Any of these small additions could have made the movie better.

Favreau has confirmed Disney told him to pause season four and make a simpler, cheaper film

At Star Wars Celebration 2023, three new movies were announced: a Rey movie, a Dawn of the Jedi movie, and a Dave Filoni directed movie. The Mandalorian and Grogu was not one of them, and the Filoni film was not this movie either. Jon Favreau has confirmed that after that Celebration he began writing scripts for Mandalorian season four, but was then told by Disney executives to pause that and make a self-contained, simple Mandalorian and Grogu movie instead, one that could be watched without having seen the show and would be relatively cheap to make.

That is what this is: a movie designed to make some money for Disney at the expense of the brand's reputation, and that's unfortunate. It's upsetting that Star Wars feels the need to make spin-offs this shallow just because they're fun enough to turn a profit. This feels like the kind of movie a studio makes to hold onto the license to an IP, except Disney doesn't have to worry about that with Star Wars.

My rewrite keeps the same plot but gives Mando and Grogu a real arc

My rule for rewrites is not to scrap the existing story, even though if I could I would scrap this whole film and season three of the show and make a Mandalorian movie about retaking Mandalore instead. Since that's not on the table, the goal is to take what already exists and make it better. The opening text would add that Imperial attacks are on the rise, giving urgency to the New Republic's need for information, and the opening AT-AT battle would show Mando doing nearly all the fighting while keeping an overprotective Grogu sidelined, including a moment where Grogu tries to use the Force to capture the fleeing warlord himself only for Mando to interfere and let him escape. That plants tension: Grogu wants to help, Mando won't let him.

The Hutt twin and Rotta plotline would mostly play out the same, except Rotta's speech about wanting his own identity away from his father would come later, delivered to Mando on the way back from the gladiator pit rescue, after Rotta notices Grogu's frustration with Mando. Mando still tells Grogu to stay behind for safety during the raid on the Imperial warlord's base, and still doesn't fully absorb the lesson when Embo attacks back on Nevarro and Mando again tells Grogu to hide.

When Grogu escapes, makes his own way to get Mando the antidote he needs by actively convincing an alien to help rather than stumbling onto convenient help as in the actual film, and nurses him back to health, that becomes the turning point: Mando wakes up, sees what Grogu accomplished alone, and apologizes instead of just delivering the line about the old protecting the young and the young protecting the old. I'd also have the twins remove Mando's helmet purely because Beskar is valuable, keep the helmet in their possession until the end instead of tossing it into the fighting pit, and let Mando stay helmetless through the recovery scene so the apology lands with his face visible.

In the final battle, Grogu is no longer being babysat, taking out droids and guards on his own as an equal partner rather than a sidekick. After Mando and Grogu are rescued, I'd add one closing scene before the credits where an Imperial council tells Thrawn that this Mandalorian is causing problems, and Thrawn ominously replies, "He will be dealt with," setting up either a sequel or season four. I don't think this rewrite is anything special, but it takes the existing movie and makes it better with a few tweaks, and if the film had been made this way the criticism that it's shallow, action-only content wouldn't be nearly as prevalent. I want Star Wars to be great, and I don't think mediocre content like this gets us there.

What did you think of The Mandalorian and Grogu, and what do you make of this rewrite?