Warning: This article contains spoilers for The Mandalorian season 3.
The third season of The Mandalorian ended, as expected, with a big final battle to retake Mandalore from the Imperial Remnants. After the Mandalorians have won the battle and taken back their homeworld, “Chapter 24: The Return” ends with a tantalizing epilogue that sets up a perfect season 4. While Bo-Katan and the Armorer start rebuilding their planet, Mando takes Grogu to see Captain Carson Teva, who hires them to help him govern the Outer Rim. Mando and Grogu going off on their own to complete missions for the New Republic will bring The Mandalorian back to its initial premise as an adventure-of-the-week Lone Wolf and Cub show.
Star Wars fans have been divided by The Mandalorian season 3. It was already polarizing before it even began, because Mando and Grogu had been reunited in a totally different show. After The Book of Boba Fett undid the bombshell twist ending of The Mandalorian season 2 ahead of the season 3 premiere, viewers wondered if anything in this series would have any permanence. As season 3 took the spotlight away from Mando himself and told stories about Bo-Katan and Dr. Pershing and Captain Teva, it seemed as though The Mandalorian might have lost its way. But the setups for future storylines in the finale episode have gotten the show back on track ahead of its recently greenlit fourth season.
How The Mandalorian’s Season 3 Finale Sets Up Season 4
Whereas the season 2 finale of The Mandalorian ended the second Luke Skywalker showed up to take Grogu away, the season 3 finale has an epilogue of a couple of scenes after the culmination of its climactic battle. The Armorer has restarted the Great Forge on Mandalore and Mando has officially adopted Grogu as his son, giving him the name “Din Grogu” and establishing The Mandalorian as a true father-son story before diving into its fourth chapter. As Mando’s newly appointed Mandalorian apprentice, Grogu is required to go out into the galaxy and experience some adventures. So, Mando promptly pays a visit to Captain Teva to offer his services as an “independent contractor” (in other words, a gun-for-hire) for the New Republic. Greef Karga has gifted Mando and his young ward a quaint little cabin on the outskirts of his town on Nevarro, giving them a reliable home base to return to in between adventures.
Teva is finally getting the regular role he’s always been promised as a sort of talent agent who will give Mando and Grogu cases to solve on a weekly basis. In its fourth season, The Mandalorian is gearing up to become the intergalactic procedural that the canceled Rangers of the New Republic series promised to be. Moff Gideon seemingly died when Axe crashed the mothership into his base and he was consumed by flames, but that didn’t seem like a permanent demise. And whether or not Gideon is really dead, he’s just one of many Imperial bureaucrats working under Grand Admiral Thrawn on the Shadow Council. Now that Mando and Grogu are working for the New Republic, they’ll be more directly involved in the fight against the Imperial Remnants.
Why The Mandalorian’s Season 4 Setup Is Perfect
The setups for season 4 in The Mandalorian’s latest finale episode will likely rectify everything that didn’t work about season 3. Season 3 has been somewhat controversial for focusing more on Bo-Katan and the expansion of Mandalorian lore than on the show’s original dynamic of Mando and Grogu. But after the events of the appropriately titled season 3 finale, “The Return,” The Mandalorian is poised to refocus on that dynamic when it comes back for season 4. Mando will go back to collecting bounties with Grogu at his side. Now that Mandalore has been reclaimed and repopulated with Mandalorians, and Mando has established a connection with Captain Teva and his troops, they have plenty of backup to call on if they need help bringing their bounties to justice.
The biggest complaint about The Mandalorian’s signature side quests is that they distract from the major ongoing storylines and delay the development of those serialized arcs. But now that it’s been established that going on journeys with his dad is the next part of Grogu’s initiation into Mandalorian society, those side quests are officially a part of the overarching narrative. Looking back, the most compelling episodes of The Mandalorian have been the standalone adventures: the prison break, the dragon-slaying, the attack on the Imperial refinery. If anything, the overarching plot distracts from the side quests, not the other way around. In season 4, The Mandalorian can focus squarely on Mando and Grogu’s journeys across the galaxy. And based on their side-by-side defeat of Gideon’s Praetorian Guards in the season 3 finale, they’ll probably become more of a “buddy cop” duo in the series’ future.